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Bush's Father Foresaw Costs of Iraq War by George Gedda
Published on Wednesday, August 25, 2004
WASHINGTON - Not many people foresaw the postwar difficulties the administration has endured in Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.
One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.
"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.
"Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different and perhaps barren outcome."
The senior Bush's thoughts are outlined in "A World Transformed," published well before his son became president. After Desert Storm, the nation was deeply split over whether Bush was right to bring the troops home while leaving Saddam's regime intact.
Although the political context of the region at the time was different from what the incumbent President Bush faced in 2003, the father's predictions about a post-Iraq war situation were eerily prescient.
Baker had a similar view on the perils of a regime change policy in Iraq after Desert Storm.
In a September 1996 opinion piece, he said, "Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait.
"Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power.
"Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there."
Seven years after Baker wrote those words, in 2003, the political situation in the region had changed dramatically. As the incumbent administration saw it, Saddam had systematically ignored for 12 years U.N. Security Council demands that he eliminate his weapons of mass destruction.
Also, the administration believed, perhaps wrongly, that Saddam had reconstituted weapons programs that had been uncovered and destroyed since 1991.
So the Iraq war that former President Bush chose not to fight in 1991 was carried out by his son in 2003, and cast by the current President Bush as part of the global war on terrorism that had begun with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks 18 months earlier.
Saddam was perceived at least by the current President Bush as a far greater menace in 2003 than he had been in 1991 when the senior Bush was content with liberating Kuwait and foregoing regime change in Baghdad.
The current President Bush undoubtedly was warned about the possibility of heavy U.S. troop casualties in the 2003 war. But one wonders whether those warnings were as clear-sighted as those of Baker when he wrote about the perils of ousting Saddam militarily.
If that had been the policy in 1991, Baker said, it "would certainly have resulted in substantially greater casualties to American forces than (Desert Storm) itself. For this reason, our military and the president's senior advisers were properly dead-set against it."
Defense Department figures show that, as of Tuesday, 109 U.S. soldiers died during the 2003 Iraq war as a result of hostile action, compared with 611 since Bush declared an end to major combat actions in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
This was not a war of aggression. This was a continuation of the Gulf War of 1991. There was never a peace treaty, their was a cease fire agreement which was conditional on Hussein meeting certain requirements. He violated that agreement, nulifing the cease fire.
Bush Sr did not continue the war because he felt diplomacy could succeed. He was proven incorrect. Diplomacy had failed. The conditions of the cease fire agreement were not met, the 16 UN Resolutions that Hussein violated were also clear indications that diplomacy had failed and finally, the explulsion in 1998 of the UN Weapons inspectors was an open active defiance.
People today obviously have no clue what heavy casualties are. 2000 deaths over a 2 year period are not heavy casualties. They are extremely light, even by Vietnam standards.
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it clearly states how the intel debacle unfolded, and if you read carefully? you might even see that Iran is behind the bad intel.... who is winning this war???
shooting a few POS anti-aircraft weps at our fly-boys? LOL they needed the practice..... it was like swatting gnats for them
the LATEST CIA report is finally out and de-classified... The admin did force the CIA to come up the WMD intel by demending results too quickly....
AND the CIA did predict the mess we are in right now..almost exectly, but the admin didn't want to hear that....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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How long do you think diplomacy should go on? It was 10 years with no progress, and 3 years without any UN weapons inspectors. Diplomacy failed and that should be obvious to anyone.
The report you gave is 20/20 hindsight. It's easy to look back and say it really wasn't that way, etc, etc.
The big question remains, why if Hussein was in compliance did he not allow the UN inspection teams to prove it. It would have been very easy for him to have done so yet he did not.
The reason is he was not in compliance. The report you site states no significant (large) stockpiles of chemical weapons were found. Chemical weapons were found in small amounts. What was also not found was the documented stockpiles of WMD's that the UN inspection teams located and itemized. There is also no evidence of said WMD's destruction. There is also the delivery system which your report does state existed.
