IRAQ MINISTER SAYS SADDAM WMD CAREFULLY HIDDEN

Reuters ^ | 1/29/04

[areafiftyone]

(Updates with comments on Saddam's trial, Iraq's unity)

By Anna Mudeva

SOFIA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Iraq's foreign minister said on Thursday Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which inspectors have failed to find, were carefully hidden but Hoshiyar Zebari said he was confident they could be discovered.

"I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward," Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, told a news conference in Sofia. "They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated."

The United States and Britain cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological arms as their main reason for invading the country last March and toppling Saddam. But no such weapons have so far come to light despite intensive searches.

Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said on Wednesday "we were almost all wrong" about the issue and it was "highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarised chemical and biological weapons" in Iraq.

But Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said: "We as Iraqis have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons of mass destruction against us. He hasn't denied that."

Zebari was apparently referring to the use of chemical weapons by Saddam's forces against Iraqi Kurdish villages in the late 1980s.

He reiterated the position of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council that Saddam, accused of sending thousands of Iraqis to mass graves, should be tried by an Iraqi court.

The former Iraqi president, who was given prisoner of war status, was captured in mid-December near his home town of Tikrit, having evaded U.S. forces since the American military launched its war in Iraq with a March 20 attack targeting him.

Zebari said Saddam's trial should be fair and transparent because it would be a test for Iraq's new rulers to prove their adherence to the supremacy of law.

TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

Asked to comment on Turkey's fears Iraqi Kurds might seek a breakaway state, Zebari said there were no plans to divide Iraq.

"We have proved over the last nine months that all the Iraqis from the North to the South are committed to the national unity...No group, no party has any plans to undermine Iraq's unity or territorial integrity," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he was also committed to a "territorially intact" Iraq.

Turkish officials have been concerned Iraqi Kurds might press for an independent state, which could boost independence claims by Turkey's own restive Kurdish minority.

The Kurds, who fought with the United States to topple Saddam, are one of Iraq's best organised ethnic groups after enjoying U.S-protected autonomy since the 1991 Gulf War. They have presented a plan to the Iraqi Governing Council that grants significant autonomy to the Kurdish region.

Zebari did not rule out the federalisation of Iraq as long as it did not violate territorial unity and added only the Iraqi people could choose the country's future political system.

[Dave S]

No, because that is not what is being said - at least by me. I'm not saying I know they're buried, I'm saying they may be buried. I have no idea what happened to them. And we may never know what happened to them. That's a far cry from those who claim to know there were none.

I accept the possibility that there might have been some but I tend to doubt it. I think those who can tell you that they are buried here or there are fools. I dont think it makes a damn bit of difference whether there were WMD or not except from an intelligence failure standpoint if there were none. Bush didnt lie. He used the best evidence we had and no rational person is going to blame him for protecting the US by invading Iraq to eliminate that gathering threat.

[Dave S]

Yes, I do know the WMDs exist.

When you say they exist, do you mean a vial of antrax or a container of mustard gas or are you talking about hundreds of shells containing WMD? It makes a difference. I would buy the vial but not the warheads or loaded shells.

[Hotdog]

Better yet...lets find where they are located in Syria...then send a couple of bombs in...stirring it up for all to inhale and enjoy!

[Tommyjo]

Iraqi forces had chemical weapons used against them by Iran during their long war and the Iraqi General Staff new that their troops had to be able to fight in an NBC environment. If you do a study of the middle east you will find that NBC training of their forces is part and parcel of their training cycle. As UK forces I train for operating in biological and chemical environments, but my country does not field such munitions.

[Dave S]

what does ideology have to do with reasoned debate supported by facts?

What are these facts? Ive yet to hear them. Try me. Kay said they probably didnt exist. The CIA folks who said they existed are now saying they probably didnt exist. What are your facts? That he had some mustard gas in 88? What quantities are you talking? You must know how much if you KNOW beyond a doubt that they exist. I say ideology because you are so damn afraid that they may not have been there. Personally I dont care. There other reasons to get rid of Saddam. Got everyone's attention in the Middle East and if can start freedom spreading in that part of the world it would be a major advance. And I dont think that Bush or Cheeney lied so it doesnt matter to me whether we find WMD or not. Great if we do but certainly not essential. You act like the US will fall to pieces if the WMD did not exist or is never found. NOt true.

