Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief

The Sunday Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1/25/04 | Con Coughlin

[saquin]

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Dr Kay's comments will intensify pressure on President Bashar Assad to clarify the extent of his co-operation with Saddam's regime and details of Syria's WMD programme. Mr Assad has said that Syria was entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own biological and chemical weapons arsenal.

Syria was one of Iraq's main allies in the run-up to the war and hundreds of Iraqi officials - including members of Saddam's family - were given refuge in Damascus after the collapse of the Iraqi dictator's regime. Many of the foreign fighters responsible for conducting terrorist attacks against the coalition are believed to have entered Iraq through Syria.

A Syrian official last night said: "These allegations have been raised many times in the past by Israeli officials, which proves that they are false."

[Dave Elias]

"Oh and now it's my turn to ask a few questions.
What happened to the WMD stockpiles admitted to by Iraq?

Why is there no evidence or records of their destruction?"

A queer line of reasoning you have there. It seems that you would rather be vindicated at all cost. Surely the best result, maybe not for the administration but for the security of the general population, would be if the WMD didn't exist at all.

If they as you suggest have been sent to Syria and therefore potentially distributed to every mad Mullah with a few bucks to spare, then this is an horrendous scenario.

I hope to god that we were wrong, but I fear they may now turn up on the streets of New York, London or Tel Aviv. The invasion of Iraq could turn out to be the biggest own goal in history.

Have you actually considered this as a possibilty?

[RandallFlagg]

I just got the transcript of the interview (believe it or not, from someone who has stated on another board that NOTHING would justify the war).

Here it is:
_____________________________________________________________

David Kay discusses his conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq

LIANE HANSEN, host:

On Friday, CIA director George Tenet announced the resignation of the chief US weapons investigator in Iraq. David Kay has served as special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group since June of last year. After resigning his post, Kay told the Reuters news service that he does not believe Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The Bush administration stands by its prewar assertions about Iraq's banned weapons, although Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters yesterday, 'We don't know yet.' Kay will not submit a final report on his work in Iraq, but the weapons search will continue. Charles Duelfer, also a veteran of UN inspections, will replace Kay as the new CIA special adviser. David Kay came to our studios this morning. We began by discussing the conclusions he's reached at the end of his hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Mr. DAVID KAY (Former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq): Well, I think what we reported in October and what the president actually cited in the State of the Union address are the most important things we found. We found that the Iraqi government, particularly Saddam Hussein and his senior leadership, had an intention to continue to pursue their WMD activities; that they, in fact, had a large number of WMD program-related activities. Now it's also important what we have not found. We have not yet found actual weapons and certainly not large stockpiles of weapons. So there was a WMD program. It was going ahead. It was rudimentary in many areas--for example, the nuclear area. But it continued without, though, actual stockpiles of weapons.

HANSEN: So prior to last year's invasion and your report of October, things hadn't really changed.

Mr. KAY: Not very much.

HANSEN: Have you determined that you're never going to find clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction?

Mr. KAY: Well, I think one has to be cautious in this regard. Because of the breakdown of social and political order at the end of the war and rioting and looting continued unchecked for at least two months, we're going to be left with ambiguity as to what we found. My summary view, based on what I've seen, is that we are very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons. I don't think they exist. That's my personal view based on the evidence as of when I left. The search is going to go on, and indeed one shouldn't be surprised in Iraq by surprises. You continue to be surprised by what you find. I personally think we're going to find program activities, and some of them are quite substantial, as in the missile area. We're not going to find large stockpiles.

HANSEN: Program activities meaning there's material; it's been processed and it's ready to deploy?

Mr. KAY: No. Program activities meaning that there were scientists and engineers working on developing weapons or weapons concepts, that they had not moved into actual production, but in some areas--for example, producing mustard gas--they knew all the answers. They had done it in the past, and it's a relatively simple thing to go from where they were to starting to produce it. But they had not made that decision to go ahead at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom, at least that's my conclusion.

HANSEN: You told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that you do believe some weapons materials may have been moved to Syria. What can you tell us about that?

Mr. KAY: I think that's a compressed view of what I said. What I've said is there's ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war. I mean, there's satellite photography, there are reports on the ground, of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved. And that's an important area for which continued work has to be done, although I must say there's very little you can do in Iraq to determine what was moved. The real answers to that are in Syria, and the Syrian government has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue.

HANSEN: Since your October report, Saddam Hussein has been captured. Did you have an opportunity to speak to him yourself or any high-level political leaders in his regime?