What mess are we in now? The only thing you ever see on the news is the negative. Rebuilding takes time and if you look past the constant negative reports by the mainstream media is progressing. Will it last? I doubt it but I could be wrong.
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chemical weapons were not found. what was found were very small amounts of chemicals which could be combined to make weapons . not unlike what you might have under your sink. I cannot understand why some people still believe the horseshiit this administration continues to shove down our throats.
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Strider576, you are arguing points that have already failed the test of time...
the report i gave was not hindsight, i figured the basics of that out after we walked into Baghdad untouched...
and in case you've been looking the other way? i direct your attention to Joseph Wilson, who was screaming bloody murder about the lies as soon they were uttered....
sadam was defeated and caged in a jail the size of a country, we flew over it night and day with IMPUNITY.....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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the UN inspection teams that were told to LEAVE Iraq so we could start bombing were saying they were being sent on wild-goose chases....
the admin shouted everybody down using fear loathing...
Posted 3/17/2003 5:40 AM Updated 3/17/2003 1:16 PM U.S advises weapons inspectors to leave Iraq VIENNA, Austria (AP) In the clearest sign yet that war with Iraq is imminent, the United States has advised U.N. weapons inspectors to begin pulling out of Baghdad, the U.N. nuclear agency chief said Monday.
-------------------------------------------- Wolfowitz Had CIA Probe UN Diplomat in Charge By Walter Pincus and Colum Lynch Washington Post
April 15, 2002 Officials gave contradictory accounts of Wolfowitz's reaction to the CIA report, which the agency returned in late January with the conclusion that Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" as chief of the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997.
A former State Department official familiar with the report said Wolfowitz "hit the ceiling" because it failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program.
Iraq war wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say Blix, ElBaradei: U.S. ignored evidence against WMDs
Monday, March 22, 2004 Posted: 1:34 AM EST (0634 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United Nations' top two weapons experts said Sunday that the invasion of Iraq a year ago was not justified by the evidence in hand at the time.
"I think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart," Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency's investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." ------------------------------------------
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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Jordan of course the kool aide drinkers still believe Mr. Bush and i myself have never seen the likes of it in America. Lots of people think WMD were smuggled out of the country, that Sodam is responsible for 9/11.And we need to stay the couse so to speak.When the truth of the matter is put before them with written reports from the highest government officials they don't believe it. And that scares me more than the war it self.
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i've gotten so tired of repeating the simple truth i can practically remember the url's in my sleep...
people hate to admit they've been conned... look at some of the stock market scams, and how long they go on......
it's very similar to a religion to some of these people....
people can pull a quote out of context from any number of places in the bible to argue three sides of the same debate...sometimes using the same quote to support opposing arguments....
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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It is truly amazing that, while the Bush Klan consistently rapes the country and the world, so many US citizens keep screaming "More! Please sir, more?!"
quote:Originally posted by jordanreed: chemical weapons were not found. what was found were very small amounts of chemicals which could be combined to make weapons . not unlike what you might have under your sink. I cannot understand why some people still believe the horseshiit this administration continues to shove down our throats.
Chemical weapons were found on at least two seperate occassions, once by US troop, once by Polish troops.
Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq Monday, May 17, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent (search) recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.
Bush administration officials told Fox News that mustard gas (search) was also recently discovered.
Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.
"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy."
The round detonated before it would be rendered inoperable, Kimmitt said, which caused a "very small dispersal of agent."
However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results were from a field test, which can be imperfect, and said more analysis was needed. If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war.
Polish Troops Find Sarin Warheads Friday, July 02, 2004
WARSAW, Poland Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin (search) that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.
Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's (search) war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.
"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."
Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.
In May, a booby-trapped artillery shell apparently filled with the sarin nerve agent exploded alongside a Baghdad road but caused no serious injuries to the U.S. forces who discovered it. At the time, officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam's regime.
