Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector

UK Telegraph ^ | 3/12/2005 | Francis Harris

[Stars&StripesNE]

Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 12/03/2005)

Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction

[mlc9852]

I haven't read it or heard it any where else. Has anyone?

[Yossarian]

Ritter already has spent half that on his porn collection......

Yeah, and the other half got paid in the form of Burger King gift certificates:

[RushCrush]

This is old news, wasn't it called Oil for Food?

[Stellar Dendrite]

"Who knows? (Certainly you don't) - The fact is all sorts of things could have been in those "supposed" caravans leaving Iraq (a war was coming and it does make sense for people to try and get all sorts of valuable items out of the Country beforehand). "

Here is an individual who certainly know more than you, marty60 or myself:

"Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs" http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10111

also published at:
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030820-081256-6822r.htm

The man who wrote these articles: "General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc"


We have not found any residuals to an "active" WMD program. That is the bottom line



Really? I find that interesting that you bring this up....so if there were no WMDs how did Saddam use them on his own people? Don't you remember the pics of those people laying in the street? "Have War Critics Even Read the Duelfer Report? The Saddam regime was an imminent threat" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1244773/posts "While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, aflatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents. These laboratories were also evaluating whether various poisons would change the texture, smell or appearance of foodstuffs. These aspects of the ISG report have been ignored by the pundits and press.... The chemical section reports that the M16 Directorate "had a plan to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades and a plan to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard.... The major threat posed by Iraq, in my opinion, was the support it gave to terrorists in general, and its own terrorist activity.... "


What about this?
"ISGvol2 illegal nuclear enrichment equipment that could have been turned over to UN"





"ISGvol2 illegal nuclear enrichment equipment that could have been turned over to UN"

"perfectly legal perfume bottles at chemical weapons plant to be used for sarin warheads."


"Al Muthanna after Desert Storm"




"Al Muthanna after Desert Storm"

"Al Muthanna after Desert Storm"

" so_called dual use bioweapons equipment"



"so_called dual use bioweapons equipment v2 good for making powder anthrax."


" so_called dual use bioweapons equipment v3 bio reactor for making animal vaccines and biowarheads"
more pics at: http://www.scottmalensek.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=248&st=0&#entry742

Also, what about the mortar shells with sarin gas that were found over there?

[SevenMinusOne]

Really? I find that interesting that you bring this up....so if there were no WMDs how did Saddam use them on his own people?

We are missing each other here - In that I was talking about Saddam with regard to any "new / active" WMD program -

We are all well aware of the WMD program Saddam had in the late 80's - This is common knowledge. In fact us (along with the UN) document much of these WMD's - In fact we destroyed much of them via documented efforts -

However all of these older WMD's were never accounted for - Though there are plenty of reasonable observations as to why not - Many were possibly destroyed during the 91 Gulf War (we hit many sites where these type of weapons were believed to be kept).

Saddam probably destroyed large segments of these himself shortly after the war in trying to avoid UN Sanctions, etc, etc -

However, going into Iraq in 2003 we expected to find an active WMD program within Iraq - This we have not found.

[marty60]

I go back to my original question. IF Saddamn had destroyed the WMD's(or we did), WHY would he pay millions of $$ in bribes to get a clean bill of health from the U.N.?

[Radix]

" Saddam probably destroyed large segments of these himself shortly after the war in trying to avoid UN Sanctions, etc, etc -"

Bought any bridges lately?

[SevenMinusOne]

Bought any bridges lately?

No, you need to be willing to look at things from a factual standpoint and not through some self-needed lense -

The fact is it much more plausible that certain segments of Saddam's late 1980's WMD's were voluntarily destroyed then to assume they have some how managed to remain "residual free" and have secretly been taken to Syria (without anyone in Iraq being willing to talk since the removal of Saddam).

Your suggestion of "bought any bridges lately" was the same noise being spouted prior to going into Iraq when we all assumed Saddam had an active WMD program - (which we have come to find out he didn't).

Regardless of the WMD issue Saddam was a threat (he as a state sponsor of terrorism, he continually did not abide by obligations from the first Gulf war and the list could go on).

But just because the WMD issue didn't unfold exactly how we hoped it would....does not mean we tilt facts or come up with all sorts of somewhat unreasonable scenarios -

We know with certainty what happened to vast amounts of Saddam's late 80's WMD's - Though we only speculate what could have happened to the other amounts (OR to what even those OTHER amounts were to begin with!).

You see, just as our intelligence was off going into this war.....our records / intelligence to what WMD quantities Saddam had in the late 80's could very well be off as well.

[SevenMinusOne]

I go back to my original question. IF Saddamn had destroyed the WMD's(or we did), WHY would he pay millions of $$ in bribes to get a clean bill of health from the U.N.?

First you assuming this assuredly happened - Secondly Saddam was in violation of his missile technology - He developed missiles that went much further than the range allowed in rules given at the end of the First Gulf War (which the UN was enforcing....or trying to). -

To me the UN is a joke (for the record).

However, there are many reasons Saddam would have been paying off people within the UN outside of him having an active WMD program. The UN was monitoring a list of requirements outside of just WMD's -

[Radix]

" No, you need to be willing to look at things from a factual standpoint and not through some self-needed lense -"

I appreciate that comment, and it will not go unheeded.

I do have great concerns about current events in Iraq and elsewhere.

I see that the media is virtually worthless when it comes to objectivity, and so I am somewhat jaded.

When my boy returns from the shithole where no WMD exist, I'll likely be more open to discourse concerning Sadaam Hussein's arsenals.

[HangThemHigh]

Why were the bribes not publicly acknowledged?

