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Not Missing: Moved (Saddam's WMD are missing only because we haven't looked in the right places)
The American Prowler ^ | 6/13/2005 | Jed Babbin

Posted on 06/13/2005 1:49:51 AM PDT by nickcarraway

For those of us who are occasional targets of the Soros-funded propaganda machines, it's encouraging to discover a useful purpose that they can serve. The hyperlib machinery, and the reactions it commands, are as accurate a gauge as I can find to measure the import of the key points of the liberal dogma. As demonstrated by the reaction they manufactured to some comments I made on MSNBC last week, the volume of hate mail the organized hyperlibs generate is directly proportional to the importance they assign to an issue and the weakness of their position.

At issue was the so-called "Downing Street memo," a top-secret Brit document memorializing a meeting in July 2002. The document says that the decision to take military action against Saddam had already been made two months before we took the case of Iraq to the UN Security Council. It is as significant historically as Nick Nolte's DUI record, and far less accurate. After Ron Reagan pressed me to admit our casus belli was a tissue of lies, I told him that the fact we haven't found Saddam's WMD proved precisely nothing. That's so, I said, because while we fiddled and diddled in the UN for six months before military action began, Saddam almost certainly moved all his WMD and scrubbed away all the evidence of it.

When Reagan pressed me further, contending that none of the commissions investigating the missing WMD said they had been moved, I cited the report of Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, which spent many months searching for WMD in Iraq. That report, I said, showed the substantial body of evidence that a lot of people, money, and materials, possibly including WMD, were smuggled out of Iraq in the months before March 2003. The destination of these cargoes was Syria. I had touched a nerve: by the time I got home, the "Media Matters for America" blog had accused me of lying, and dozens of nearly identical e-mails (on the intellectual plane of, "liar, liar, pants on fire") were pouring in. I quickly stopped reading them and just hit "delete" when I saw them.

I hadn't merely touched a hyperlib nerve. I had challenged the basis for the hyperlibs' existence: to discredit George Bush and the war at any cost. But the problem, for them, is that I had stuck to the facts. Which are very uncomfortable things, if you're Soros or Howard Dean. Or any of their Michael Mooron drones. Having demonstrated that I can drive them into a fit of apoplectic rage with a 30-second comment on television, the scientific method requires a controlled, repeatable experiment to see how many can be driven to nervous breakdowns with a more elaborate exposition of the facts. In the interest of science, let us proceed.

WHAT I SAID ON MSNBC was, of course, just what the Duelfer's ISG report said, and what Duelfer has said personally and repeatedly in Congressional testimony. You can look it up. On November 17, 2004, Duelfer told the House International Relations Committee that a lot was moved by Saddam's people from Iraq into Syria and no one knows whether or not the WMD were among the shipments to Syria: "I can't confirm anything one way or the other. What we do know is that a lot of stuff was crossing the border before the war. Trucks, but you don't know what was in them. So that's -- you know, I would like to be able to state definitively one way or the other an answer to that. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to." On October 6, 2004, Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee, "...But what I can tell you that I believe we know is a lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria. There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say."

Duelfer's report also said that Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence Service "operated a series of laboratories in the Baghdad area" (up to five in that area alone) and that one of them, a clandestine lab in the Baghdad Central Public Health Laboratory, was "emptied of all equipment and documents in December 2002," and that other labs were also found in the scrubbed-clean-of-evidence condition.

The only reasonable conclusion anyone can draw from the Duelfer report -- even if we ignore the other mountains of evidence about Saddam’s WMD -- is that Saddam had WMD and in the six months we spent trying to convince Kofi, Dominique, and their pals to act, Saddam's regime moved the WMD, cleaned out the evidence, and did their best to conceal what they had done. That they did so with the active participation of Assad's Syria is also terribly clear.

It is a pity that the embittered hyperlibs can't accept facts or use them to assemble the logical, and inevitable, conclusions to which they lead. When any of them -- Soros, Moore, Dean, Franken, or any of them -- call a conservative a liar, it must create a rebuttable presumption that it is the lib who is falsifying. Not that they care.

