Posted on 05/24/2003 4:31:22 PM PDT by Pokey78
British military officers have uncovered an attempt by Saddam Hussein to build a missile capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel, The Telegraph can reveal.
Plans for the surface-to-surface missile were one of the regime's most closely-guarded secrets and were unknown to United Nations weapons inspectors. Its range of 600 miles would have been far greater than that of the al-Samoud rocket - which already breached the 93-mile limit imposed by the UN on any Iraqi missiles.
Saddam's masterplan for the new missile, which was being developed by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission (MIC), the body responsible for weapons procurement, constitutes the most serious breach uncovered so far of the tight restrictions imposed on Iraq's military capability after the 1991 Gulf war. The range of Saddam's missiles was restricted to prevent him from using them as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction.
David Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector responsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear weapons programme in the 1990s, said the British discovery proved that Saddam had no intention of complying with UN requirements.
"This is the smoking gun we have been looking for," he said. "We have known all along that Saddam was desperate to develop a delivery system for his mass destruction weapons, and this missile would undoubtedly have given him that capability."
Details of Saddam's secret missile programme were discovered by British weapons experts after interviews with several former senior officials of the MIC.
Gen Mudh'her Sadeq Sabe'a, the head of missile technology at the MIC, was in charge of the development programme, which began in 1999. Once a week Gen Mudh'her and Abdul Tawib Mulla Hawish, the minister responsible for the MIC, would travel to the presidential palace in Baghdad to deliver a progress report to Saddam, who is said to have taken a keen personal interest in the project.
Mr Hawish surrendered to coalition forces shortly after the war and has provided British officials with a detailed breakdown of Saddam's plans to manufacture the weapon.
The rocket motor was to be built at the Abu Ghraib military base, the main fuselage at al-Waziriyah and the navigation system at al-Taji. "We had finished the research stage and entered the development stage," said a senior Iraqi engineer who worked at the MIC and is now co-operating with British officials. "If it had not been for the war, development would have been completed within a year."
Iraqi officials insist that the missile was intended to carry a conventional warhead, but British weapons experts believe it could easily have been adapted to carry chemical or biological weapons.
The Iraqis say that the missile's main purpose would have been to protect Iraq from attack by neighbouring countries. However, it could also have been used to attack Israel. During the Gulf war Saddam launched Soviet-made Scud missiles at targets in Israel.
The discovery of the plans for Saddam's secret missile programme is being hailed as a significant breakthrough by coalition commanders, who have so far failed to find any convincing evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programme.
. . .agree; more going on than ever met the eye of the look/see inspectors. . .
Long Range missiles are not a defensive weapon and have never been. They are city killers, not tank or troop busters. Short range missiles can be used as artillery against attacking troops, but long range missiles cannot strike a target within 1/4 of their maximum range.
Islamic’s may be stupid enough to believe any lie, and are stupid enough to think that of us.
Middle East list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
The carb loading is phenomenal on the Originals, and those can be consumed in such rapid succession that you could tail the production line with your mouth open.
Unless there is some new information, they haven't found a program. According to this article they just got some "talk" from several former senior officials of the MIC.
I'm hopeful this leads to some hard evidence, but until it does this is just more hyperbole from an editor who claims in the headline a smoking gun has been located.
I haven't either. Unless I've missed a story somewhere that has to be one of the strangest parts of this story so far. We heard about those ships for a couple of weeks and now nothing. I hope someone does have some information to post here about them.
Good job posting this. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that these things already were set to carry chems and bio, but the Iraqis "unadapted" them during the time the French and Germans were throwing up roadblocks in the Useless United Nations Security Council.
I doubt the left would classify any thing found WMD. Haven't they already found chemicals and nerve gas? This along with the missles's would classify in ,my opinion, as WMD's. I mean what more is needed.
The only thing left would be nuclear.
I don't want to leave the impression that I think the war was unjustified. We've found plenty of indications that they had the capability and the will to create WMD. We just haven't found any finished WMD yet.
"This is the smoking gun we have been looking for," he said. "We have known all along that Saddam was desperate to develop a delivery system for his mass destruction weapons, and this missile would undoubtedly have given him that capability."
Details of Saddam's secret missile programme were discovered by British weapons experts after interviews with several former senior officials of the MIC.
Good job! I just wish they would stop saying "smoking gun." :-)
Lets assume you're right. If that's so, there's some very important questions that need answers.
#1: EVERY intelligence agency in the world agreed they had the WMD. No one even questioned that. The UN said so in a 15-0 vote in NOV 2002.
#2: If Iraq did not have WMD why would they essentially toss the UN inspectors out in 1998? All they had to do was provide evidence as to what happened to what THEY themselves declared? Then they could have easily won the lifting of the sanctions they suposidly detested.
#3: If Iraq were clean WHY couldn't the UN inspectors get even ONE Iraqi scientist to come clean? They had 7000 people just in the nuke dept at one time. This was not just a few mad scientists, it was a national priority for Saddam.
#4: The world was divided on the war, but not on the subject of these weapons, why is it that now, only 2 months since the fall of Baghdad, is the incomplete picture on the WMD picture all it takes for folks like you to claim it's all a lie. The anti-war crowd kept yelling for more time for the inspectors before the war, now that Saddam's gone, times up. That's ridiculous! We don't even have Saddam yet anyway.
I think I'll stick with BUSH, BLAIR, and the Coalition countries that are working this project, KKK Byrd does not speak for me(>sarcasm on<)[:)
Yep! Being short of cash and friends is no way to go through life.
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