WMDs - Updated for the Election Cycle of 2008

WMD’s ~ Myth or Reality?

Iraqi general, Georges Sada (right), makes the charges in a new book,“Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”

Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.” … (See Atlas Shrugged post)

Below is an updated edition of some of the proofs I used from a debate with a professor of history from Michigan University:

Just some of the "stuff" our boys "didn't" find in Iraq. The below are all violations against the cease fire brokered with Iraq in 1991, which all allow a legal re-entry into Iraq.

From: "Disinformation: 22 Media Myths that Undermine the War on Terror":

• Found: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium

• Found: 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons

• Found: Roadside bomb loaded with sarin gas

• Found: 1,000 radioactive materials--ideal for radioactive dirty bombs

• Found: 17 chemical warheads--some containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent five times more powerful than sarin

From a Daily News Article:

• A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

• A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

• Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

• New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

• Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

• A line of UAVs 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 km, 350 km 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 UN.

• Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

• Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

Also, 750 shells with saran gas were found. Just 15 of these killed about 15,000 people, pictured below.

Protest Warrior sign:

These vials pictured below were found in a safe house with other items mentioned in the Daily News article (scientists, lab equipment, and the like).

97-Vials with Agents of Mass Destruction:

The below picture is some lab equipment found in a Mosque along with research scientists.

As our troops moved in, many documents were burned and destroyed. While we still have many hundreds of thousands of paperwork found still needing to be translated… much was lost.

What was discovered was dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

This caused the United States and a larger coalition than the First Gulf War to resume (not preempt) military operations. Just the fact alone that the Iraqi’s were firing on our flyboys in the “no-fly” zones was reason enough to resume (not preempt) operations based on the cease fire agreement brokered by the United Nations via the first war.

Updated, by-the-by, there is a peace rally on the Whole Foods corner on the 22^nd of this December (2007). I will be wearing an interesting shirt that I hope will cause a conversation or two.

PapaG