You guys still haven't explained where the weapons went. The United Nations documented very specific number and stockpiles of WMD's. They inventoried the items. These were all WMD's which Hussein acknowledged existed and they visually inspected them and photgraphed them.
Where are they now? They were required under the cease fire agreement to be destroyed under UN supervision, this never happened. Hussein just prior to the war took UN inspectors to a site where he said he destroyed them but they could find no evidence of that occuring.
Glassman,
Joe Wilson doesn't have any credibility
Hans Blix never explained where the weapons went, he wanted more time. He was out of a job otherwise. I question his credibility as well.
Bond 006,
I suggest you check a couple of the links I've provided. I don't automatically believe anything Bush says but I do look at the available evidence. The following link details the UN involvement in the WMD inspections. It also lists the various UN Resolutions Hussein was in violation of.
It is truly amazing that people continue to buy into propaganda the media puts out every day and then spread around exagerated inflamatory statements to "legitimize" their claims.
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Hmmmmm? Seems to me I recall the absolute guarantees that there were huge store houses of poison gas and bio-weapons already arming illegal rockets set in position and capable of landing on US targets and hundreds completed and functional atomic devises, only awaiting the command of Saddam, before being unleashed on our shores.
No no no....I correct that. It doesn't "seem" that I remember. I remember definitely It was said! Over and over and over......
If you remember that being said, you were hearing it from the wrong people.
It never came from anyone in the Bush administration.
Where are they? What you are asking about never existed. Hussein did not have the capability YET of hitting the United States although he did have the capability of hitting our allies in the region. He also never had any nuclear weapons capability.
The stockpiles of poison gas exited in various forms.
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aragorn243: i was curious to know why iraq was attacked for violating UN resolutions when the following countries have violated several themselves by my count they are as follows turkey-23 morocco-18 croatia-6 israel- 32 armenia-4 russia-1 indonesia-4 sudan-3 so why arent we at war with turkey, morocco,and israel they have violated more than iraq, and on top of that if i recall correctly there were weapons inspectors in iraq, but we were ignoring what they were telling us because it wasnt what we wanted to hear. heres a (few) quotes from reputable news agencies reguarding iraq and weapons inspections. enjoy:
In a report to the Security Council Chief Inspector, Hans Blix, stated that before leaving on the eve of the US-UK led invasion, he had found no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (Associated Press)
Hans Blix, UN Chief Weapons Inspector, suspects that the Iraqi government possessed little more than "debris" from a former, secret weapons program before the US-led invasion. The US inability to find weapons of mass destruction after the fall of the Hussein regime has led Blix to downgrade his original assessment of the threat Iraq posed. (Washington Post)
On the eve of retirement, UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has made sharp criticisms of Washington. He referred to *******s in the Bush administration who consistently undermined his efforts to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and "leaned on" his staff to tailor their reports. (Guardian)
After weeks of fruitless searching, the Bush administration has come close to conceding that Iraq may not have had any biological or chemical weapons. Admitting this raises questions about the justification for the war. Some are calling it "the greatest intelligence hoax of all time."(Independent)
US have not found any weapons of mass destruction and questions are raised about the justification for a war on Iraq. If no WMDs are found, the world is going to be even more suspicious of US intentions in the future. (Reuters)
US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledged that it is difficult to prove Iraqs weapons of mass destruction and it is possible that no actual weapons will ever be found. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accuses the Bush administration of lacking credibility in its hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Blix states that only the UN inspectors can provide an objective assessment of the material found. (Independent)
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix stated that US officials tried to discredit the UN weapons inspectors to win Security Council support for war on Iraq. (Middle East Online)
Weapons inspectors supervised the destruction of Al Samoud 2 missiles by Iraq. The government of Iraq also plans to hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent. (Associated Press)
While the short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles discovered by UN inspectors can fly a few miles further than allowed by UN resolutions, the inspectors have reported no sign of any longer-range missiles that could strike Israel or neighboring nations. (Associated Press)
According to South African disarmament experts, Iraq is fully cooperating and the inspectors should be given more time before the UN Security Council authorizes war. (Associated Press)
UN weapons inspectors are complaining about information received from US intelligence because it leads the inspectors to one dead end after another. (CBS News)
A presidential decree issued by Saddam Hussein banned all weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, meeting a longtime demand of UN arms inspectors. (Associated Press)
UN chief weapon inspector Hans Blix challenged the Bush administration's false statements regarding the recent inspection report. Blix stated that he had not seen any persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda. (Sydney Morning Herald)