[Dave S]

You really should give our intel folks a bit more credit

Perhaps I would if they had prevented 9/11, had captured Bid Laden, and were able to find the supposed Iraqi WMD that they had marked on satellite maps.

[plain talk]

I think those who can tell you that they are buried here or there are fools.

I guess I don't know who you are referringto. Many are saying that there was ample time and motivation for Saddam to have had them buried and plausible explanations for why they haven't been found yet, namely tons of sand and mass graves. I haven't read of anyone claiming to know exactly where they are. But let's look at what you wrote. You say you "... accept the possibility that there might have been some but I doubt it." First of all, it's a fact chemical WMDs existed. They have been used. The question is whether they were destroyed before the invasion or buried. Then there's the question about whether bio materials were produced. I treat these two types of WMDs differently because for chem agents we know they existed and bio agrents we're not so sure. They've found evidence of the bio programs an trailers but not the agents themselves which could be stored in very small containers.

So, you accept the possibility that they existed but then say you doubt it. Based on what? The fact they haven't been found. They may never be found? There have been numerous posts explaining the difficulty in finding them or evidence they were destroyed. I guess I just don't understand the logic being used by some to reach their conclusions. That concerns me more than the issue itself, frankly, because these people will use these same flawed reasoning abilities to jump to a quick conclusion on some other issue.

But I do agree with the second part of your post. This whole issue about the WMDs is silly. No one can prove anything one way or the other and it just gives the dems a phoney issue to yap about. No one can prove a negative. It's like arguing about what happened to Jimmy Hoffa with some claiming he never existed. Take care.

[sirchtruth]

I am in the no WMD camp. Face it. A janitor in a WMD facility could become a very wealthy man right now by telling us where the stuff was buried.

I'm in the WE DON'T KNOW WHAT BUSH KNOWS CAMP! He is STILL insisting that there ARE WMD. He is either stupid as a rock, or he knows something the rest of us, and Kay just don't know.

I'll be over here in the BUSH KNOWS camp if ya need to reach me.

[brooklin]

Hard water comes through your water pipes. Heavy water is what you are looking for.

[Dave S]

So, you accept the possibility that they existed but then say you doubt it. Based on what? The fact they haven't been found. They may never be found? There have been numerous posts explaining the difficulty in finding them or evidence they were destroyed.

Its not that they just havent found anything. They have translated hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, they have interviewed thousands of Iraqi's ranging from the factory sweeper to the top scientists and government leaders. We've gone to the places where we said the munitions were stored and found no trace that they were ever there. With some of these agents, if they were produced there or stored there you would find some trace. Even the two trucks that were loudly proclaimed as mobile labs have been found to be nothing of the kind according to Kay.

Also we sent in special forces prior to the start of the war to look for these WMD and we found nothing. We had sophisticated satellite imaging equipment focused on these sites. If Saddams hengmen decided to put them on a truck and move them, dont you think we would have had some indication? We probably offered to bribe various generals who were thought to have them and got nothing. Really at some point you have to begin to wonder if there was really all that much to begin with.

BTW, having had chemical weapons before Gulf War I doesnt say anything about whether Saddam had such weapons before the lastest war. Frankly I have a feeling that his scientists couldnt produce what he wanted in the quantities that he wanted so they lied to save themselves from Saddam's fury. As a result Saddam lost his Kingdom.

[RobbyS]

As someone has said, Saddam himself was a WMD. However long the UN inspectors would have looked, the would have found nothing. With a clean bill of health , the sanctions would have been lifted, the Saddam would have been back in business with his regime enjoying another ten to twenty years of life.
So we have this guy there with this huge store of conventional weapons, now about to update and add to them, and the possvbility of acquiring up-to-date WMDs.

[HankReardon]

Saddam was a WMD, they found him.

[Dave S]

Saddam was a WMD, they found him.

I agree. Argument over. We found it.

[Quick_Rod]

Pulled this information from the Federation of American Scientists' Gulf Link section of their website when someone asked this very question.

"QUESTION: HOW LONG WILL THE STOCKPILE WEAPONS REMAIN EFFECTIVE?

ANSWER: IT DEPENDS, THREE BASIC FACTORS AFFECT THE SHELF LIFE OF
STOCKPILED CHEMICAL WEAPONS.

