Hunt for WMD in Iraq almost over.
Hunt for WMD in Iraq almost over.
More than four years after the fall of Baghdad, the United Nations continues to spend “millions of dollars in Iraqi oil money to continue the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.” But a new report in the New York Times indicates that the search “appears close to an official conclusion, several years after their absence became a foregone one”:
The United States and Britain have circulated a new proposal to the members of the United Nations Security Council to “terminate immediately the mandates” of the weapons inspectors. Staff meetings on the latest proposal have already taken place, and officials say that the permanent Council members, each of whom has veto power, seem ready to let the inspection group — the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission — meet its end.
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So we can leave Iraq, right?
June 17th, 2007 at 9:54 pmThe United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission will hold its next regularly scheduled meeting in
June 17th, 2007 at 9:57 pmShip Bottom, New Jersey, as they prepare to assess the Weapon of Mass Destruction created by the US Army, off the East Coast of the United States.
LOL Bush and Blair knew from day one that there were NO working WMD in Iraq, but they used that as an excuse to invade Iraq to take control of the OIL fields.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:00 pmThere are plenty weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Of course, they’re all ours.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:00 pmSo we can leave Iraq, right?
Comment by Zooey — June 17, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
Well, it was the reason Wolfie said they chose as being the best way to sell the invasion to the American people. (Perhaps he didn’t put it in quite those words.)
OT – Zooey, check the two most recent items on my blog. You might be surprised.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program already in progress.
“…and if it hadn’t been for my horse, I never would have spent that year in college.”
June 17th, 2007 at 10:02 pmYes Zooey the mandate from the UN was to find, and destroy WMD, so the UN should inform Bush that he is in violation of the mandate, if the US continues to occupy Iraq.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:02 pmThey knew there were WMDs in Iraq, Rumsfeld even had the sales slips.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pmThe United States and Britain have circulated a new proposal to the members of the United Nations Security Council to “terminate immediately the mandates†of the weapons inspectors. Staff meetings on the latest proposal have already taken place, and officials say that the permanent Council members, each of whom has veto power, seem ready to let the inspection group — the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission — meet its end.
When asked why, they said “its getting too hard to climb over the rubble”
June 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pmThe Iraq Intelligence and WMD document center includes the Senate Intel Committee Reports, the Robb-Silberman Commission Report, the Downing Street memos, the Iraq Study Group recommendation, the Iraq Survey Group’s WMD findings, and more.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pm“…and if it hadn’t been for my horse, I never would have spent that year in college.â€
Comment by Wayne A. Schneider
Thanks, Wayne. I needed that popped vein in my head…..
Checking blog…
June 17th, 2007 at 10:09 pmA leading spokesmen for the group stated; “given the lack of electricty in the country or standing buildings not occupied by the Americans, the prospect of a working nuclear centrifuge for enriching uranium seems highly dubious”
June 17th, 2007 at 10:09 pmSomebody please tell to 60-70% of Fox viewers, that believe that WMDs were already found.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:09 pm“though it is believed a large stockpile of cloth encased soap powder explosives, also known as “burka-bombs” is believed to be stored somewhere in Al Anbar.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:14 pm….”No WMD’s under here!” – never were/never will be any.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:33 pmI grew up reading Ian Fleming novels. For the life of me, I can’t understand why we weren’t competent enough to plant a few WMD-covertly, of course.
Seems to me the mobsters responsible for this debacle could have anticipated this problem, and prepared “cover” for our fake provocation. Sure, the UN inspectors and some from Saddam’s regime would have howled, but who would have listened to them?
(I don’t advocate this approach, but I am surprised Bushco didn’t pursue it.)
June 17th, 2007 at 10:41 pmWayne,
Fantastic blog article, and a nice picture. Nothing more current? :)
June 17th, 2007 at 10:43 pmWell Mr. Wilson was right after all. At lease Cheney did what he needed to do and illegally invade Iraq. I wonder what the families of the dead soldiers think of that fact their love ones were lied to by the White House.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:44 pmI hope the Wilson’s Judge in the legal suit reads this report. All these American people falling all over Bush are only making fools of themselves. They honor a drunk who allowed their sons and daughters get killed based on lies and corruption. Libby supporters could care less about our troops as they are making money.
Emerald sez:
Actually, it’s more difficult to “plant WMDs” than you might suppose at first. It’s a lot more involved than just leaving a couple warheads in the desert to find later…you also have to plant a plausible support structure that would be capable of producing such a weapon, or the ruse would be obvious, even to Republicans.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:06 pmTripMaster-I assume there would be logistical and infrastructure fakery, as well. It just seems like our ability to be a step ahead of the game is as lost as this administration seems to be.
I think it still comes back to competence. Even in trying to dupe the world, we have lost our edge.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:22 pmI know some have pointed it out already, but wasn’t the UN mandate focused on removing Saddam from power and destroying WMDs?