In his report on Iraqs weapons program, Chief US weapons inspector in Iraq Charles A. Duelfer concludes that Saddam Husseins ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991 and that there was no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program." The same conclusions apply to programs for chemical and biological weapons. The report thus contradicts the coalitions justifications to invade Iraq. (Washington Post)
A report commissioned by US President George W. Bush found that by the time Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, "every piece of fresh evidence" of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction "had been tested -- and disproved -- by UN inspectors." (Washington Post)
-------------------- "Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." Herbert Hoover 1930
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"British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.President Bush, 2003 State of the Union Address
"They could still be there like the 50 tons of mustard gas hidden on a turkey farm." President Bush, clinging to the claim that weapons of mass destruction may still be found in Iraq, April 13, 2004
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." --Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, "Vanity Fair" interview, May 28, 2003
"Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day." President Bush, telling Time magazine that he underestimated the Iraqi resistance, Aug. 2004
"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Vice President Dick Cheney, "Meet The Press" March 16, 2003
"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." President Bush, discussing the Iraq war with Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, after Robertson told him he should prepare the American people for casualties
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"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States." White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." President Bush, 7/17/03
Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time." White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03
"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now." President Bush, 7/2/03
"Absolutely." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03
"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended." President Bush 4/24/03
"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03
"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended." Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." President Bush, 3/19/03
"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations." President Bush, 3/16/03
"This is about imminent threat." White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies." Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03
Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03
Iraq "threatens the United States of America." Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03
"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03
"Well, of course he is. White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?, 1/26/03
"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat." President Bush, 1/3/03
"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands." President Bush, 11/23/02
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America." President Bush, 11/3/02
"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq." President Bush, 11/1/02
"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein." President Bush, 10/28/02
"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace." President Bush, 10/16/02
"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." President Bush, 10/7/02
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is." President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02
"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness." Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
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Iraq was violating UN Resolutions that were connected to a cease fire agreement. Iraq had a record of invading its neighbors and was on probation.
It's pretty amazing that Hans Blix couldn't find what his own organization inventoried and documented in 1991. That's one reason he isn't the most reliable of sources.
Hans Blix also said the following which contradicts what you posted:
Iraq's al-Samoud missile
By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent
When chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix delivered his first report to the Security Council at the end of January, he drew attention to two Iraqi missile programmes, the al-Samoud Two and the al-Fatah.
Both of these, he said, had been tested to ranges in excess of the permitted 150 kilometres (93 miles).
For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads.
Violation
Inspectors confirmed that the al-Samoud II missile does indeed exceed the limits set by Security Council.
There are indications that the weapon may already have been supplied to the Iraqi Army
The fact that it has a larger than permitted diameter and that it may also have an engine derived from a surface-to-air missile are two further facts that contravene UN restrictions.
Both of these facts suggest that the missile could be intended to have an even longer range, since it could carry additional fuel and could perhaps be fitted with an even more powerful motor.
Iraq's missile programme, like the early stages of North Korea's and other countries' missile efforts tend to take a basic Soviet-era design and re-manufacture it, gradually extending its range and payload.
Thus, quite apart from being a violation in itself, the al-Samoud II could be the basis for further development.
And Mr Blix pointed to additional signs that Iraq had taken steps to refurbish its missile manufacturing capability.
Owning up?
The exact operational status of the al-Samoud II is unclear. There are indications that the weapon may already have been supplied to the Iraqi Army.
