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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (708953)	10/26/2005 4:31:53 PM
From: Wayners	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The following was the ACTUAL basis for using force against Saddam. This huge report and SH's unwillingness or inability to account for WMD was the reason for his removal...NOT whether SH actually had WMD...This was a big deal in the Press in Dec 2002 and Bush repeatedly cited it leading up to March 2003. Bush in clash with UN over Iraq weapons dossier By David Blair in Baghdad and Julian Coman in Washington 08/12/2002 telegraph.co.uk Iraq yesterday handed the United Nations a 43-volume 11,807-page declaration on its weapons of mass destruction as America reacted with fury to a ruling that it will not be allowed to see the full report. The contents of the document will decide whether Iraq faces war. An Iraqi official shows documents on Iraq's arms programmes to journalists in Baghdad Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, has told the 15 Security Council members that they will be given the report only after sensitive information about weapons manufacture had been removed. The purged details are expected to be the most sensitive - precisely the information that America most needs to compare with its own intelligence. Washington believes that the document will provide the trigger for military action as it is certain that Iraq has left out key information. That would put Saddam Hussein's regime in "material breach" of UN resolutions, paving the way for an American-led attack. A senior US official said that Washington would provide the inspectors with evidence, including some not made public before, that Iraq has retained and accelerated prohibited weapons programmes. UN inspectors in Baghdad were given what Iraqi officials called an "accurate, full and complete" report covering 11 years of intensive work on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Baghdad hopes to head off the threat of war by providing details of secret weapon programmes whose existence it once denied. In a cynical attempt to forge an anti-American alliance in the Arab world, Saddam last night apologised for the first time to the people of Kuwait for invading the emirate in 1990. He also urged Muslims to join any Iraqi struggle against "occupation forces". But Kuwait rejected the apology last night. Saddam's aides persisted in denying that the country possessed banned weapons. "Some ministries perhaps contain some activities which are dual-use and they are declared fully, completely and accurately," said Maj-Gen Hussam Mohammed Amin, the head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate. The weapons declaration was presented to the world in chaotic fashion after journalists were told to follow a government vehicle driven across Baghdad at breakneck speed to a secret location. They were told that they would see the declaration in groups of six, but the information ministry failed to announce which would be allowed in first. This provoked pandemonium as cameramen besieged the office and smashed a window. Officials then scribbled out a hasty list and journalists were allowed two minutes each in the room with the 43 spiral-bound volumes and 12 CD-roms. The report was flown to Cyprus last night en route to the UN in New York. Officials will pore over the text and the inspectors in Iraq will have the task of verifying every claim. President George W Bush said that Washington would take some time to judge the declaration, but repeated that the US would disarm Iraq by force if necessary.