Posted on 06/24/2004 12:35:11 AM PDT by Veritas_est
UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq
© June 18, 2004, Rod D. Martin
In a report which might alternately be termed “stunning” or “terrifying”, United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed last week not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.
Late last week, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's lightning-fast dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items - with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.
Notably absent from that list is Iraq's western neighbor Syria, ruled by its own Baath Party just like Saddam's and closed to even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence has been reporting the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war. Syria has long been the world's foremost state-sponsor of terrorism.
Perricos highlighted the proliferation danger to the Security Council, as well he should: UNMOVIC has no idea where most of the WMD material is today, just that it exists and it's gone; and anything in Syria is likely to be in Jerusalem or New York tomorrow.
This is the biggest news story of 2004 so far. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you?
You probably haven't heard about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin either -- a socialist and no friend of America. Addressing a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal last month, Martin stated bluntly that terrorists have acquired WMDs from Saddam. “The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Huseein had, we don't know where they are…. [T]errorists have access to all of them,” the Canadian premier warned.
The tip of this terrorist sword was scarcely deflected on April 26th, when Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi -- the same man who personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in Iraq last month -- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a “toxic cloud”, meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (by contrast, only 3,000 died on 9/11). Over twenty tons of chemical weapons were seized from the conspirators, who were just days away from carrying out their plot.
One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and sarin came from: Chemical Weapons-Mart? Yet their coverage, like most major media outlets, mentioned not a word about Saddam's smuggled WMDs, which -- according to liberal dogma -- “don't exist.”
Even though the UN says they do exist, now spread around the world.
It's not just the UN. Bill Clinton says they exist, even after the war: in a July 2003 interview with Larry King, the ex-president uncharacteristically defended George Bush, saying “it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]…a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for” in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today.
So what's the deal? Why the relentless pretence that “Bush lied” when even the UN and Bill Clinton say he didn't? Why the absolute silence about “inconvenient” parts of various UN reports, such as the discovery of chemical and biological weapons plans, recipes and equipment; of bio-weapons agents in an Iraqi scientist's house; of a prison lab for testing bio weapons on humans; of complexes for manufacturing fuel for prohibited long-range missiles; of artillery rounds containing enough sarin to kill thousands of people, of similar shells containing mustard gas, two (but far from the only) of which were used in a terrorist attack against U.S. forces just weeks ago?
America cannot afford the answer to this “why”: that many on the left consider George W. Bush's defeat more urgent than al Qaeda's, his political death more essential than the possible physical death of millions of Americans.
The character of our foreign enemies has never been in doubt. The character of the enemy within -- from Dan Rather to Michael Moore -- has never been clearer. And the stakes are the highest they've ever been.
Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of Vanguard PAC. A former policy director to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy, a Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), and author of the forthcoming Visions of America.
Thanks for the ping.
This one is scary.
I totally agree.
You are mistating what this report says. It does not say that the weapons were removed in operational form. Junked weapons are hardly that much of a threat.
And then into Iran and North Korea?
Won't happen.
The American public won't stand for it. We may conduct airstrikes against labs and storage facilities, but there is no groundswell of support for another invasion. The military is already as stretched as far as we're willing to stretch them. Unless we are attacked, we won't commit them further.
Also, we'd be eaten alive at the U.N. and other places. You can just imagine the chorus of our friends at the U.N. 'This time, we need to give diplomacy, sanctions, and inspections time to work'. We'd be lucky to get a resolution authorizing force out of them before 2035.
We don't have a cease fire with Syria that they are violating, nor any clear and compelling need to attack them. No, I think Bush has pushed the military angle as far as it can reach at the moment. Which is fine, IMHO. We have Syria cornered, and they know we have their number if they try anything. Now, it's time to use different tactics to achieve our goals.
The New Tone is a joke, it always has been. The Left is like the Taliban...you can't reason with it, you can't work with it, you can't co-exist with it, you can only defeat it. But Bush apparently has no stomach for defeating his political enemies, so he tries to go along to get along with them. Too much Neville Chamberlain, not enough George Patton.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
TAKE THAT... MICHAEL MOORE, ED ASSNER, DANNY GLOVER, SEAN PENN, MADONNA, AND REST OF YOU STINKIN TRAITORS!
Things to consider:
1. Satellite imagry and some scrap metal does not mean that we know the fate of an entire WMD project. The fact that Saddam's WMD infrastructure was dismantled and sent over the border does not mean that it was 'junked' per se.
1. Even if the equipment is now so much scrap, they wouldn't be in that state were it not for the threat of war. If they are in fact destroyed and hidden then it justifies our efforts the same as if they were found intact and hidden.
Of course your analysis points out the failings of OP's "logic" and points to the most probable result of an assassination of Saddam. Al Queda would have used it as an opportunity to gain not only access to the weapons programs in place but control of Iraq's oil.
None of this matters to those looking for any excuse to attack Bush.
I agree. That weaponry which was found in a junk yard was of no danger to us after it was junked. That was what I was referring to and seems to be what the article references.
Thank you for your support. Its easy for people to sit back and make suggestions, but translating them to real life is the real trick!
Ann was a guest on "Drudge Radio" about 3 months ago. They were talking about home security and its effectiveness. Ann said something to the effect that (paraphrase) It's a good thing they found that dirty bomb on that ship in New York Harbor.
They went to commercial break immediately. When they came back not a word was said about a dirty bomb. It all happened very fast.
BTTT
Is there a transcript?
And I know the half that you mean...I too have lost faith in them
Oh, really?
Please provide hard evidence of the truth of your assertion.
Otherwise, you have just been caught in raw, unadulterated bloviation -- and you look silly.
Of course one as dense as you would believe that I was referring to attempts by Americans. I wasn't. Do you doubt that Saddam has had many attempts against him? Like Hitler he led a charmed life and none were successful.
What? You think I'm paranoid? Well just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they are NOT watching me! My friend Scott used to say, "If you aren't paranoid, you aren't paying attention."
Anyway, better safe than sorry.
crappy Un finally does somethin right bump
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