Al-Samoud missiles are based on a Soviet-era design But what is going to be more controversial is the sourcing of this evidence - it seems that the inspectors learnt about the new missiles from data provided by the Iraqis themselves.
So is this an example of wilful disregard for the UN's strictures, or of the Iraqis coming clean on some proscribed activity?
One has to assume that the Americans already had a pretty good idea about these missile tests from satellite data. The Iraqis would know that too.
Many will say that developing the weapon does indeed put Iraq in material breach of its obligations.
For the British and the Americans, this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get.
The US has found WMD's, so has Poland, see previous post.
The following is a partial list of WMD's and other weapons violations found since the end of the war:
Investigative Report Saddam's WMD Have Been Found Post April 26, 2004 By Kenneth R. Timmerman
New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.
In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."
Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.
Both Duelfer and Kay found that Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs," the official said. "They found a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects." They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.
But while the president's critics and the media might plausibly hide behind ambiguity and a lack of sensational-
looking finds for not reporting some discoveries, in the case of Saddam's ballistic-missile programs they have no excuse for their silence. "Where were the missiles? We found them," another senior administration official told Insight.
"Saddam Hussein's prohibited missile programs are as close to a slam dunk as you will ever find for violating United Nations resolutions," the first official said. Both senior administration officials spoke to Insight on condition that neither their name nor their agency be identified, but their accounts of what the United States has found in Iraq coincided in every major area.
When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice. Among Kay's revelations, which officials tell Insight have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:
A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?
"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"
New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.
A line of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."
"Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."
"Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] - well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."
In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles - probably the No Dong - 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.
In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."
In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].
What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."
Lt. Gen. Amer Rashid al-Obeidi (left) and Lt. Gen. Amer Hamoodi al-Saddi (right) speak to an unidentified French intelligence officer at the Baghdad International Arms Fair in April 1989, and another French officer listens in (behind al-Saadi, facing camera)
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction concluded that Saddam "probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW [chemical warfare] agents - much of it added in the last year." That assessment was based, in part, on conclusions contained in the final report from U.N. weapons inspectors in 1999, which highlighted discrepancies in what the Iraqis reported to the United Nations and the amount of precursor chemicals U.N. arms inspectors could document Iraq had imported but for which it no longer could account. Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.
But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.
Douglas Hanson was a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I. He was an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.
In an interview with Insight and in an article he wrote for the online magazine AmericanThinker.com, Hanson examines reports from U.S. combat units and public information confirming that many of Iraq's CW stockpiles have indeed been found. Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.
But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble. "Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."
The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides - or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.
When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."
Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.
At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."
That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"
At Taji - an Iraqi weapons complex as large as the District of Columbia - U.S. combat units discovered more "pesticides" stockpiled in specially built containers, smaller in diameter but much longer than the standard 55-gallon drum. Hanson says he still recalls the military sending digital images of the canisters to his office, where his boss at the Ministry of Science and Technology translated the Arabic-language markings. "They were labeled as pesticides," he says. "Gee, you sure have got a lot of pesticides stored in ammo dumps."
Again, this January, Danish forces found 120-millimeter mortar shells filled with a mysterious liquid that initially tested positive for blister agents. But subsequent tests by the United States disputed that finding. "If it wasn't a chemical agent, what was it?" Hanson asks. "More pesticides? Dish-washing detergent? From this old soldier's perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy."
The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.
A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation. "The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.
What does 3.9 tons of VX look like? "It could fit in one large garage," the official says. Assuming, of course, that Saddam would assemble every bit of VX gas his scientists had produced at a single site, that still amounts to one large garage in an area the size of the state of California.
Senior administration officials stress that the investigation will continue as inspectors comb through millions of pages of documents in Iraq and attempt to interview Iraqi weapons scientists who have been trained all their professional lives to conceal their activities from the outside world.
"The conditions under which the ISG is working are not very conducive," one official said. "But this president wants the truth to come out. This is not an exercise in spinning or censoring."
