Posted on 11/14/2005 5:30:18 AM PST by conservativecorner
In The President’s Quiver – The First Installment
There are many, many documented examples of how Saddam posed a threat to the world, in spite of the fact that the media ignored them, having already written the story with the ending they wanted. One discovery by the Iraq Survey Group, reported by Kenneth Timmerman, always comes to my mind when I hear those on the left and in the media say that we now know that there was no WMD in Iraq. What follows is a rerun of something I posted in April of 2004. (The updates listed below were to the original April 2004 post.)
This is one for the President’s quiver. There are literally dozens of similar findings regarding WMD and Saddam’s ties to terrorism that have been documented, but that went virtually unreported in the mainstream media. There is plenty of ammunition, I just pray that the President continues the fight. The Veteran’s Day speech was a good beginning, but that is all it was, a beginning.
Monday, April 26th, 2004
Evidence of Iraq WMD Isn’t Spectacular Enough for Press to Report
When the facts don’t fit the story the media is trying to peddle, they just ignore the facts – even when the facts relate to the discovery of WMD in Iraq. This accounting of the findings by the Iraq Survey Group by Kenneth Timmerman is breathtaking. I knew that David Kay’s testimony was misrepresented to the public, but did not realize the extent of the misrepresentation.
What the president’s critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find “stockpiles” of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism “a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security.” Timmerman claims that chemical weapons agents have been found.
But what are “stockpiles” of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA’s) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.
The following is just one example of many listed by Timmerman:
At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large “agricultural supply” area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a “camouflaged bunker complex” that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. “More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent,” Hanson says. “But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The ‘agricultural site’ was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG.” This is information that you aren’t getting from ABCBSCNNBC. Please read the whole thing, and remember it the next time you hear that Bush lied about WMD.
UPDATE: Not only is the media negligent, but think about all those in Congress (Ted Kennedy) who know every bit of this information and still tell the public that Bush lied.
“At a very minimum,” Hanson tells Insight, “they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly.” Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment’s notice.
UPDATE: This shows the search continues. The battle came just hours after a workshop in Baghdad, believed to be producing chemical munitions, exploded in flames moments after U.S. troops broke in to search it on Monday.
ping
Links dont seem to work.
Use the link to go to the site. Sorry concerning the non-working links.
Why have the Republicans caved on this? This information would have satisfied many of those in the "political middle."
It's too late to bring it up now...too many Republican out there saying the "intelligence was wrong."
Where did all those weapons go? (I know probably Syria) Is the DOD and/or CIA still looking? Will we ever see the headline on the NYT/WP front page:
WMD Caches Found in Syria; Came from Iraq!
Syria has had vast quantities of their own chemical weapons and chemical weapon production facilities for decades, and even if Syria were somehow invaded and occupied thus allowing inspections (which ain't happening), it would be difficult to determine the origin of anything found.
I don't recall anything about the site that was "camoflaged" or a "bunker."
It was just some old leaky drums of pesticide that were buried. Nerve agents are chemically very similar to pesticides. If you took your can of Raid from under your sink and sprayed it repeatedly into a bag, and put your head into the bag, you'd have some pretty serious health problems.
It seems once a story is put out by America's enemies, it's suddenly gospel. They have found CW and shells to put it in, but just not large quantities. The MSM is looking for warehouses full of hundreds of thousand of munitions, or GWB lied. The point is, Saddam could make them anytime, and his nuclear guy buried all the stuff for bomb making to start up later. The 1 TON of enriched uranium was already enough for at least 1 nuke.
I thought he kept golf balls in there..
Now all he needs is a Bow.. you know, to SHOOT the arrows..
LOL! Every journey begins with a first step.
Mort Kondrake made this stunning statement: "The dems would rather lose the war in Iraq than let Bush score political points for it's success.
I'll say it again - you can't get more arrogant, partisan and seditious than that.
No, it's not too late to bring it up now. In fact NOW is the perfect time.
And .. while we're brining it up - let's remind the public that THE DEMOCRATS KNEW ABOUT ALL THIS STUFF AND STILL CONTINUED TO CALL BUSH A LIAR.
SO WHO'S THE LIAR!! This needs to get out there all over the place because it proves there was evidence - which the dems are conveniently ignoring because they believe the public is too stupid to figure it out.
THEY STILL DON'T GET IT!!
Well, the Dims have opened the door back up for debate.
Perhaps the White House should seize the opportunity; here's what we HAVE found...
later read.
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