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| 4/3 |
| 2002/8/4 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:25491 Activity:very high |
8/3 http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13710 We're all doomed. - danh \_ http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/1/142827/1669 Unlike the alternet drivel, kur5hin's article acknowledges the actual real history of what was going on at the time. actual real history of what was going on at the time and possibly what has happened since the inspectors got kicked out years ago. \_ Here's the Big Lie in the article, "According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such capability exists". What they fail to mention is that *4 YEARS* ago Ritter and all other inspectors were kicked out of the country \_ the article mentions that a number of times. \_ No. It doesn't. Not once. Quote it. At best it says the year he left and doesn't say it was because they were kicked out. Care to try again? There are numerous other lies in the article but this was the most flagrant. The article is crap and a quick read of any real news source from the net reporting on it would tell you that. It's commonly known history which the article denies by failing to acknowledge. You can't change reality by simply willing to be different. \_ "Ritter himself and no weapons inspection team has set foot in Iraq since 1998." Back to English 1a for you. \_ Yes this is the part of English 1A where you missed the context around that one sentence which makes it *painfully* clear that they're trying to claim he left because there was nothing left to find, not because they were kicked out. I was waiting for you to stick your foot in your mouth on that line. Go read the article without extracting sub-pieces and twisting them to suit yourself. Also, this one line is still not "a number of times" as you claimed and again, does not say they were kicked out. English 1A indeed. after wasting 7 years playing hide and seek (and losing) with the Iraqi military/government. Not only can a *lot* happen in 4 years but the odds they found and destroyed all the Iraqi WMD in the previous 7 years is flat out zero. This story is crap. For the record, (like Scott Ritter), I voted for Bush and I'm highly disappointed with the way Bush has handled _all_ of the corporate responsibilities mess but the real problem with Iraq was Bush Sr. playing global power balance politics the first time not with his son cleaning up the mess later. Clinton should have done this 4 years ago when the inspectors got kicked out and since he didn't, the next guy in line should do it no matter what his party. \_ you're wasting your time in CS, your calling is talk radio. \_ *laugh* Welcome to the motd, the home of personal attack. If the best you can do is personally insult someone then don't bother wasting disk space. \_ The burden of proof on someone who wants his country to invade another country and cause the death of many thousands of people is on the invader, not the peacelover. Can you give any evidence that Iraq does have WMD, other than overheated Bush rhetoric? \_ I love the MOTD! - danh |
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| www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13710 One of the organizers for the gathering, United For Justice With Peace Coalition, handed out green pieces of paper that read, "We will not support war, no matter what reason or rhetoric is offered by politicians or the media. There at the lectern stood this tall lantern-jawed man, every inch the 12-year Marine Corps veteran he was, who looked and spoke just exactly like a bulldogging high school football coach. A whistle on a string around his neck would have perfected the image. Ritter was in the room that night to denounce, with roaring voice and burning eyes, the coming American war in Iraq. According to Ritter, this coming war is about nothing more than domestic American politics, based upon speculation and rhetoric and entirely divorced from fact. Congress just passed emergency appropriations money and told the Boeing company to accelerate their production of the GPS satellite kits that go on bombs that allow them to hit targets while the planes fly away, by Sept. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Democrat Joe Biden, has convened a hearing, which began Wednesday, July 31. The Committee will call forth witnesses to describe the threat posed to America by Iraq. Ritter fears that a lot of crucial information will not be discussed in that hearing, precipitating a war authorization by Congress based on political expediency and ignorance. Scott Ritter came to that Boston classroom to exhort all there to demand of the Senators on the Committee that he be allowed to stand as a witness. Ritter began his comments by noting the interesting times we live in after Sept. There has been much talk of war, and much talk of war with Iraq. Ritter was careful to note that there are no good wars - as a veteran, he described war as purely awful and something not to be trivialized - but that there is such a thing as a just war. He described America as a good place, filled with potential and worth fighting for. We go to just war, he said, when our national existence has been threatened. According to Ritter, there is no justification, in terms of national security, international law or basic morality, to justify this coming war with Iraq. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. After all, Saddam Hussein has been demonized for 12 years by American politicians and the media. Ritter's owed his presence in Iraq to Hussein's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, along with the ballistic missile technology that could deliver these weapons to all points on the compass. According to the Bush administration, Hussein has ties to the Al-Qaeda terrorists that brought down the World Trade Center. The White House is certain that Hussein will use these terrorist links to deliver a lethal blow to America, using any number of the aforementioned weapons. The argument, propounded by Bush administration officials on any number of Sunday news talk shows, is that a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, and the unseating of Saddam Hussein, is critical to American national security. It would be just, smart, and in the interest of national defense. Therein lies the rub: According to Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in Iraq with the UNSCOM weapons inspection teams performing detailed investigations into