THE SOPHISTICATION OF THE TECHNOLOGY USED TO PRODUCE THE CHEMICAL AGENTS. RELATIVELY PURE CHEMICAL AGENTS PRODUCED BY MODERN INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES (LIKE THOSE FORMERLY USED BY THE UNITED STATES) REMAIN STABLE FOR DECADES. AS MPURITIES INCREASE, SHELF LIKE WILL DECREASE. FOR EXAMPLE, NEXPLODED WORLD WAR I CHEMICAL MUNITIONS (MUSTARD, ETC.) STILL SURFACE FAIRLY REGULARLY ON OLD EUROPEAN BATTLEFIELDS--THEY REMAIN VERY TOXIC. NERVE AGENTS (RELAQTED TO INSECTICIDES) HAVE A VERY LONG SHELF LIFE. IN ADDITION, EVEN WITH IMPURE AGENTS, THE LOSS OF MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS IS GRADUAL. WEAPONS WITH DETERIORIATED AGENT MAY STILL HAVE MILITARY VALUE--THEY JUST WON'T BE AS EFFECTIVE AS "FRESHER" AGENTS."

THE QUALITY OF THE MUNITIONS CONTAINING THE AGENT. MOST AGENTS ARE CORROSIVE, AND CERTAIN MUNITIONS CASING MAY
"RUST THROUGH". THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH OUR WELL-BUILT
MUNITIUONS, BUT COULD BE IN OTHER COUNTRIES. ALSO RELATED IS THE STABILITY OF THE EXPLOSIVES OR PROPELLANTS IN THE MUNITIONS. FOR EXAMPLE, THE US HAS CHEMICAL ROCKETS THAT WE WILL SOON DESTROY BEFORE THEIR PROPELANTS BECOME USTABLE.

HOW WELL THE MUNITIONS ARE STORED AND MAINTAINED AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM WITH WELL-BUILT AND MAINTAINED US WEAPONS. HOWEVER, ALL CHEMICAL WEAPONS REQUIRE PERIODIC MONITORING TO ENSURE THEY ARE INTACT (UNDAMAGED), NOT CORRODED AND NOT LEAKING. A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF DAMAGED WEAPONS AND "LEAKERS" MAY INDICATE THAT THE STOCKPILE IS NOT SAFE FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO USE IT. IN ADDITION, THE USER MUST MAINTAIN FILL AND CLOSE FACILITIES TO TRANSFER BULK-STORED AGENT INTO MUNITIONS CASINGS.

IN SUMMARY, SPECIFIC SHELF LIVES DEPENDS ON OF THE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY, THE QUALITY OF THE WEAPONS THEMSELVES (THE HARDWARE) AND THE QUALITY OF MAINTENANCE AND STORAGE.

http://www.fas.org/irp/gulf/intel/950901/0178pgv_00d.txt

[plain talk]

We had sophisticated satellite imaging equipment focused on these sites. If Saddams hengmen decided to put them on a truck and move them, dont you think we would have had some indication?

Put what on a truck? A couple vials of bio agents? Maybe a few barrels of chemicals in an SUV. Documents? They are still translating and going through them. They haven't found all the documents anyway. And there's millions of tons of sand and endless tunnels etc.

"We sent in special forces before the war and found nothing."

Are you serious? I guess you believe those special forces went into enemy territory and combed the entire country of Iraq, all the sand, all the tunnels, etc. What everyone is trying to tell you and others like you, is that it would be easy to hide these materials because they are small in size. Just read what Kay's October report. Yes, the chemical agents could have been destroyed before this recent war. That's a possibility. But there's no evidence of that is there? Why not? You can't prove a negative.

I have a feeling that his scientists couldnt produce what he wanted in the quantities that he wanted so they lied to save themselves from Saddam's fury.

OK, so you do believe they did produce agents but just not that many of them. How much is not that much? What kind of agents? Bio or Nerve gas or what? In either case, where are these agents they did produce in small quantities, then, based on your feeling ?

Dave, I suggest you read over this thread again. It's chock full of rationale for how these agents could easily have been stashed away.

[Matchett-PI]

"I would like to know the physical size and dimensions of all the WMD stockpiles missing. I mean, Anthrax can be housed in very small containers. .."