Mr. KAY: I certainly spoke to a lot of high-level political leaders. I didn't have the opportunity to speak to Saddam, although people who worked for me have.

HANSEN: Mm-hmm. What did you learn?

Mr. KAY: Well, I think that's an ongoing intelligence inquiry from Saddam. I can tell you, you know, very little in detail about it. It certainly is important. I wish we'd captured him earlier, as I think everyone does. From others in his leadership, it's a mixed bag. There are some who still absolutely deny everything. There are others who have helped the inspection effort considerably and are talking frankly.

HANSEN: Your public comments about Iraq's weapons are at odds with those that were offered last week by Vice President Dick Cheney on NPR's "Morning Edition." Mr. Cheney said, and he's talking about Iraq, 'I believe they had programs designed to produce weapons of mass destruction.' You've mentioned it. But you've also said the best evidence is that Iraq did not resume large-scale production after the 1991 Gulf War. Are you agreeing with Mr. Cheney? Do you dispute his assertion?

Mr. KAY: No, I think we're both looking at what is an enigma from slightly different positions. Based on what I've seen there, my conclusion is they had not resumed large-scale production. There is uncertainty. That's one reason it's important that the inspections continue. And I look forward to Charlie Duelfer, who I know well and have a great deal of respect for, leading those inspections now, so that we can come to a consensus view. My warning to the American public, though, is there's always going to be unresolved ambiguity here. The failure to establish security at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and allowing the looting to continue meant the records have been destroyed and destroyed forever and can't be put back together again.

HANSEN: Can you say there was ambiguity before the war?

Mr. KAY: I think there was. You know, if you talk before the war, the interesting thing is there was very little difference in opinion between US intelligence, French intelligence, German, even the Russians, with regard to whether they had weapons or not. There was differences of opinion about how one dealt with the program. The most important task before the nation and, actually, the world right now, in my view, is understanding why the picture we see after the war is the almost unanimous picture that all intelligence services saw of Iraq before the war.

HANSEN: In that light then, Representative Jane Harman, who's the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday, 'The president owes the American public and the world an explanation,' and your statement would have fit into what she had heard from you before. So does the president owe the American public an explanation for this idea of the ambiguity, why the search didn't find stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq?

Mr. KAY: Oh, I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people. We have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn't change in the Bush administration. It is not a political 'got you' issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the future. It's not unusual--I'd remind you, as you well know, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the intelligence estimate was that there were no nuclear weapons in Cuba. We learned only afterwards, and as former Secretary of Defense McNamara said in the recent movie "The Fog of War," two societies came within seconds of destroying each other based on a misperception of what reality were. Often estimates are different than reality. The important thing is when they differ, to understand why. This is not a political issue. It's a fundamental issue of national security.

HANSEN: You made it clear, though, before and after the war began you believed that weapons would be found. In an interview on CNBC a couple of months before you joined the search, you said you were absolutely confident they would be found. We have a minute, but I'd like to be able to keep you here in the studio because we have more questions to ask. But for now, on that, are those words in that interview coming back to haunt you?

Mr. KAY: Not coming back to haunt me in the sense of I'm embarrassed. They're coming back to haunt me in the sense of, 'Why could we all be so wrong?' Almost everyone believed, regardless of how you felt about whether you should have unilateral military action or wait for the UN, there was no disagreement about the belief that the weapons existed. The search--and people forget, we led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The fact that we found that so far the weapons did not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why. And it's not a political issue. It's an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information.

HANSEN: David Kay has stepped down from his post as special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group. He was the US chief weapons investigator in Iraq. We do have some more questions for you, David Kay, when we return from a break in about two minutes. Thank you for staying with us.

It's 18 minutes past the hour.

(Announcements)

HANSEN: We are speaking with David Kay, CIA adviser to the Iraq Survey Group and who acted as chief US weapons inspector as well as the UN weapons inspector. He resigned from the Iraq Survey Group just this past week.

You said your motivation for stepping down was that the resources for your group were diverted into the fight against the insurgency in Iraq. I mean, can you briefly explain how that happened, and is that frustrating?