Maybe Kofi didn't want the attention that the revelation of the bribes would likely bring what with the 'oil for food' fiasco.

[Stellar Dendrite]

Devsix,
I find it troubling that you didn't read the articles or take a look at the pictures I included in my initial reply (but am not surprised). You must have missed the pictures of Al Muthanna that showed WMD activity POST Gulf War....NOT destruction as you claim (which is merely repitition of MSM propaganda).



You also missed the article I posted by Ion Pacepa, who worked as an intelligence officer in Romania directly with the KGB. Let me make it easy for you, Ill post it right here.




Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Washington Times | October 2, 2003

On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.

All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless of the circumstances.

The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we sponsored.

Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.

The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals: Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war—Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.

The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war — the technological documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks.

Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 — when Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.

Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection, since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq—ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).

It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad — even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a good price.

Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing.

Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to worry about after all.

It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible."

The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its danger. On the contrary, it increases it.


-----
In addition to the above story, here is another interesting one:

"2 Russian generals given awards in Iraq on war eve"
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041029-110322-3343r.htm

"Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms"
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm


To think that somehow Saddam would comply with the UN to "destroy large segments" of WMDs "to avoid UN sanctions" is supremely naive. As if the UN would enforce anything, everyone was getting paid off with Oil for Food money!!!


We waited too long by played along with the Left's dangerous games in the lead up to the war. After all, of course they would support Saddam...he was a SOCIALIST (Ba'ath Socialist Party). In fact, one of the Left's heros, Ramsey Clark will represent Saddam in his trial!

One day the truth will be known, some have suggested that the WMDs are in Bekka Valley.

[AlGone2001]

"It's big news in our minds, but the tragedy is that it never will become "big news" in the MSM. They never said anything about those sarin gas shells or the 500 tons of uranium. They will purposefully ignore this as well.

This is what makes these people so dangerous."

I agree with that in full, but we have a president who doesn't need their approval.

[ZOTnot]

How do you then explain the convoy of trucks which went across the border and deposited their 'load' in Lebanon's Bakaa Valley? (Verified by satellite; verified by Israeli intelligence; mentioned here frequently in threads on Free Republic?)

[SunkenCiv]

Scott Ritter took 100s of $1000s to make a "documentary" on Saddam's compliance with UN sanctions and the starvation "caused" by those sanctions.

[TexKat]

FORMER CHAIRMAN ROLF EKEUS, UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COMMISSION

[SevenMinusOne]

Ion Pacepa

I most certainly did read what you had posted earlier (in fact have read all that material before) -

The bottom line is we have conducted complex hex operations all throughout Iraq and have not found any active WMD program to speak of -

GWB, Cheney and Rumsfeld (and many others high in the U.S. Army) know much more about what WMD programs Saddam did and did not have active then does Ion Pacepa - To suggest otherwise now that US Forces have been in control for over a year is simply niave.

As for Saddam WMD's being in Syria (Bekka Valley) - Again, there are no residuals of any active WMD program in Iraq to have been moved (at least none we have found thus far) - And also that is simply "moving the goal post" type reasoning -

If we were to go into the Bekka Valley with force you would simply suggest "they were moved again" - There is no integrity in that type of reasoning -

GWB, Cheney and Rumsfeld are all serious men who do not play word games. All have said Saddam did not posses the WMD's we thought he did. Why do you think you know more than they do??

[SevenMinusOne]

I see that the media is virtually worthless when it comes to objectivity, and so I am somewhat jaded.

We are in 100% agreement here - There is no doubt the MSM is nothing but a hack for the Democrat Party - Facts and honesty mean nothing to the MSM today - they simply have an agenda and push / spin it daily.

God bless your son. He is making the World safer. Our actions in Iraq were right, just and needed. Freedom and self worth are spreading in a region of the World that for far to long has denied its citizens either.

[Dr. Frank fan]

Trucks? You call trucks WMDs? Oh man.

P.S. sarcasm

[Imaverygooddriver]

If you ever watch the History channel, tonight they had a show on Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, probably one of the more interesting shows I`ve ever seen on that channel. If they repeat, watch it. The similarities between Lincoln and Bush blew my mind, and the History channel is not know for being exactly a fan of the President.

Bush will go down in history as one of, if not THE greatest President this country has ever had. Savor this time because you are living in a time in this country were people will talk about this man for as long as this country exists.

Although both Lincoln and Bush were hated in time of war, although both were awkward, although death threats constantly plagued them (Lincoln actually use to collect his death threats in his desk, most notably by actors at the time..It seems Hollywood never changes) they both never wavered on doing what was morally right even though they both had to go through hell.

I wonder how many people today can put themselves out like that, to put their personal lives through so much in 8 years like that especially when you don`t have to! There will come a day in this world when people will look back and find it hard to believe that tyranny, terrorism, and the Clintons were ever accepted much like we look back on slavery today and wonder how in the hell people back then ever accepted it.

It seems with every century there are those who are complete utter f----in idiots, and those who aren`t. The idiots never win. Good always wins over evil. Common sense and the right thing to do always wins, it just takes years for others like the Clinton fans to catch up and all I can say is thank God for George W. Bush. God gave us this man at the right place and at the right time because if it wasn`t for him, I would hate to see where we would be right now if AlGore was on his second term. 911 would look like a baby burp by now.

Here`s an ad for that show.....

Tune In:
Saturday, March 12 @ 9pm ET/PT


He is perhaps the most beloved president in American history. But in his lifetime, Abraham Lincoln was hated by so many that an envelope inside his desk marked "Assassination" was stuffed with 100 morbid letters. What led Lincoln to predict his own murder and handsome actor John Wilkes Booth to kill him? TVPG cc