If that’s the case, then… Mission Accomplished! See ya at the bar!
June 17th, 2007 at 11:38 pmIt was over day 1 of this fiasco.
IGNORE THE TROLLS – Debate good, Trolls suck
June 18th, 2007 at 12:07 amMaybe if they stop searching for weapons that aren’t they, they can now focus on coming home.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:10 amNow the only mandate the chymp has is Gannon.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:24 amHunt for WMD in Iraq almost over.More than four years after the fall of Baghdad, the United Nations continues to spend “millions of dollars in Iraqi oil money to continue the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.â€
And a certain furniture store in Tulsa, Okla., has been advertizing “Store Closing” sales every weekend for over a decade…
June 18th, 2007 at 12:45 amI thought this was already finalised.
There were no WMDs. Not that I cared anyway. Not that it was even the reason for invading. Not that WMDs mattered.
The threat of WMDs was Saddam’s bluff to stop radical Islamists taking over. He got radical Christians instead. Soon to be followed by radical Islamists. Not that that matters either.
Fixing Africa should have been the focus. We should do good there and develop Moral Authority for the future.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:59 amFixing Africa should have been the focus. We should do good there and develop Moral Authority for the future.
Comment by Martin Gifford
Bahhh! Dont be a party pooper. That wont make profits for all good old war/gun companies. This is a world run by trade. If trade needs blood, it will get blood. If trade needs to cut health services for poor people, it will be done. If trade needs to sell drugs (alcohol, cigar, weed, etc.) it will be done. We have the world we want.
June 18th, 2007 at 1:17 amU.S., Russia: Iraq had no WMDs
http://www.star-telegram.com/279/story/139036.html
UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dismantle the U.N. agency that searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and affirm that Saddam Hussein’s government had no such arms at the time of the American invasion in March 2003.
The Security Council will adopt a resolution the last week in June to close the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, created in 1999 to search Iraq for biological and chemical weapons, Belgian and British diplomats said. The measure will also end the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency’s mandate to look for nuclear arms in Iraq.
U.N. inspectors found no banned weapons before or since the invasion.
Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the U.N., said his country is “still dealing with the residue of having been a pariah state” and called the resolution a “huge symbolic step that will show we are taking steps forward to be reintegrated in the community of nations.”
He said adopting the U.S.-drafted resolution would be a prelude to lifting all U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq during Saddam’s reign.
The Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq and toppling its government was the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq has complained about paying $50 million since the invasion to maintain the agency, known as UNMOVIC. The agency, which withdrew the inspectors before the war, employs 34 people and prepares quarterly reports to the Security Council.
An annex to the proposed resolution will include a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar al-Zebari pledging that his government won’t develop WMDs.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:29 amAGAIN you are spreading this nonsense.
The UN inspectors are VERY important to DOCUMENTING BUSH’S CRIMES, not least of which was the release of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS OF HIGH-EXPLOSIVES, ARTILLERY SHELLS, and other munitions.
• That’s the seed corn for Bushco Genocide, now underway throughout the region.
The friendly bastards at the NYT want to make INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS some sort of budget issue, when in fact the cost of Bush’s mercenaries is 1,000s of times more expensive than the UN inspectors on a daily basis.
Turn OFF the NYT propaganda. Progress does not consist of helping Bushco remove the international presence in his disastrous colonial adventure.
June 18th, 2007 at 4:02 amNaturally Tobey is spreading the same hokum.
“The measure will also end the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency’s mandate to look for nuclear arms in Iraq.”
Or nuclear material. But Bushco NEVER ALLOWED THE INSPECTION OF TUWAITHA FOR THE MISSING CESIUM OR STRONTIUM, most likely either looted, or stolen during the looting that Bushco allowed/encouraged.
This is not a boon to Iraq — this is THE COVERUP.
June 18th, 2007 at 4:05 amUS Soldier Sodomised Female Iraqi Detainee
A Seymour Hersh interview with General Anthony Taguba, who investigated Abu Ghraib, confirms details of the abuse not previously public. It also confirms that the torture was sanctioned from the top. Not quoted here, but General Janis Karpinski has testified that she saw a memorandum on “Interrogation techniques” pinned to the wall by military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, signed by Donald Rumsfeld himself. Karpinski was at the top of the line of command of the guards – the military police – but not the interrogators. Taguba here notes that Rumsfeld not only denied advance knowledge, but even tried afterwards to deny having seen Taguba’s report or knowing what had happened.
Doubtless more of the detail of the war crimes at Abu Ghraib, and of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo, will continue to emerge in the next few months as the war party becomes totally discredited.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/
June 18th, 2007 at 4:57 amTaguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061707A.shtml
June 18th, 2007 at 4:58 amaccording to an article that appeared at raw story in jan 06, they tried shortly after “mission accomplished” but failed …
June 18th, 2007 at 5:02 am
The true irony is that Iraq is so blown to bits that you can search the country by satellite now.