Mr. KAY: Well, Liane, when I took this job, it was both a difficult personal and professional decision to do. I said that the one condition that really had to rule is Iraq Survey Group be totally, exclusively devoted to the search for WMD. I thought that was an important issue that deserved total focus--and it's very hard to run organizations with multiple missions, particularly if one-half is controlled by the Defense Department and the other half by the CIA--and that the resources had to be made available. Everyone agreed to that; it's actually in writing. By September, when Saddam had not been captured, the security situation was getting worse, the military commanders in the field, particularly General Abizaid, who's overall military commander, started looking for resources that would help deal with the political security issue. I agree, that is the absolute requirement. You've got to stop having Americans killed, and you've got to have stability, or you'll never get political change.

They started looking at the Iraq Survey Group because we had a reputation of having a very well-run organization that was doing its work and started talking about taking resources and changing missions. By the time we got to December, in fact, they had changed the mission of ISG from exclusively focusing on WMD, so that counterterrorism, forced protection was an equal priority, and resources started to be moved. I thought that was the wrong thing to do. I particularly thought it was the wrong thing to do in terms of my skills and capabilities. I didn't think I had the capability to adequately direct an organization that was working both for a four-star general as well as working for me. (Laughs) It's one of those bureaucratic things that never work out. And so I thought the straightest thing to do was for me to express my disagreement and simply step out. I understand fully the importance of political stability...

HANSEN: Sure.

Mr. KAY: ...and security in Iraq; I lived there.

HANSEN: Knowing what you know now, though, did Iraq pose an imminent threat?

Mr. KAY: Well, Liane, I think this is one of the questions the American public and politicians are going to have to grapple with. 'Imminent' depends--it's a risk assessment. How risky are you to run? And in the shadowing effect of 9/11, it seems to me that you recalculate what risk. Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion, although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war.

HANSEN: Maybe we should define 'imminent.' Was it, you know, 45 minutes, a year or two, five or six, seven or eight?

Mr. KAY: Well, it's quite clear--before the war, it was reasonable for people to think imminent meant a very short order because you assessed that they had those weapons. After the war and with the inspection effort that we have carried out now for nine months, I think we all agree that there were not large amounts of weapons available for imminent action; that's not the same thing as saying it was not a serious, imminent threat that you're not willing to run for the nation. That is a political judgment, not a technical judgment.

HANSEN: What's next for you? Will you be writing a book about your experiences, both working for the UN and the CIA and in Iraq?

Mr. KAY: Well, I hope there is a book out there sometime, but as I've told my friends, I'm not doing a Paul O'Neill. No, I would like to deal with the serious issue of proliferation intelligence, lessons we've learned and what we need to do to readjust it. People forget, and I'm one of the worst, you focus on Iraq--we've had three surprises this year. We've had Iran, and we've had Libya. The Iranian program was not found either by the international inspection agencies or by domestic intelligence services. It was Iranian defectors, Iranian opposition groups outside of Iran that brought that to the world's attention. The Libyan one--I don't think we still know how it was found, but it had very surprising elements: Pakistan connections; plants in Malaysia producing parts. It is, in many ways, the biggest surprise of all, and it was missed. We need to understand our capabilities and what needs to be done to make the nation better.

HANSEN: David Kay, he has stepped down from his post as special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group. Mr. Kay served as a UN and US weapons inspector and he's been a frequent guest on NPR's WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY.

Mr. Kay, thank you so much for coming into the studio today.

Mr. KAY: Thank you. Happy to do it.
_____________________________________________________________
Ping whoever you want with this.

[JimRed]

But, why doesn't Dr.Kay come forward and give his statement directly to the public via TV.

ABCNNBCBS to Dr. Kay: "Sorry, no news here." To the U.S. public: "Move along, nothing to see here..."

[JimRed]

My choice is July 25 -- the day before the RAT convention.

Yes, just before we bring Osama Bin Laden out of his holding cell under the White House...

;^)

[billbears]

Oh dear. The neocons seem to have been in total control of America since close to its founding

In that estimation you would be incorrect. My point to jwalsh was that before 1917 it was not regular practice to interfere with sovereign nations without being first attacked. One of the only instances before WWI was the War Between the States.

[ravingnutter]

Where are those satellites that can take a picture of a liscense plate as the car rolls down the highway? We have had a satellite over Iraq constantly and aerial reconnaisence since the First Iraq War.

U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located. Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.

Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in tomorrow's new weekly edition.

U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebaon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time.

U.S suspects Iraqi WMD in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley

Oct 28, 2003 - The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material "unquestionably" had been moved out of Iraq.

"I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.

General Clapper's agency is responsible for interpreting satellite photographs and other imagery. He declined to answer a question about whether he believed that illicit Iraqi weapons material might have been smuggled into any other country.

Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Iraq is said to have transported chemical and biological weapons to the borders with Syria and Turkey.

U.S. officials said an Iraqi intelligence unit was spotted transporting the nonconventional weapons about six weeks ago from facilities in Baghdad to the Syrian and Turkish borders. They said the transfer of the weapons appeared to be part of an effort to conceal them from United Nations inspectors and spare them from any expected U.S. attack.

"We know that in late January, the Iraqi Intelligence Service transported chemical and biological agents to areas far away from Baghdad, near the Syrian and Turkish borders, in order to conceal them," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday. "And they have concealed them from the prying eyes of inspectors."

In an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Powell did not identify or say how many BW and CW weapons were transferred by Iraq. But Powell and other officials said Iraq is believed to have produced such agents as anthrax, VX and botulinum toxin.

Iraq Transports WMD TO Syrian, Turkish Borders

[ravingnutter]

It will take a lot more than propaganda to remove the Syrian government. The propaganda is just to convince the public that another war is needed.

FYI, Bush signed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 on Dec 13, 2003 which places sanctions on Syria

[ravingnutter]

FYI...

Washington---The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to misstate the degree of success it achieved on dismantling Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear-bomb program during nuclear inspections in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, according to an analysis by the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a non-proliferation research and advocacy center.

“IAEA’s recent claims that they have ‘neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapon program’ and ‘destroyed all their key buildings and equipment’ related to weaponization are patently false, and the Agency’s own inspection reports prove it,” said Steven Dolley, NCI research director.

Dolley, citing IAEA’s own inspection reports as documentation, said: “Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance.”[5]

Moreover, IAEA has previously conceded that Iraq’s weaponization R&D---small-scale technical research devoted to the design of a nuclear bomb’s components---is not readily detected by means of inspections. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei stated in 1998 that “no matter how comprehensive the inspection, any country-wide verification process, in Iraq or anywhere else, has a degree of uncertainty that aims to verify the absence of readily concealable objects such as small amounts of nuclear material or weapons components.”[6]

The IAEA’s own guidelines for the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium gives the conversion time for transforming these materials into weapons components as on the order of seven to ten days or one to three weeks, depending on the form the materials are in (metal, oxide or nitrate) when the materials are acquired by means of diversion or theft.[7] Thus, Iraq could be capable of producing a nuclear weapon in less than a month with sufficient diverted or stolen fissile material if it has managed to fabricate and conceal all of the non-nuclear components of a weapon.

“THERE THEY GO AGAIN”: IA.E.A. MISSTATES ITS RECORD ON DISMANTLING SADDAM’S NUCLEAR-BOMB PROGRAM

[ravingnutter]

Add in a pattern of behavior to the equation:

NICOSIA [May 03, 2002] — Iraq has issued another appeal for the return of aircraft flown to Iran on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war.

Iraq said it flew 148 military and civilian aircraft to Teheran to avoid destruction by the United States. Iran has never returned the aircraft, linking it to demands for Iraqi compensation for the 1980-88 war between Baghdad and Teheran.

Iran is holding 24 Su-24, 4 MiG-29s, four MiG-25s 12 MiG-23s, 24 Su-20 and S-25 fighter-jets. In addition, President Saddam Hussein ordered 20 Tu-22 bombers to Iran.

Most of the aircraft are said to have deteriorated through lack of maintenance. Teheran, however, has quietly overhauled Iraq's fleet of 24 Mirage F-1B fighters.

Earlier this week, Saddam called on Iran and other countries to return the aircraft, saying they would be used to help the Palestinian war against Israel.

Saddam calls on Iran to return 148 war planes

[ravingnutter]

it would be hard for dems Kerry and Edwards to make an issue of it due to their votes.

And their previous comments:

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People

[ravingnutter]

Saddam destroyed all the weapons in 1995? Oops...he missed some...

[Oct 04, 2003] The vial of botulinum bacteria discovered in Iraq by U.S. arms inspectors – which experts call the most poisonous substance known to man – is "a weapon of mass destruction," the State Department's top spokesman announced yesterday.

"Botulinum kills people, it kills people in large quantities. Botulinum is a weapon of mass destruction, yes," said State spokesman Richard Boucher," according to an Agence France-Presse report. "Anything that destroys on a massive scale is a weapon of mass destruction."

The botulinum had been stored in a vial discovered in an Iraqi scientist's refrigerator, where it had been stored for safe keeping since 1993.