Jed Babbin, a contributing editor of The American Spectator, was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, and now often appears as a talking warhead on MSNBC.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: bush; duelferreport; husseiniraq; jedbabbin; saddam; wmd
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1 posted on 06/13/2005 1:49:51 AM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

Even though the Liberals/Leftist machine of propaganda against president Bush and the Iraq war doesn't hold water and is baseless ( the WMDs WILL BE FOUND ) .... once the WMDs are found, and the worlds gets to see that President Bush was RIGHT, it will be interesting to see how the liberal/leftist/anti-America crowd will spin themselves out of a corner and tie themselves in knots.


2 posted on 06/13/2005 1:58:18 AM PDT by Prophet in the wilderness (PSALM 53 : 1 The ( FOOL ) hath said in his heart , There is no GOD .)
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To: Prophet in the wilderness
I find it quite amazing that anyone still thinks that the WMDs will be found.
3 posted on 06/13/2005 2:02:14 AM PDT by AntiGuv (™)
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To: nickcarraway

The RATS sat there in the senate and got the same info as the GOP. They believe, the same as this reporter believes, that UN inspecter believes, BUT they want to be in charge! Dammit!! It's what it all comes down to, "let us play with $$$ and the rules".


4 posted on 06/13/2005 2:13:29 AM PDT by Waco
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To: Prophet in the wilderness

It doesn't matter; Saddam is still in jail; Bush is still president. And there were 999 other & mostly bigger reasons to take Saddam out. Starting with Saddam having painted a bullseye on his own back and setting himself up as the easiest & most convenient target for a ME rennovation project.


5 posted on 06/13/2005 2:17:36 AM PDT by elli1
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To: AntiGuv

Why is that?


6 posted on 06/13/2005 2:19:30 AM PDT by Treader (Hillary's dark smile is reminiscent of Stalin's inhuman grin...)
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To: AntiGuv
If we went so far as to take satellite imagery of the WMD sites during the time in question, they have info to the whereabouts. I believe they have attempted telltale sample confirmation of Iraqi WMD stocks in Syria by SpecOps/CIA units. The regime also operated very different from the west...or at least convincingly so. They had buried info to be resurrected later. The regime had all the numbers to skew and was responsible to hand this over to IAEA, which was quite skeptical of the data.
7 posted on 06/13/2005 2:26:27 AM PDT by endthematrix (Thank you US armed forces, for everything you give and have given!)
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Documents are starting to come out about WMD, we will find them:
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200410%5CSPE20041004a.html


8 posted on 06/13/2005 2:29:22 AM PDT by WonkyTonky (God Bless America and all that love her)
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To: Prophet in the wilderness
The backup excuse was/is that Bush and Halliburton will actually put WMD in place to make it look like they were right. Funny since it's been years and Bush never said, "I old you so" what does that say to the DUers?
9 posted on 06/13/2005 2:31:08 AM PDT by endthematrix (Thank you US armed forces, for everything you give and have given!)
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To: Prophet in the wilderness

syriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyriasyria......


10 posted on 06/13/2005 2:31:44 AM PDT by ovrtaxt (...a sheep in wolf's clothing)
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To: Treader

Because either there was never anything there to be found or they were sent out of Iraq, and if they were sent out of Iraq they will at this point surely never be traced back to the Iraq even if by some miracle we happen to come across them.


11 posted on 06/13/2005 2:33:11 AM PDT by AntiGuv (™)
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To: nickcarraway
This report relays the findings of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The files comprising the PDF edition of this 1,000-page report are extremely large and, in practice, available only to visitors who have a broadband connection. The HTML edition is available to all, regardless of connection speed.

Please see the correction regarding Niro Atomizer Inc.

