The Times has never insisted that UN-monitored WMD-related (NOT actual "WMDs") facilities and equipment were never there.
The fundamental cause of confusion in a billion "WMD" threads has been this issue of stuff Iraq was actually ALLOWED to have.
A lot of "Dual use" stuff; chemical equipment used to make regular industrial chemicals, but COULD be used to make WMDs; also, a lot of equipment at their nuclear facility, wasn't destroyed, but sealed and monitored by the IAEA.
Iraq was never required to destroy them; instead, they were regularly inspected by the UN.
That this stuff existed isn't breaking news, and there are zillions of articles from before GW II describing them in detail.
None of these materials potentially violated UN sanctions and were openly declared and acknowledged by the Iraqis.
One problem with the NYT article is that it assumes the reader, to a degree, is aware of the above. However, many people on FR, and, apparently, Newsmax, is not.
Also people seem to be confusing "looted after Baghdad fell" with "Shipped out of Iraq before the war by Saddam."
Good points and I'm glad someone made them...there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on this WMD issue and partisans on BOTH 'sides' seem to be deliberately 'spinning' these issues to EXPLOIT people's [especially the ignorant masses'] preconceptions or misconceptions; a lot of 'Lets not confuzzle the rubes with FACTS!' going on...-sigh-
Yeah, that is the stretch. There apparently was a large, coordinated, efficient effort planned in advance to get all this stuff out of the country if we invaded, so they knew:
A. Where to go (90 different sites, how many hidden?)
B. What they wanted (who had that knowledge?)
C. Where to take it (lined up ahead of time)
D. What equipment and manpower they needed (lined up ahead of time cranes and many many heavy trucks, fuel and manpower)
E. How to get it out of the country (TONS of machinery from 90+ sites, without being conspicuous)
Now, how exactly did this shadowy group get all this coordinated so well before the war, in a country with a dicatatorship that had spies literally everywhere? How was that possible?
Not only that, but they managed to loot 90 sites right under our very noses using cranes and lorries, all witnessed by govt workers and officials but not by us, and, managed to get the 'tons of machinery' out of the country over a several week period, again right under our noses. How exactly did all this happen?
The times says that the sites were left 'essentially' unguarded. What does that weasel word mean? It only takes one soldier to see cranes and truck carting stuff off to send up the red flag, so if anyone was at any of these 90 sites, the alarm would have been raised.
We in fact had no more wrapped up the invasion and we had troops swarming over all these sites for weeks looking for weapons. How did they manage to get all this stuff out while this intensive search was going on?
I am very curious as to how 90 sites were cleaned up in mere weeks in a very coordinated effort, who was involved, and how it was coordinated. That would take a massive amount of equipment and manpower. I am curious as to all that equipment got out of country without being a massive convey coming from various parts unknown and trying to get out of the few exits out of the country capable of such traffic, unseen. I am curious as to how al-Araji came upon this information.
Interestingly Dr. Sami al-Araji came up twice in Google, once about the Allies use of depleted uranium in an anti-US article in Le Monde, http://mondediplo.com/1999/06/08duarms. The other was in something called 'A Letter from Baghdad,' a propaganda article put out by the Iragi govt possibly and circulated on the left-wing websites (http://www.northside.greens.org.au/stuff_4.html) about the final UN inspections before the invasion.
It's also interesting that it was al-Araji that worked as the point man with the final UN inspection team and took them to the various sites. This means if there was any diversion or misdirection, al-Araji would have been the person carry out the orders of the regime. He was not in the 'deck of cards' issued by the U.S. for wanted Iraqi officials.
Meaning then that al-Araji would know most if not all of these 90 sites and what was in them. The question then is what does he know and when did he know it. He could have easily been one of the players in this dismantling operation, making you wonder if he is duping the NY Times in misdirection to get the issue out now and let the anti-US screeching drown out the real truth before it is uncovered. Being that he was a former Iraqi official, he is immediately suspect in terms of the ability to believe that he is telling the truth.
My guess is that this is a thin and desperate cover story for dismantling that occured BEFORE we invaded, maybe even being some kind of stalling measure so as to not speed up events even faster. With Lebanon in the process of being freed, we could be close to being able to get CIA and Spec Ops assets in the Bekaa valley easily to find the missing weapons. Meaning there may be time needed to get them out?
At any rate, there is more to this than meets the eye, and I don't think this is the end of this story, nor do I think we have seen the truth what what really happened.