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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (160028)	4/1/2005 9:22:31 PM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Saddam was cooperating. Prove that he wasn't. I remember all reports saying that the weapons inspectors themselves were disappointed to be leaving as they were accomplishing thier tasks and were getting cooperation. Orca

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (160028)	4/1/2005 9:24:05 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Your level of "intellectual honesty" never ceases to astonish, Nadine. From cia.gov Nuclear: Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and signifi cance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date. • Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. • Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. Chemical: While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered. Biological: In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the Presidential level. Iraq would have faced great difficulty in re-establishing an effective BW agent production capability. This being an official Bush administration document, Duelfer dutifully did a great deal of retrospective scaremongering, and talk about future intentions, but when it comes to actual evidence, it's pretty clear there was no there there, and there hadn't been any there there for a long time. Now, in some parallel universe or other, maybe a quick invasion would have discovered this massive infrastructure that Saddam cleverly destroyed without a trace in the year before W finally got the war of his heart's desire, but that seems a pretty dubious assertion under conventional reality. Alternatively, the non-existent WMD weapons and programs were all shipped to Syria, or something, I hear from alternate "intellectually honest" sources.