Sad, indeed.
June 18th, 2007 at 5:46 amThe real test of how “progressive” people are on this blog is whether they understand the need to condemn US corporate pillage of third world resources. In the case of Iraq, the natives are fighting. Soldiers are dying, and therefore people are against it. If Iraqis weren’t putting up such a fight and you could get away with it, I suspect most Americans would be happy to support resource wars.
Why do I call it pillage? The new hydro-carbon law in the Iraqi parliament puts 60 odd of the 80 plus oil fields in Iraq into the hands of Exxon-Mobil and BP-Aramco. That’s why Iraqi MPs do not want to support it.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:08 amFFS!
If we find WMD in Iraq now, it would NOT mean they were there
prior to our little pre-emptive strike. It would seem that Saddam had
disposed of all of the chemical and biological weapons THAT WE GAVE HIM and had not constituted a nuclear weapons program (as the U.N. inspectors had stated they had not found any proof prior to our invasion).
What a complete and utter travesty.
My God, we have completely radicalized so many people it makes me
June 18th, 2007 at 6:19 amsick. Our actions have been Osama’s best recruitment tool, and we have
played right into his hands.
start buying all of your gas from Hugo Chavez at CITGO stations!!
June 18th, 2007 at 6:43 amhttp://ccoaler.blogspot.com/2007/06/us-openly-states-iran-main-source-of.html
US depicts Iran as source of weapons 4 insurgents
June 18th, 2007 at 6:44 am“This is a world run by trade.”
Satire noted.
Fixing Africa and building Moral Authority for the future would be good for trade, not to mention HAPPINESS, in the long term.
Trade should be for the happiness of all.
The problem is simplistic short-term thinking. Schools, or at least university, should fix that.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:48 amWith the conclusion of tat searc should come warrants against Bush, Cheney and their syncophants for lieing to congress and aggression under false pretenses (as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity). Of course we won’t see that.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:55 amOf course, it’s time to start looking for them in Iran. You didn’t know?
June 18th, 2007 at 8:49 amAS for the “why didn’t they just plant some themselves issue”, there is talk that they were in fact on the very verge of brining them in, but Valerie Plame’s team was able to intercept and bring it to a grinding halt. So, maybe she was outed for her husband’s criticism and nothing else, but it seems FAR more likely they would do something that heinous to cover up something MUCH more traitorous.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:00 amMr. Bush’s WMDs will likely go down in history as the premier hoax. It will likely be seen as the most lethal hoax the United States of America (the Bush team) has ever perpetrated upon another nation.
And still the Bush team is reticent about the birth of WMDs. The Bush team is the same team that wants all of America’s kimonos open so that Americans “shall have no secrets from the Bush team†is itself the king of secrets.
The WMD affair is another one of the Bush team’s “TRAIN WRECKSâ€. Name a major task that the Bush team attempted and I’ll name another train wreck. Here is a part of what James Bovard wrote about WMDs in 2003:
“Bush’s WMD Flimflamsâ€
by James Bovard, September2003
The forgeries
In early March, the IAEA announced that the documents detailing the attempted purchases of uranium were frauds. One senior IAEA official told the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh,
These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped.
The British government had long refused to give the documents to the IAEA; when the Brits finally passed along the “smoking gun,†it took IAEA inspectors “only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake,†Hersh reported.
The letters appeared to be a crude cut-and-paste operation with Niger government letterhead; however, the names of officials in power did not match the dates on the letter and the signature of Niger president Tandja Mamadou was an obvious forgery.
A senior IAEA official observed that the flaws in the letters could have been “spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.†Hersh, who wrote a superb exposé on the scam, noted,
Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) requested that FBI chief Robert Mueller investigate the document fraud because “there is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.†The FBI effectively brushed off Rockefeller’s request.
Six weeks after Hersh’s piece appeared, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported that the vice president’s office began a much earlier investigation into the Iraq-Niger nuclear documents, sending a former U.S. ambassador to Niger. Kristof reported that in February 2002
that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged…. The envoy’s debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.
A tardy admission
After months of the story of the false Niger claims festering in the media, a senior Bush administration official — unnamed, of course — formally announced on July 7, 2003,
Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq’s attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the state of the Union speech.
This greatly belated admission by an unnamed official was taken by senior Republicans as the proper close of the entire episode. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, declared,
Obviously, when you use foreign intelligence, you — we don’t have necessarily as much confidence or as much reliability as you do your own. It has since turned out to be, at least according to the reports that have been just released, not true. The president stepped forward and said so. I think that’s all you can expect.
But it is ludicrous to assert that “the president stepped forward and said so.†Bush never conceded his statements were false; instead, he busied himself in late June denouncing “historical revisionists†who were examining the administration’s record on Iraq.
