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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (149163)	10/26/2004 6:19:20 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

On the weapons inspections on March 8 2003: 1. The IAEA inspectors last verified that previously inspected facility containing high explosives remained sealed - this was in March 2003 just before the invasion. The FOX news report is simply FALSE if you are using it to "prove" that no explosives were there. They most certainly where there. But if we give you and FOX the benefit of doubt, this can be explained by simple terminology differences - the statement: U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex -- most recently on March 8 -- but found nothing during spot visits to some of the 1,100 buildings at the site 25 miles south of Baghdad. Terminology: UNMOVIC / IAEA are not the same thing. You can loosely describe them as "UN" but that's not precise enough for this story. For example, if the FOX reporter really meant UN - UNMOVIC inspectors, then that could be true. They were looking for chemical/biological weapons. IAEA was there on scene looking for nulcear weapons and related materials. Since this site was already well known to contain the high explosives, and already sealed by IAEA, there would be no reason for the "UN" UNMOVIC inspectors to consider that part of the Al Aq-qaa site. People need to stop believing everything they read plus start asking questions plus start searching for their own.

To: greenspirit who wrote (149163)	10/26/2004 6:19:28 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Respond to of 281500

Sigh... that old Fox report has so many inaccuracies in it, I can't let another one go while its in front of us here. Speaking to the chemical weapons "found"... Lets start at the very begining -- not that it probably matters to you, but Ronald Reagan and his special envoy to Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld, knew perfectly well that Saddam had chemical weapons decades ago -- and that Saddam had used them on Iran -- and despite this knowledge, Reagan was trying to convince Saddam to build an oil pipeline through Jordan. Back to modern times: 1. You'll have to read the CAFCD / FFCD (Final Full Complete Disclosure) all 12,000 pages of it, to learn that Iraq disclosed its chemical weapons programs. 2. Specifically: One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun" -- a nerve agent that the U.S. government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. There was no way to immediately confirm whether the substance was indeed tabun and soldiers found only a small amount, indicating the site was meant for training, not storing or deploying chemical weapons, Brooks said. 3. This "discovery" is not listed in the CIA's own WMD report. Tabun is referenced 32 times in Volume 3. Not a single reference to this single bottle found is mentioned in the report. One wonders why... Maybe Iraq got somethings right after all: Iraq has repeatedly claimed that it destroyed its unconventional weapons programs after 1991. The claim was voiced again on April 1 by Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Referring to the gas masks and other chemical gear found by advancing coalition troops, he suggested U.S. forces were planning to plant evidence to implicate Iraq. "Let me say one more time that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "The aggressors may themselves intend to bring those materials to plant them here and say those are weapons of mass destruction." Turns out he really wasn't lying.