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RICE: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
RICE: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Yes, she didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. He did not yet possess nuclear weapons. What's your point? You take that little sentence and create a "scenario" out of it. Interesting.
2 minutes to read my 7:31pm post is really good. I read it myself and it took 5. Or did you just skip over it?
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aragorn243: in my post i talked about the al samoud 2 missles and i also said that they were being destroyed. in your post it says: "For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads."
the UN teams acknowledged this and saw that they were destroyed and there was no ability for them to be repaired or improved. As posted below.
Iraq Says It's Destroying More Missiles By Bassem Mroue Associated Press March 3, 2003
Iraq was destroying at least seven more Al Samoud 2 missiles on Monday, quickening the pace in an attempt to avoid war. U.N. weapons inspectors said Iraq would hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent.
Odai al-Taie, an Information Ministry official, said Iraq had begun destroying more Al Samoud 2 missiles at 9 a.m., and expected to destroy between seven and nine on Monday. With weapons inspectors supervising the work, Iraq crushed four missiles on Saturday and another six on Sunday. It also destroyed two casting chambers used to make engines for another kind of missile, the Al Fatah.
Iraq said it would submit a detailed written report to the weapons inspectors in about a week with a proposal for verifying its claims that it unilaterally destroyed anthrax stores and about 1.5 tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said Monday.
Saddam Hussein's scientific adviser, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, said Sunday night that Iraq wanted to use DNA testing to help determine the characteristics of the destroyed anthrax. The weapons inspectors went Monday to a chemical and explosives plant and a rocket factory where they have been before, and to two import companies and a plastics factory, Iraq's Information Ministry said. The inspectors do not comment on their day's work until evening.
Iraq also said inspectors returned to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad, where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991. Al-Saadi said 157 of the R-400 bombs contained anthrax, aflotoxin and botulin toxin. He said Iraq has been excavating them and so far has uncovered eight intact bombs, as well as many fragments of destroyed bombs.
On Sunday, U.N. weapons inspectors took samples of the material in the bombs to confirm their composition. The destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles complies with an order from chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said they exceeded the 93-mile range set by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
The casting chambers had been banned and destroyed in the 1990s, but Iraq rebuilt them. Blix's deputy, Demetrius Perricos, said this time they are destroying them in a manner in which they can't be rebuilt. Calling the missile destruction "proactive cooperation from the Iraqi side," al-Saadi said Sunday night that "We hope that it will be to the satisfaction of UNMOVIC," the U.N. inspections program.
But al-Saadi said that if the United States indicated it would go to war anyway, Iraq might stop destroying the missiles. "If it turns out at an early stage during this month that America is not going to a legal way, then why should we continue?" he said.
The United States, which is leading the push for war against Iraq, had dismissed the missile destruction. The White House called it part of Iraq's "game of deception." Iraq has agreed to destroy all unassembled pieces, software, launchers, fuel and equipment used to make the Al Samoud 2 in "a few days or a very short few weeks," according to Perricos.
it looks to me like they were destroying the weapons they admitted to having to me. Its not like they had the missles, lied about them and kept building them. We knew about them, had them destroyed and we still invade. Sounds like a good tactic to me, disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless.
-------------------- "Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." Herbert Hoover 1930
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That sums it up nicely, turbokid: "Disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless."
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No. I'm a speed reader. Admit you were wrong about Rice, and I'll comment further. Now, please reply to turbokid's brilliant post. He deserves a response.
Did they destroy all or just some? Sounds like some to me. It is interesting that you at this point admit that Iraq had WMD's at the time of the attack. That Iraq was in the process of digging them up to show to the inspectors. Don't you even consider that these were probably stored in many different locations, not just the one that they were digging up? And why were they digging them up, they weren't even supposed to have them and had claimed they did not possess them.
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quote:Originally posted by turbokid: aragorn243: in my post i talked about the al samoud 2 missles and i also said that they were being destroyed. in your post it says: "For the British and the Americans this may be as close to a smoking gun as they are going to get
In a move seen as key test of the Iraqi's willingness to comply with the inspectors Mr Blix demanded their destruction - a task which has now begun.