I videotaped the 4 minute segment on Greta Van Susteren's show tonight when she interviewed ex-CIA Director, James Woolsey. This is what he said on the matter:

"[Garbled] defected from Iraq in 1995 and admitted to making 8,500 liters of anthrax.

He was the head of the bio war-fare program.

Ah, that's 8 1/2 tons -- less than 1/2 a tractor trailer -- that fills up a two-car garage.

And if you reduce it to powder it's 4 suitcases.

Now, Colin Powell said in his speech before the Security Council, that we thought it was about 3 times that.

So, OK, 3 two-car garages; 12 suitcases. If that's the difference between a large stockpile and a small stockpile, ah, you know, we're into some fine nuance, there."

Last Sunday (1-25-04) I happened to be watching Fox when Eric Shawn did a 3 minute interview with intelligence analyst, John Loftus. Eric mentioned the fact that David Kay had just said that it is quite possible that stockpiles of WMD may have been moved from Iraq to Syria, and asked John what he thought about that.

I transcribed what Loftus said (take it for what it's worth):

John Loftus: "Yeah, for about 6 months now I've been saying that in the 8 to 10 weeks just before the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein moved the key components of his WMD across the border to Syria and some were later buried in the Bekkah Valley. And it's been confirmed by our space satellites; by a Syrian defector who talked openly about the three cities in Syria where these weapons were kept and the Israelis have confirmed it.

And, oh, I talked with my friends in the Pentagon this week, because I was very concerned about Kay's statement on Friday saying that, you know, no weapons stockpiles ever existed inside Iraq.

Well, it turns out that Kay was "speaking spy". And he has retracted that statement -- or clarified it in an article today in the Sunday Telegraph. Kay said that he has confirmed from prisoner interrogations that some components of Saddam Hussein's WMD program were in fact shipped to Syria before the war. So he's not denying that Saddam had WMD, he's just saying that they weren't in weapons form until the [garbled. ?issues?] in Iraq."

Eric: You know John, what really concerns me about the Bekkah Valley situation is you've got Hezbolla, you've got Islamic Jihad, you know, they're all there. Could they get their hands on these weapons, potentially, and use them, if they are there, against Israel?

John: The Syrian army has pulled out of the Bekkah Valley except in the northeast corner where they have two armored brigades. And the suspicion is that those brigades are there because they are camped right over the fields where the WMD are buried. The US is -- the war planners have a number of options, including special forces going in to take the weapons.

Understand - we can't just bomb these buried weapons because an explosive bomb isn't hot enough to incinerate liquid anthrax and VX nerve gas. That's what we think is buried there."

Eric: "So you're saying that there ARE plans in the Pentegon to potentially send special forces into the Bekkah Valley to try and secure this material -- material which, byy the way, Syria denies that it has?"

John: "Yeah - Syria's been caught in a flat-out lie, but it's not the first time. We had an unusual defector this week who appeared in a German war crimes trial court saying that he was an Iranian intelligence officer and that before 9-11, both Syria and Iran knew of 9-11 and were helping al Qaeda. Bombshell testimony.

The Syrians have been putting out a phony story about where their true allegiances lie, but the Pentagon is not having any more of it and they're gearing up the war machine. Syria is on the "you're next" list."

Eric: "So it seems to me, maybe fighting the war on terror potentially on another front could be Syria and Hezbolla. ..."

[wizardoz]

Yep. Far as I'm concerned, "Syria" is the Arabic word for "NEXT!"

[Coop]

Powerful stuff. Can you find a transcript of this? The intel will have to be rock solid, IMHO, before the Administration sends in SOF to take territory in another country.

[Coop]

Coop would be screaming bloody murder over intelligence failure if Bill Clinton was still President.

Nope. I'd be screaming bloody murder at that corrupt Administration. I was working intel during the Impeached Rapist's years. I know what I'm talking about.

Dave, you've been completely outclassed on this thread. Pack it in. But before you do, it would behoove you to go back and read this entire thread from start to finish. Educate yourself.

[Dave S]

We sent in special forces before the war and found nothing."

Are you serious? I guess you believe those special forces went into enemy territory and combed the entire country of Iraq, all the sand, all the tunnels, etc.

No, they went were the CIA confidentially said the WMD was stored and was being produced and where Powell told the UN it would be found.