Iraq's weapons program, no such capability exists. Iraq simply does not have weapons of mass destruction or maintain threatening ties to international terrorism. Considering the American military lives and the Iraqi civilian lives that will be spent in such an endeavor, not to mention the deadly regional destabilization that will ensue, such a baseless war must be avoided at all costs. Ritter noted explicitly that Iraq did possess these weapons at one time - he spent seven years there tracking them down. They failed to declare the existence of their biological and nuclear programs after the Gulf War, and declared less than 50 percent of their chemical and missile stockpiles. They hid everything they could, as cleverly as they could. After the first lie, Ritter and his team refused to believe anything else they said. For the next seven years, they meticulously tracked down every bomb, every missile, every factory designed to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry. They went to Europe and found the manufacturers who sold them the equipment. They got the invoices and shoved them into the faces of Iraqi officials. They tracked the shipping of these materials and cross-referenced this data against the invoices. They lifted the foundations of buildings destroyed in the Gulf War to find wrecked research and development labs - at great risk to their lives - and used the reams of paperwork there to doublecheck what they had already determined. Every weapon or facility they found was later destroyed in place. After a while, the Iraqis knew Ritter and his people were robotically thorough. Fearing military retaliation if they hid anything, the Iraqis instituted a policy of full disclosure. By the time he was finished, Ritter was sure that he and his UNSCOM investigators had stripped Iraq of 90-95 percent of all their weapons of mass destruction. Ritter believes that the ravages of the Gulf War accounted for a great deal of the missing material, as did the governmental chaos caused by sanctions. The Iraqis' policy of full disclosure, also, was of a curious nature that deserved all of Ritter's mistrust. Ritter told a story about running down 98 missiles the Iraqis tried to pretend never existed. UNSCOM got hold of the documentation describing them, and demanded proof that they had, in fact, been destroyed. He was brought to a field where, according to Iraqi officials, the missiles had been blown up and then buried. At this point, Ritter and his team became "forensic archaeologists," digging up every single missile component they could find there. After sifting through the bits and pieces to find parts bearing serial numbers, they went to Russia, who sold Iraq the weapons in the first place. They cross-referenced the serial numbers with the manufacturer's records, and confirmed the data with the shipping invoices. When finished, they had accounted for 96 of the missiles. Left over was a pile of metal with no identifying marks, which the Iraqis claimed were the other two missiles. Ritter didn't believe them, but could go no further with the investigation. Americans mesmerized with stories of lying Iraqis who never told the weapons inspectors the truth about anything should take note of the fact that Ritter was led to exactly the place where the Iraqis themselves had destroyed their weapons without being ordered to. The pile of metal left over from this investigation that could not be identified means Iraq, technically, could not receive a 100 percent confirmation that all its weapons were destroyed. Along with the other mitigating factors described above, it seems clear that 100 percent compliance under the UNSCOM rules was impossible to achieve. The fact that chemical and biological weapons ever existed in the first place demands action, according to the Bush administration. After all, they could have managed to hide vast amounts of the stuff from Ritter's investigators. Iraq manufactured three kinds of these nerve agents: VX, Sarin and Tabou. Some alarmists who want war with Iraq describe 20,000 munitions filled with Sarin and Tabou nerve agents that could be used against Americans. Even if Iraq had somehow managed to hide this vast number of weapons from Ritter's people, what they are now storing is nothing more than useless and completely harmless goo. It is harder to manufacture than the others, but once made stable, it can be kept for much longer. Ritter's people found the VX manufacturing facility that the Iraqis claimed never existed totally destroyed, hit by a Gulf War bomb on Jan. The field where the material they had manufactured was subsequently buried underwent more forensic archaeology to determine that whatever they had made had also been destroyed. All ... |
| www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/1/142827/1669 But in our world, there are "people who believe the killing of innocent men and women is justified. Then there are the madmen bent on domination who are only too happy to exploit these groups to their own ends. The looming specter of a war with Iraq rightfully 32 deserves to be questioned. At the same time, history has taught us that appeasing 33 tyrannical madmen will not stop them, nor will it long save us from having to deal with them. Moreover, I fully believe the longer the world waits to act, the more dangerous the situation will become. In the first installment of this series, I will examine Iraq's Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction programs. ADVERTISEMENT Sponsor: 34 RimuHosting 35 root@rimuhosting # mkdir /home With a RimuHosting VPS $20 a month will get you root access to your own Debian or Red Hat 9 server. The possibilities are endless: run blogs, Java servers, photo galleries, or PostNuke. You can even be a mate and share your web space with friends. Iraq possesses no capability for manufacturing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)', many allege that administration concerns over Saddam Hussein's use of such weapons in the region and abroad are baseless. Unfortunately, it has been years since any member of UNSCOM has been in a position to assess Iraqi WMD manufacturing infrastructure. Moreover, most accounts by UNSCOM inspectors have complained of an Iraqi shell game whereby critical equipment, documents, and personnel were removed from sites, while access to other sites was denied as inspectors watched materials being removed out the literal back door^ 41 1 . These two facts cannot be ignored, nor can the best recent data showing Iraqi attempts at acquiring materials related to WMD manufacture. Iraq's WMD Programs and History Chemical The first reported use of WMDs by Iraq came during the 42 Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Over 10,000 Iranian casualties were attributed to the use of Mustard and Serin nerve gas by Iraq, with the majority of casualties occurring in 1981 and a lesser number in 1984. Under international political pressure, the Iraqi military scaled back its use of gas in the conflict. Towards the end of the conflict, 43 Hussein used gas to quell internal uprisings by Kurds in the North. Although the 44 1925 Geneva Protocol (to which Iraq later became a party) banned chemical weapons, their availability was wide spread, as was the technology to manufacture them. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Iraq saw the development of chemical weapons as integral to its defense. These chemical weapons included H-series blister and G-series nerve agents. Iraq built these agents into various offensive munitions including rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and warheads on the Al Hussein Scud missile variant. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi fighter-attack aircraft dropped mustard-filled and tabun-filled 250 kilogram bombs and mustard-filled 500 kilogram bombs on Iranian targets. The 45 Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center was established in the late 1960's, and initial research centered on synthesizing heavy elements for Nuclear research. Later, Iraq failed to procure plutonium recovery technologies from the French, but did receive assistance in the construction of a 40 mega-watt light water reactor named "Tammuz", aka " 46 Osiraq". Israeli intelligence was able to determine that the plant was being used to develop plutonium for an atomic weapons capability, and provided enough substantial evidence to the Iranian government to prompt them to bomb Osiraq during a raid in 1980. Iraq repaired the reactor, but it was again bombed in 1981 by Israeli 47 Air Force planes. This time the reactor was damaged beyond Iraq's capability to repair it quickly. With France failing to assist in repairs, Iraq shifted its focus to acquiring fissile Uranium. The plant did regain production capacity, but was heavily bombed during the opening hours of the air war in Operation Desert Storm. After it became clear the French would not provide timely assistance to rebuild Osiraq, Hussein directed the start of Project 182: The construction of a natural uranium heavy-water type reactor based on the 48 Canadian NRX design. However, Project 182 fell behind in funding as Iraq focused on Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EIMS) technologies at 49 Al Sharqat and other sites. Iraq had found a natural supply of Uranium at the 50 Akashat mining facility, and was working at as many as seven facilities to refine the material into a supply of weapons grade uranium. Akashat was also a Phosphorus mine, so Iraq was able to disguise its Uranium processing efforts as fertilizer production. The 1991 Gulf War added urgency to Iraq's nuclear program, but as the intensity of the air war increased, Iraq sought to preserve its capacity by removing equipment from some of the sites whose security was compromised. As a result of these moves, the heavy bombing of Tuwaitha, Tarmiya, and Al Fajar by coalition air forces failed to destroy Iraq's nuclear manufacturing equipment base. The overall war and subsequent UNSCOM activities did prevent the resurgence of manufacturing capacity. At one point, documents related to " 51 Petrochemical Project 3" (PP3, the cover administration for Iraq's WMD programs) were forcibly removed from UNSCOM inspectors and returned hours later after being heavily censored and tampered. Biological The progress of Iraq's biological program was severely hampered by a lack of internal support. Starting in 1975, 52 facilities were established at Al Hazen Ibn Al Haytham Institute, but lack of success in developing weapons grade bio-weapons caused the facility to be closed in 1978. During the Iran Iraq war, focus on WMD development centered on existing chemical weapons capacity and the development of a nuclear capability. In 1985 research resumed at the Muthanna State Establishment, the main chemical weapons production facility for Iraq. By 1986, a staff of 10 was at work, and PP3 had authorized the acquisition of fermentation equipment for use in cultivating biological agents. In 1987 the bio-weapons program was transferred to facilities at Al Salman where staff and equipment were given greater funding. Research focused more tightly around the development of 53 botulinum toxin (botox) and Anthraces Bacillus (Anthrax). An inhalation chamber was constructed for extensive testing on live animals. By 1988, full production on botox had commenced at a facility in Taji. At Al Salman, the laboratory demonstrated its ability to mass produce large quantities of live bacteria by producing 1500 liters of 54 bacillus subtilis, an anthrax simulant. Owing to this success, Iraq commenced full scale production of Anthrax. Iraq had not limited itself to botox and anthrax, however. In 1989 a facility was established at Al Hakam for the production of botox and anthrax, freeing up Al Salman and Taji for research into 55 aflatoxin, 56 Clostridium perfringens, 57 tricothecene mycotoxins, 58 wheat cover smut, a 59 hemorrhagic conjunctivitis virus, a 60 rotavirus and 61 camel pox virus. None of these agents are believed to have been used, and the destruction of materials related to these programs was ordered at the onset of the land phase of the 1991 Gulf War. Present Status of Iraqi Weapons Programs Iraq has been comparatively discreet about its WMD programs following the Gulf War. In 1998, Iraq expelled all UNSCOM inspectors after nearly a decade of much publicized interference with inspections activities. Allegations of a 1996 gas attack on Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq were investigated by Turkey, but the results were inconclusive. While direct use of its WMD capability hasn't occurred, Iraqi biochemical weapons technologies are turning up among terrorist organizations. Much of the current state of intelligence on the Iraqi weapons programs comes from defections by members of the regime and officers of its programs. Without UNSCOM direct assessment, it is difficult to accurately gauge the current state of these programs, but the data that has come out of Iraq so far suggests that Iraq is actively pursuing further refinement of WMDs and has a... |