Botulinum is WMD

[billbears]

I know how one vial of botlinum toxin is equal to 25,000 liters of the stuff to you WMD deadenders but the fact is that it had probably been there for many years, not in production

[ravingnutter]

I know how one vial of botlinum toxin is equal to 25,000 liters of the stuff to you WMD deadenders but the fact is that it had probably been there for many years, not in production

Excuse me, but how long it has been there is irrelevant...you quoted the son-in-law as saying Saddam destroyed all of the WMD in 1995...then why was there still WMD in this scientist's refrigerator in 2003? I was merely pointing out that he apparently did not destroy it all as you had claimed.

[ravingnutter]

Oh, and P.S.:

Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known.6-7 A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult. The basis of the phenomenal potency of botulinum toxin is enzymatic; the toxin is a zinc proteinase that cleaves 1 or more of the fusion proteins by which neuronal vesicles release acetylcholine into the neuromuscular junction.8

Journal of the American Medical Association

Now refute that one....

[Ryan Bailey]

We are unfortunately dealing with an opposite party which has neither time nor interest for any reality save that of their own social agendae especially relative to that which has been faithfully documented by experts like Dr. Kay.

These still hold that our President has not assembled a "true coalition" for Opn. Iraqi Freedom, which of course all the Democratic "Bush wannabes" pledge that they will do just that. What's next, will Sen. Kerry propose a 'Department of Homeland Security'. What Genius.

We may certainly be assured that since the Democrats, for the most part, apparently no longer recognize Twenty-seven seperate nations as existent let alone viable and sovereign members of the largest international coalition ever assembled and contributing 23000 troops to the Operation, why should we be surprised that they no longer recognize the most poisonous Chemical weapons in the world.

There has been more proof uncovered of WMD's in Husseinist Iraq than there has been proof that the sky is blue. But our Democratic friends have been longsuffering in their habit of overlooking such facts, why would that change now.

[sully777]

I'm utterly confused. I just saw a Frontline POS yesterday where Kay is telling a British journalist that Allies were wrong in their views on WMD. Just heard another report on Drudge that WMDs were not in IRaq, that Saddam started winding down and destroying stockpile back in 93. Then we have administration people like Rice and Powell going around saying maybe we were mistaken.

On the other hand, reading reports on various websites and newslines that say opposite.

Would be nice if truth was revealed rather than constant confusion.

[fire_eye]

You have to wonder about this, when Syria has had a front-row seat at the spectacle of how the fearless and intrepid Saddam humiliated and overwhelmed the decadent, degenerate foreign infidel invaders. Somehow I don't think the brave Islamic Syrian warriors are going to be too anxious to do something like stash the Holy Nerve Gas of Islam on their territory, thereby risking having to rather abruptly join their Iraqi brothers in Heaven, where I hear Allah has run out of virgins and has started substituting goats and camels.

However, I really hope it's true. All my friends in the National Guard in Iraq are really bummed out at having to sit around picking holy Islamic fleas out of their bedding, and would like nothing better than for Syria to be found harboring the Fearless Islamic WMDs, and then try to face down Bush. One in particular I know has gotten to know the 40mm full-auto grenade launcher on his Humvee really well during his spare time over there, and is just bubbling with curiousity over how effective it would be on... well, use your imagination...

[billbears]

Oh goodie. One vial and Hussein's son-in-law lied. Tell me, have you ever taken something home from the office? It had been there since 1993. Hussein probably didn't even know about it. We're talking, if the President's figures are to be believed, raw materials to produce 20,000+ liters of the stuff and you're hinging your entire argument for WMDs on one vial?

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

Below is the comment that started this:

To: billbears
"Oh yes, my 'misunderstanding' of the Constitution. Tell me, how many pre-emptive attacks on sovereign nations by this nation of states besides the War between the States occurred before 1917?"

1776 was the very first. Just thought I would note that to you since you were talking about your "misunderstanding" of the constitition.

153 posted on 01/25/2004 7:00:58 PM PST by mjaneangels@aolcom


And your response to me was: "BTW, since the group of colonies was not a sovereign nation at the beginning of the War for Independence, my statement still stands."

England was a sovereign nation and we were then a part of it, therefore we were a nation also. That war was the first in our nation's history and it was a pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation and that lead to the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Please stop trying to change the truth to fit your agenda. This country and our constitution were built specifically upon the very idea of pre-emptive action on a sovereign nation.

[FBD]

Excellant detail of Iraq WMD history post, Tentmaker