Posted on 02/06/2003 12:04:57 PM PST by Wolfstar
Following is a verbatim excerpt of the transcript of Secretary Powell’s address to the United Nations yesterday. This excerpt focuses on bioweapons; most particularly anthrax. I have emphasized certain key points in bold typeface, and have interspersed just a few of my own editorial comments, which are in blue typeface. This is a somewhat long read, but very critical to an understanding of what is at the heart of the dangers this nation currently faces.
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT]
I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.
[SNIP]
First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry — to pry — an admission out of Iraq that it had biological weapons.
Second, when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast.
[Ed. note: Sec. Powell held up a small vial at this point.]
Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount — this is just about the amount of a teaspoon — less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.
Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.
And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.
Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has provided little evidence to verify anthrax production and no convincing evidence of its destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.
[Ed. note: The above highlighted passages are diplomat-speak for, “The United States believes the anthrax used in 2001 came from Iraq, even if we can’t prove it to court-of-law-type certainty.”]
[SNIP]
Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.
Although Iraq’s mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.
[Ed. note: Pay particular attention to key dates Powell mentions. MOST OCCURRED DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION. The immense danger our nation faces today can be laid directly in Clinton’s lap.]
The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier.
[SNIP]
We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of — there may be more — but perhaps 18 that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.
It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities?
Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.
By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production facilities.
We know from Iraq’s past admissions that it has successfully weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.
[Ed. note: Again, an emphasis on weaponized anthrax and “dry agents.” That's what was used against us in 2001.]
But Iraq’s research efforts did not stop there. Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox.
The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disperse lethal biological agents, widely and indiscriminately into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.
[Ed. note: Recall the interest Atta had in learning how to fly crop dusters. Note the Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle in the slide below. It is set up to spray biochemical weapons. A crop duster is essentially a manned version of this UAV. Also note that the Mirage is a FRENCH jet. The French have much to hide in all this.]
[SNIP]
My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq’s continued flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on. And that has to do with terrorism.
Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons. It’s the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against innocent people around the world.
[SNIP]
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
[SNIP]
Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.
During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
[SNIP]
Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an Al Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that Al Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaida.
We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
[SNIP]
Saddam became more interested as he saw Al Qaida’s appalling attacks. A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by Al Qaida’s attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam’s former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to Al Qaida members on document forgery.
[Ed. note: The above paragraphs provide proof of the linkage between Al Qaida and Iraq going back to the 1990's. This is also more proof of the devastating legacy of the feckless, monumentally negligent, possibly traitorous Clinton administration.]
[SNIP]
Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaida. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.
This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan.
His information comes first-hand from his personal involvement at senior levels of Al Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaida leader Muhammad Atif, did not believe that Al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
[SNIP]
The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
I for one, do not need for there to be a connection to al-Qaeda in order to see the need to take out Saddam Hussein.
We are trying to eradicate terror. Let's face it the whole Middle East is enamored with terror as a weapon. In order to defeat terror, the whole ME must suffer a consequence so dire that they will not think of attacking us again.
Such a consequence can be accomplished with a minimum of dead arabs only by dealing them a severe psychological blow.
The requirements are:
1-Annihilate the Middle East's most feared military.
2-Saddam Hussein must be killed or humiliated, we should make no apologies that our mission is punitive in nature.
3-Seize controlof Iraqi oil. This is the part that will have a tremendous psychological effect on the arab world and serve as a cathartic consequence. Control of this oil eliminates the only leverage they've had with us and will realign the whole ME dynamic in our favor.
Secretary Powell drew the outlines of a picture that many of us have suspected for over a year. Eventually, the media will outdo themselves and fill in the colors-by-the-numbers.
The clock has been running on this operation since shortly after 9/11. The alarm goes off and we're going into Iraq, soon. We should be prepared for retaliation, here at home.
With all due and sincere respect, don't hold your breath. The only thing the media care about is making a buck. Any attempt to actually inform the American public on vital issues is purely incidental.
First on your list: "The most serious bioterror attack in America began only days after 9-11."
Actually, when the news of the anthrax victim from AMA first broke toward the end of September 2001, AMA employees said that a letter with a brownish-white powder had arrived the week of 9/8/01. That was contemporaneous with the event, when their memories were fresh. I have no reason to doubt them, because no information has ever been published to refute them (to the best of my knowledge). So best evidence indicates that the first anthrax letter was mailed in South Florida a few days BEFORE the 9/11/01 hijackings.
Given (a) the timing of the attacks, (b) everything we've since learned about Iraq, Al Queda, and
[Wink and LOL] Yep, it does make a great deal of sense. I don't think Powell's emphasis on anthrax and the attack on our Capitol was so much evidentiary in nature as diplomat-speak for letting the world know what the administration knows or strongly suspects. A shot across the world's bow. And the true rationale for going into Iraq. The president, himself, said it today. Hussein has the means and the hatred to endanger the American people. "He will be stopped."
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