Posted on 02/09/2004 7:09:32 AM PST by Conservative Coulter Fan
Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik says, "In 2003, George W. Bush sent American soldiers to fight and to die in Iraq because he insisted Iraq had sufficient quantities of WMD's to pose an immediate threat to the United States. Thanks to David Kay, we have now learned that Iraq 'all but abandoned' its WMD programs and destroyed its weapons stockpiles after the Gulf War in 1991.
Truth: David Kay actually stated the following before Congress:
Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The very scale of this program when coupled with the conditions in Iraq that have prevailed since the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom dictate the speed at which we can move to a comprehensive understanding of Iraq's WMD activities.
We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.
We have discovered 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. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:
• 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.
"If Bush knew these weapons did not exist - and deliberately lied to the American people and the world - then he should take full responsibility and immediately resign. And he should be joined by every top official who participated in these lies, led by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and George Tenet.
Truth: Larry Elders has best answered...
On Iraq and WMD: Did the president lie?
Dems validate Bush on Saddam's WMDs
WMD: Will Bush's critics read David Kay's report?
Remember Clinton's war in Iraq?
Where were Bush's critics during Kosovo?
BTW...Bob Fertik was part of the Clinton Administration, which also stated Iraq had WMDs.
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