Posted on 10/07/2004 7:34:25 AM PDT by Carl/NewsMax
Press coverage of the report to Congress by Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer yesterday has focused on what the U.S. didn't find in Iraq during it's 18 month search for weapons of mass destruction.
Paraphrasing Duelfer's report, for instance, the New York Times states categorically: "[Saddam] Hussein ended his nuclear program in 1991 and there was no evidence he tried to restart it."
But that's only part of the story as far as Saddam's nuclear ambitions went.
While Duelfer says he found no evidence of a "concerted effort" by Saddam to press ahead with his nuclear program after 1991, his report makes it clear that the program itself was was never abandoned.
In fact, what Duelfer actually says is that Saddam's nuclear program was on hold - in a state of suspended animation - with scientists, nuclear equipment and raw materials standing by awaiting the green light from the Iraqi dictator.
Here's a few quotes taken directly from Duelfer's findings that didn't make it into coverage by the Times, Washington Post and other big media outlets.
• "Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability - in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks. . . ."
• "Baghdad undertook a variety of measures to conceal key elements of its nuclear program from successive UN inspectors, including specific direction by Saddam Husayn [Duelfer's spelling] to hide and preserve documentation associated with Iraq’s nuclear program."
• "[The Iraq Survey Group], for example, uncovered two specific instances in which scientists involved in uranium enrichment kept documents and technology. Although apparently acting on their own, they did so with the belief and anticipation of resuming uranium enrichment efforts in the future."
• "Starting around 1992, in a bid to retain the intellectual core of the former weapons program, Baghdad transferred many nuclear scientists to related jobs in the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). The work undertaken by these scientists at the MIC helped them maintain their weapons knowledge base."
• "Initially, Saddam chose to conceal his nuclear program in its entirety, as he did with Iraq’s BW pro-gram. Aggressive UN inspections after Desert Storm forced Saddam to admit the existence of the program and destroy or surrender components of the program."
More quotes from the Duelfer report:
• "Saddam did express his intent to retain the intellectual capital developed during the Iraqi Nuclear Program. Senior Iraqis - several of them from the Regime’s inner circle - told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once UN sanctions ended."
• "As funding for the MIC and the [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] increased after the introduction of the Oil-for-Food program, there was some growth in programs that involved former nuclear weapons scientists and engineers."
• "The Regime prevented scientists from the former nuclear weapons program from leaving either their jobs or Iraq. Moreover, in the late 1990s, personnel from both MIC and the IAEC received significant pay raises in a bid to retain them, and the Regime undertook new investments in university research in a bid to ensure that Iraq retained technical knowledge."
In his preliminary report to Congress just seven months ago, Duelfer went into detail about some of Saddam's suspected nuclear equipment:
• "In the nuclear arena, the ISG has developed information that suggests Iraqi interest in preserving and expanding the knowledge needed to design and develop nuclear weapons. One significant effort illustrating this was a high-speed rail gun program under the direction of two senior scientists associated with Iraq’s pre-1991 nuclear weapons program."
• "Documents found outside [one] laboratory described a high-voltage switch that can be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, laser detonation, nuclear fusion, radiation measurement, and radiation safety."
• "It is this combination of topics that makes us suspect this lab was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development," Duelfer concluded.
bttt
And, of course, from the New Left Times, the public ONLY GETS WHAT THE LEFT WANTS YOU TO KNOW AND THINK is the whole and complete truth WHEN THEY KNOW IT IS NOT!!!!!
The credibility of the MSM is gone.
bookmarking
Duelfer could report today that Saddam had an ICBM under his bed & they wouldn't bother reporting it at this point.
It sounded like it concluded the pilot is nowhere to be found -- in Iraq.
Following the Dem's logic, the pilot never existed either. That's going to be a shock for his family.
Several scientists who cooperated with this investigation have been murdered.
I guess Saddam executed his son in law wrongfully, for escaping Iraq in 1995 and exposing an ongoing nuclear program that didn't exist.
Until 1995, Iraq denied having had any serious intention of building nuclear weapons, despite abundant evidence to the contrary uncovered by Action Team investigations. Then, after Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and head of the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, defected in August 1995, his revelations about the scope and intensity of the nuclear weapons program threatened the credibility of the government's denial.
In response to Kamel's defection, the Iraqi government produced the so-called "chicken farm documents." Several days after Kamel fled to Jordan, senior UNSCOM and Action Team officials were taken to Kamel's farm, where a half-million-page cache of documents was stashed in a shed. The documents shed light on extensive programs to develop and build weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.
The Iraqi government said it had not made a decision to manufacture nuclear weapons. The government said, in effect, that it had been duped--that Kamel had developed these programs without authorization and had hidden the incriminating evidence at his farm.
Does anyone remember the incident before the war with the Iraqi who jumped into a UN inspection team's Jeep, claiming to have WMD-related info for them? The UN then handed the Iraqi back over to Saddamn's thugs, who later killed him. If there was nothing to the WMD program, why did that man risk and later lose his life? And why did the UN give him back to the Iraqis?
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