This limit was set by the UN after the last Gulf war as part of the stringent efforts to contain Iraq's weapons programmes.
The development of long-range missiles capable of delivering chemical, biological, and even nuclear warheads, was seen as one of Saddam Hussein's central strategic goals.
He had already used his existing missile force against Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, with conventional warheads.
It was expected that over time, Iraqi scientists would develop increasingly accurate missiles with greater ranges and payloads."
the UN teams acknowledged this and saw that they were destroyed and there was no ability for them to be repaired or improved. As posted below.
Iraq Says It's Destroying More Missiles By Bassem Mroue Associated Press March 3, 2003
Iraq was destroying at least seven more Al Samoud 2 missiles on Monday, quickening the pace in an attempt to avoid war. U.N. weapons inspectors said Iraq would hand over a report about its unilateral destruction of anthrax and VX nerve agent.
Odai al-Taie, an Information Ministry official, said Iraq had begun destroying more Al Samoud 2 missiles at 9 a.m., and expected to destroy between seven and nine on Monday. With weapons inspectors supervising the work, Iraq crushed four missiles on Saturday and another six on Sunday. It also destroyed two casting chambers used to make engines for another kind of missile, the Al Fatah.
Iraq said it would submit a detailed written report to the weapons inspectors in about a week with a proposal for verifying its claims that it unilaterally destroyed anthrax stores and about 1.5 tons of VX, a deadly nerve agent, inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said Monday.
Saddam Hussein's scientific adviser, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, said Sunday night that Iraq wanted to use DNA testing to help determine the characteristics of the destroyed anthrax. The weapons inspectors went Monday to a chemical and explosives plant and a rocket factory where they have been before, and to two import companies and a plastics factory, Iraq's Information Ministry said. The inspectors do not comment on their day's work until evening.
Iraq also said inspectors returned to al-Aziziya, an abandoned helicopter airfield 60 miles southeast of Baghdad, where Iraq says it destroyed R-400 bombs filled with biological weapons in 1991. Al-Saadi said 157 of the R-400 bombs contained anthrax, aflotoxin and botulin toxin. He said Iraq has been excavating them and so far has uncovered eight intact bombs, as well as many fragments of destroyed bombs.
On Sunday, U.N. weapons inspectors took samples of the material in the bombs to confirm their composition. The destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles complies with an order from chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said they exceeded the 93-mile range set by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
The casting chambers had been banned and destroyed in the 1990s, but Iraq rebuilt them. Blix's deputy, Demetrius Perricos, said this time they are destroying them in a manner in which they can't be rebuilt. Calling the missile destruction "proactive cooperation from the Iraqi side," al-Saadi said Sunday night that "We hope that it will be to the satisfaction of UNMOVIC," the U.N. inspections program.
But al-Saadi said that if the United States indicated it would go to war anyway, Iraq might stop destroying the missiles. "If it turns out at an early stage during this month that America is not going to a legal way, then why should we continue?" he said.
The United States, which is leading the push for war against Iraq, had dismissed the missile destruction. The White House called it part of Iraq's "game of deception." Iraq has agreed to destroy all unassembled pieces, software, launchers, fuel and equipment used to make the Al Samoud 2 in "a few days or a very short few weeks," according to Perricos.
it looks to me like they were destroying the weapons they admitted to having to me. Its not like they had the missles, lied about them and kept building them. We knew about them, had them destroyed and we still invade. Sounds like a good tactic to me, disarm your enemy using the UN as a tool and attack them knowing full well they are defenseless.
Sorry but I don't consider the mention of a mushroom cloud as the creation of a scenario. You obviously do. I consider a scenario from a government official to be a more detailed description of potential or event planning than an off hand remark.
As for responding to any other poster, I will do that in my own time and manner.
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quotes from reputable news agencies reguarding iraq and weapons inspections. enjoy:
