Posted on 08/03/2003 6:16:19 AM PDT by visagoth
Swedish researchers claim to have found proscribed weapons in Iraq
A group of Swedish researchers, travelling to Iraq without the knowledge of the Swedish government, is announcing that they have found missiles for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in a house in Baghdad.
The finds will be presented in a forthcoming production by World Television Network (WTN). The information supposedly came to Swedish WTN reporter Maria Wera Cedrell, who has worked in Iraq for 15 years, through an Iraqi scientist. She was assisted by former arms inspector and WMD expert Åke Sellström from Swedish Defence Research Agency (Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut, FOI).
"I think we have found "a smoking gun." But that is not up to me to decide."
Sellström describes this as pieces of a puzzle But the researchers will not reveal any details before the find is presented in a TV production and a book project (possible red alert here).
Swedish authorities, deeply critical to US policy in Ira q, is not amused about military scientists going to Iraq to conduct private investigations without informing them first.
(From a Swedish article in Expressen)
Update: just heard on the radio (NRK) that these scientists have also received information that Saddam had a programme for production of anthrax weapons even while the latest inspections were going on. Sellström is presented as a well-renowed expert in the field who has worked with Hans Blix. A TV production about the find will be presented on Swedish TV tonight.
Speaking of softball, all they need to do is be "harshly" interviewed by Matt Lauer, Katie Couric or Chris Matthews and they will consider themselves absolved.
The media will down play this whole thing and harp on unemployment numbers or the economy.
Exactly, this is why Bush has stated the things he has about releasing the evidence at the appropriate time.
Good point.
Now that's a word!
I can just see ole Katie spewing it now.
This is sirius:
We will soon find evidence that Iraq was behind the post 9-11 anthrax mailings.
Everyone needs to read Laurie Mylroie's new book Bush Vs the Beltway, in which she lays out the case against Iraq. It seems our own CIA and FBI had political reasons for trying to lay this on Hatfield instead of Iraq, also when this all came to light, we were not prepared to announce to the world that this attack was indeed state sponsored. One of the pieces of evidence she has presented involves one of the hijackers, only a few days before piloting a plane into one of the towers,having been treated for a sore which the doctor now admits could have been cutaneous anthrax.
She also tells how the Ames strain could have gotten into Iraqi hands through a British firm which turns out to have been owned by an Arab.
Our own CIA did everything it could to keep this info from being revealed. Why hasn't Bush fired Tenet?
I'm peter Jennings
"More Americans
get their news
from my ass,
than from any other ass"
.....
except George Steolufogus
I'd laugh at your Peter Jennings imagery if it weren't so close to the truth. As for Miss NPR, I always call her More-uh LIES-son.
"'This is the "smoking gun" the U.S. is looking for'" (Maria Gners, Svenska Dagbladet/Watch, 2003/08/03)
A partial translation of an article in today's paper version of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. It should be noted that World Television Network doesn't even seem to have a site of their own and the only former mention of Wera Maria Cedrell I can find is in a dispatch on a meeting with Iraq's former information minister. But this is a big story in today's Swedish newspapers, with Expressen publishing "sensational", "world exclusive" pictures "which might prove that Saddam Hussein had WMD's" in its paper edition, for example:
"Experts from FOI [Swedish Defence Research Agency] accompanied the Monte Carlo based production company World Television Network, when they were doing a report in Iraq with a team fronted by the Swedish journalist Wera Maria Cedrell. Wera Maria Cedrell claims that she has evidence proving that Saddam's regime produced weapons of mass destructions as late as the last year.
"This is the "smoking gun" the U.S. is looking for," she says.
The allegations made by the TV team is based on tips from two Iraqi scientists. ...
The evidence consisted of files, documents and maps. ... After having been informed of the findings by telephone, FOI chose to send down two men.
"They flew down immediately and worked with us for a week. After a preliminary investigation they assessed that the findings were very interesting and almost to good to be true," Wera Maria Cedrell says.
The TV team and the experts visited buildings and locations pointed out by the Iraqi scientists. They describe the production of WMD's as small-scaled but copious.
"We visited about ten locations. Everything was looted, but only for chairs and tables not documents. We found a lot of documents and blueprints, and also material and boxes." ...
The evidence will be presented in a series of books, which Wera Maria Cedrell currently are writing together with the American journalist Nate Thyer and an Iraqi member of the Governing Council."
http://www.expressen.se/expressen/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=442&a=51623
Most certainly, but firing Tenet would be a good start toward the cleanup.
Popular on FR but this is quite possibly the stupidest theory on anything ever devised.
Popular on FR but this is quite possibly the stupidest theory on anything ever devised.
It's not at all impossible that Saddam Hussein wanted to strike at America in a clandestine manner, also not implausible that some among the neutered, politicized, Clintonized intelligence bureaus tried in knee-jerk fashion to pin the anthrax episode on a domestic source. Thus far they have failed to implicate Hatfield, and the attempt to do so seems pretty stupid at this point, because a great deal of evidence points to Iraq as the source.
Whether deriving from political reasons or ineptitude is beside the point, Iraq should have been looked at more closely IMHO.
Possible?????
Not yet noon on Sunday and we have the understatement of the week already.
Battlefield rockets with solid-fuel boosters aren't that big for bio or chem warheads.
Does this mean the missiles can be used for WMD or do they have WMD in them or what?
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