Posted on 05/02/2016 12:12:11 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
The weapons were there
We are rerunning this piece from our October 29, 2003 issue. It was originally published by The Washington Times.
Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.
Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast.
Gen. Clapper said he is not surprised that U.S. and allied forces have not found weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq because "it's a big place."
"Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.
Congress is investigating whether U.S. intelligence agencies overstated information indicating that Iraq had hidden its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has defended the intelligence agencies on prewar reports that the weapons were there.
Iraqi government officials "below the Saddam Hussein and the sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to dispose, destroy and disperse," he said.
Gen. Clapper said he felt strongly that the satellite imagery of Iraq's weapons facilities before the war was "accurate and balanced."
"Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of [weapons of mass destruction] activity," said the retired general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Gen. Clapper said the judgment was based on analysis of spy satellite photographs and was not proof of "what was going on inside of buildings."
He also said the Iraqi government carried out operations after the fall of Baghdad in April to cover up the hidden weapons programs. The chaos following might have included both looting and "organized dispersal made to look like looting," he said.
"So by the time that we got to a lot of these facilities, that we had previously identified as suspect facilities, there wasn't that much there to look at," he said.
Valuable documents on Iraq's weapons were destroyed or lost in the chaos, which included burning of major government ministries.
Saddam began dispersing his weapons and sending elements of his chemical, biological and nuclear programs out of the country in the weeks before the war, he said.
The dispersal included moving both weapons and equipment as well as documents. The activity began before the United Nations began arms inspections last fall.
"What we saw with the avoidance of inspections, there was clearly an effort to disperse, bury, conceal certain equipment prior to inspections," Gen. Clapper said.
As for shipping weapons out of Iraq, he said, there is "no question" that people and material were taken to Syria. He said he did not know whether material also was moved to Iran.
Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.
Too many on FR have forgotten this or deny it ever happened.
Rime to re-examine the past!
One of Saddam’s top advisors, General Georges Sada wrote a tell-all book “Saddam’s Secrets”. Was a childhood friend of Saddam, and a born-again Christian, spilled the beans on what really happened... details and all.
The last 1/3 of the book tells exactly what was moved and where to. Bottom line, Iraq had them, and moved them to Syria.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of people forget this and paint the entire PUBBIE party with this.
Typo....Rime = Time!
Trump says there were none, so I get shouted down every time I bring this up. Get ready...
I will never forget the role that Hans Blixt played in this. Delaying, delaying, delaying until the WMDs could be moved.
I hope one of the surprises on Trump’s foreign policy agenda will be to defund the UN and turn the property into luxury condos.
The WMDs WERE there, but weren’t when we got there.
Saddam had a stockpile years before 2003, in violation of various treaties and UN resolutions. He used them against the Kurds (at least) after the 1st Gulf War. He NEVER accounted for their destruction, and we’d have known if he used them or turned them over to someone else. Flying unicorns farting out pixie dust didn’t make them disappear, so they HAD to still exist.
What happened: as the article reports, they were evacuated...and WHY NOT? We friggin’ telegraphed for 6 months that we were going to invade, like a bunch of 6-year-old braggarts. Hussein would had to have been stupid NOT to move them.
Oh, and the KGB, Mossad, the Germans, the Brits and the French (among others) confirmed what the CIA knew: that the weapons existed.
There can simply be not other explanation.
Good to get this out, but I wonder when they’ll acknowledge that it was the Russian Army disassembling and moving factories and materials to Syria?
THAT is why they’ve pretended so long that the intel was “mistaken”.
Trump is wrong. Iraq’s WMD were transferred to Syria at the insistence of the Russian Government, who was responsible for much of the supply and development of the weapons before and after the demise of the Soviet Union. Some of the nuclear assets were being prepared for use in the development of a Syrian weapons grade nuclear reactor. When the U.S. Government and the U.N. refused to take action against the Syrian Government to halt the development of this nuclear reactor, the Israeli Government took action to destroy it. Operation Orchard (Mivtza bustan) was the military air strike that destroyed the facility.
This should soften the accusation that Hillary voted for the war. That’s all it does in the mind of a lefty.
People wonder why Bush didn't make this case after we rolled in there and discovered the empty warehouses.
Easy explanation: if he told the truth about where Saddam sent them, he'd have essentially been admitting that because of his admin's shortsighted and downright idiotic decision to invade, occupy, and nation-build in Iraq, Saddam's WMDs were now in much more dangerous hands -- the Assad regime and Hezbollah. ....probably a good chunk of them right on Israel's northern border. (The Russian Army supervised the move. And as we've seen in the past few years, Assad has put them to use in Syria's civil war).
So rather than tell the truth about their whereabouts and Russian involvement, which would have been admitting gross incompetence (at best), Bush decided to lie and play the "oops, it looks like our intel was wrong about Saddam's WMDs" card. Embarrassing, but less embarrassing and indicting than telling the truth.
Bottom line: contrary to what most people believe, Bush didn't lie about the existence of Saddam's WMDs as a pretext to go to war -- he lied about their whereabouts after the invasion. And it's a crucial distinction. Anyone who thinks Saddam didn't have them is either ignorant or in willful denial. Especially considering the evidence presented in articles like this.
And just last week that idiot CIA appointee claims “Oh, we can’t release those 28 pages, they are innacurate.” There is NO WAY IN HELL Obama would allow WMD proof to light.
I have not forgotten.
This always po’d me when the idiots said there were no WMDs.
Thanks Ernest.
I remember that the countries stalling the invasion were implicated in the oil for food program that saw them illegally buying chews oil from saddam.
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