The Bush administration did not even have the gumption to permit the “senior administration official†to be named — and yet Santorum believes Bush deserves a “that’s all you can expect†response.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) derided concerns over the administration’s confession that it had used false statements on the path to war:
It’s very easy to pick one little flaw here or one little flaw there. The overall reason we went into Iraq was sound and morally sound. And it’s not just because somebody forged or a made a mistake on whether Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear material from Niger or whatever.
Whatever. Hundreds of American soldiers are dead and thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed. It is not a question of “one little flaw here or one little flaw there.†Instead, it is a question of plank after plank of the Bush administration’s justification for going to war being rotten to the core. And leaders like DeLay respond by rushing to attempt to close the subject and to portray any further curiosity as pettifogging — or worse.
Bush White House aides sought to defend the president by blaming the CIA for failing to warn them that the Niger story was as bogus as a three-dollar bill.
However, on July 22, Bush’s Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, conceded that the CIA had sent two warnings to the White House in early October 2002 casting grave doubts on the Iraq-Niger uranium claims.
The Washington Post noted the following day that
yesterday’s disclosures indicate top White House officials knew that the CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush’s January address to the nation.
Most of the American media ignored the revelations amidst widespread exulting over the killing of Saddam’s sons by the U.S. military in Iraq.
The Bush administration knew — at least as of early March — that the president’s statements in the state of the Union address on Iraq’s pursuing uranium in Africa were false and misleading. Yet the administration made no effort to correct its falsehoods until a British parliamentary inquiry had bludgeoned the Blair government on the same issue.
There is no reason to presume that Bush was more deceptive and manipulative on the war on Iraq than he is on the war on terrorism or other subjects. The main difference is that the evidence of false claims on Iraq is now stark, especially after the U.S. invasion.
James Bovard is author of Lost Rights (1994) and Terrorism and Tyranny: How Bush’s Crusade is Sabotaging Peace, Justice, and Freedom (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0309d.asp
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When I brought the above to the attention of a neocon, the neocon attacked James Bovard. That what neo-cons do. It’s akin to “killing†the messenger. When you don’t like the message, attack the messenger. Another WMD messenger received the same type of response after I said that Mr. Joe Wilson (the ex Ambassador to Niger) found the WMD document to be a fake. Resoundingly, the neocon said “Joe Wilson lied: he lied: he lied.â€. When I told of the IAEA’s determining, within hours of receipt of the WMD “document†that it was a FAKE, the neocon attacked the United Nations.
But what about the Bush team faithful?. Would a leader (the Bush team) want the led (the Bush team faithful ) to be misled? Don’t know.
Some time back the San Francisco Chronicle printed an article that said something like,â€50% of America still believed that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. And it is likely that some do still believe. It is likely that ideas generated by faith will need faith to either change them or remove them.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:06 amSo it took 4 years, God knows how many billions of dollars to find…. wait for it…
NOTHING!
June 18th, 2007 at 10:00 amNo WMDs found? One newspaper printed a story that said WMDs were found. That was brought to my attention by a blogger who was refuting my “no WMDs found”.
Weapons of mass destruction are just that – a category of weapons. So, if everybody in Iraq is looking for the subcategory – nuclear, why not switch to the subcategory – chemical/gas? Then print a story that WMDs were found. They were those huge gas shells that were found in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had used gas on his own countrymen some twenty years ago.
But that newspaper, saying it got the information from a Republican Senator/Congressman printed that story.
I read that story in the Washington Times.
I DID NOT read that story in the New York Times
June 18th, 2007 at 12:42 pmDid WMDs serve the Bush team well? They may have. First, they got some agreement out of Congress to go along with the Bush team’s Iraqi war idea.
But boys and girls at home, should not try what the Bush team tried on Congress. Selling somebody a “bill of goods” is a no, no in the civilized society of America. Boys and girls at home could possibly be held accountable for “selling a fraud”. Maybe, even accountable in a court of law.
So, just what did the Bush team gain in the WMD affair?
Removal of a head of state? Yes.
Democracy exported to Iraq? No.
No one could possibly mistake Iraq for a democracy. The civilian conditions in Iraq have been described as CHAOS.
An attack on terrorism? No.
Iraq’s government was removed and replaced with NOTHING. So, how many terrorists could the wild streets of baghdad produce in four years? A bunch! And the Bush team spoke of WORLD TERRORISM. That could mean that many of the terrorists trained on the wild streets of baghdad were shipped off to other countries to become a part of a WORLD TERRORISM contingent.
Now for the oil. Could it have been the oil?
June 18th, 2007 at 4:58 pmThe Secretary of Defense, in 2003, said it was not about the oil. He emphasized it was not about the oil. But in 2007 there is a Hydrocarbon Bill being processed in Iraq. And America’s BIG OIL is playing a significant roll.