In March 2005, the Special Advisor added addenda to his original report:

Note for the Comprehensive Report with Addenda (PDF,17KB)
Addenda to the Comprehensive Report (PDF, 705 KB)


HTML edition:

Volume 1

Charles Duelfer's Transmittal Message
Acknowledgements
Scope Note
Regime Strategic Intent
Regime Finance and Procurement
Regime Strategy and WMD Timeline Events

Volume 2

Delivery Systems
Nuclear

Volume 3

Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program
Biological Warfare
Glossary and Acronyms

Complete Table of Contents


PDF edition:

The files linked below are in PDF format and require Adobe's free Acrobat® Reader™ to view.

Key Findings (194 KB)

Volume 1 (53,807 KB)

Volume 2 (76,070 KB)

Volume 3 (69,895 KB)


12 posted on 06/13/2005 2:34:43 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK (secus acutulus exspiro ab Acheron bipes actio absol ab Acheron supplico)
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To: endthematrix

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that they were sent to Syria, and let's ignore the time limitation on efficacy for most of the hypothesized WMDs, do you think that the Syrians would have a big fat MADE IN IRAQ label on them? So, if the answer is no, let's pretend that we conquer Syria within a time frame that any of Saddam's WMDs would still be viable and kept around, how do suppose we would distinguish the once-Iraqi WMDs from Syrian produced WMDs?


13 posted on 06/13/2005 2:38:16 AM PDT by AntiGuv (™)
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Found this article, UN also says Iraq had WMD
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html


14 posted on 06/13/2005 2:41:23 AM PDT by WonkyTonky (God Bless America and all that love her)
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To: AntiGuv

Perhaps you are correct- those pesky WMDs were never in Iraq. Then again, if they were- we have a grave situation that demands a circumvention unknown in prior world history, correct?


15 posted on 06/13/2005 2:42:22 AM PDT by Treader (Hillary's dark smile is reminiscent of Stalin's inhuman grin...)
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To: AntiGuv

All WMDs leave a traceable signature of manufacture, even after usage. Didn't know that did ya? The big question is where and when- not if...


16 posted on 06/13/2005 2:46:19 AM PDT by Treader (Hillary's dark smile is reminiscent of Stalin's inhuman grin...)
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To: AntiGuv

The time limitations you mention would apply only to poorly manufactured unitary chemical weapons. Well manufactured chemical weapons have a long shelf life while binary chemical weapons have a nearly unlimited shelf life.

Biological weapons can be reduced to seed stocks and stored indefinitely.

The tracibility issues you mention, however, are absolutely correct. Without documentation we will never know if any found weapons were Saddam's.


17 posted on 06/13/2005 2:54:52 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter (John 6: 51-58)
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To: Treader

Yes and no.

An anthrax weapon, for example, using the Ames strain which was made in Iraq would show little differences from an another weapon using the Ames strain that was manufactured elsewhere.

The same would be true of fissile materials that were purchased from Pakistan or North Korea. The location of manufacture could probably be ascertained but not the country, or group, who had actually put it in a weapon.


18 posted on 06/13/2005 2:59:45 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter (John 6: 51-58)
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To: Prophet in the wilderness
Hmmm...

It will be dangerous...

How will Bush prove that the newly find WMD-s are not
planted?
Given the 2+ years and the enormous pressure to find them, the high number of Iraqi scientist captured and the wide believes that the US extracts information by torture, the liberal propaganda could turn this to a rather negative spin.

I guess the best would be a fair and open trial of Saddam, possible outside of Iraq.
That could silence the war-critics.
19 posted on 06/13/2005 3:01:22 AM PDT by bozot
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To: AntiGuv
I understand that Syria does not want WMD trail and posses anything that sways world opinion against them. I'm skeptical that anything will be left. However, the trail does exist.

Confirming Iraq origin can be achieved because we have the comparable sample signatures to match against. And if we are able to gain home manufactured samples from Syria then we can eliminate those. Iraqi Anthrax is different from Syria's. The formula for botulism and weaponed nerve and bioagents are different.
20 posted on 06/13/2005 3:11:38 AM PDT by endthematrix (Thank you US armed forces, for everything you give and have given!)
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