Posted on 08/04/2003 12:07:05 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:15:28 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
August 4, 2003 -- DAVID Kay, CIA adviser and former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, told a Senate panel Thursday that he is building a "solid case that withstands international scrutiny" with regard to Saddam Hussein's weapons program. "We are gaining the cooperation, the active cooperation of Iraqis who were involved in that program," Kaye told reporters. Cause for celebration? Apparently not for some Democratic presidential candidates. "If we do not find that they were positioned in a way for imminent use, the credibility of the United States government abroad and the credibility of the United States government with its own people here in the United States will be significantly eroded," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla).
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"imminent use"
And its twin sister, "imminent threat" as in "there was not imminent threat to go to war!"
Get used to it...."imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use" "imminent use"
Democrats who continue to put partisan politics before national security may be headed for an irrelevance unseen in recent history. If Sen. Graham's remarks reflect the general consensus of that party, it is an irrelevance that will be richly deserved.hehe !!
"richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance" "richly deserved irrelevance"
Graham just keeps talking and his numbers keep getting smaller.
My standard post to these threads...
Here's the exact quote regarding the "imminent" threat:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?"
An internet search reveals that there were news articles claiming Bush was saying the Iraqi threat was imminent. For example, one article referred to the State of the Union speech, while another referred to the October 7th address, but Bush never used the term in the October 7th address. The same is true for Bush’s speech last year to the United Nations, his speech/press conference of March 6th, and his speech as the war was beginning. Either Bush didn’t use the word “imminent,” or he used it to argue that we should not wait until the threat is imminent...he never, ever said the threat was imminent. Proof of media bias.
Poor Bob...he just keeps stepping in it...
Washington - Sep 2002 - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to misstate the degree of success it achieved on dismantling Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear-bomb program during nuclear inspections in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, according to an analysis by the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a non-proliferation research and advocacy center.Couple that with the statement from Bush's #2 National Security guy:“IAEA’s recent claims that they have ‘neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapon program’ and ‘destroyed all their key buildings and equipment’ related to weaponization are patently false, and the Agency’s own inspection reports prove it,” said Steven Dolley, NCI research director.
On September 26, IAEA challenged a statement by President Bush that the IAEA had concluded Iraq was six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons in 1998. An IAEA spokesman stated that no such IAEA report existed.[1] The Agency also took issue with the conclusion of a report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), released earlier this month. The IISS report posited that if Iraq “were to obtain fissile material from abroad --- steal it or buy it in some way --- we certainly believe [Saddam] has the ability to put together a nuclear weapon very quickly, in a matter of months.”[2]
In response, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky declared "I don’t know where they [IISS] have determined that Iraq has retained this much weaponization capability because when we left in December ’98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment."[3] Additionally, on September 30 IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming claimed that, prior to the inspectors’ withdrawal in late 1998, IAEA had “uncovered Iraq’s secret nuclear program, and we dismantled it. We were successful last time. If we get unfettered access, we will be successful again.”[4]
“For IAEA to claim that they ‘neutralized’ Saddam’s nuclear weaponization capability is dangerously inaccurate, and muddies the waters of the Iraq debate,” said Dolley. “Since 1997, the Agency has operated under the assumption that Iraq could successfully fabricate a working nuclear bomb if they managed to acquire a sufficient amount of fissile material. The Agency’s latest statement correctly points out that no one outside Iraq knows the current status of Iraq’s nuclear-bomb program, in large part because there have been no inspections in nearly four years. But for IAEA to suggest that it completely eliminated Iraq’s weaponization capability prior to 1998 is irresponsible in the extreme. The Agency should recant this statement.” Several Iraqi nuclear weapons facilities and much equipment were indeed dismantled or destroyed by U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1998. However, substantial and significant issues about Iraq’s ability to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program remained unresolved when the inspectors left the country.
Dolley, citing IAEA’s own inspection reports as documentation, said: “Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance.”[5] Moreover, IAEA has previously conceded that Iraq’s weaponization R&D---small-scale technical research devoted to the design of a nuclear bomb’s components---is not readily detected by means of inspections. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei stated in 1998 that “no matter how comprehensive the inspection, any country-wide verification process, in Iraq or anywhere else, has a degree of uncertainty that aims to verify the absence of readily concealable objects such as small amounts of nuclear material or weapons components.”[6]
The IAEA’s own guidelines for the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium gives the conversion time for transforming these materials into weapons components as on the order of seven to ten days or one to three weeks, depending on the form the materials are in (metal, oxide or nitrate) when the materials are acquired by means of diversion or theft.[7] Thus, Iraq could be capable of producing a nuclear weapon in less than a month with sufficient diverted or stolen fissile material if it has managed to fabricate and conceal all of the non-nuclear components of a weapon.
IAEA’s recent statement that the Agency had “neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapons program” suggests that by 1998, IAEA had effectively eliminated Iraq’s ability to weaponize---that is, to manufacture and assemble the components needed for a working nuclear bomb, lacking only fissile material (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) to fuel it. This is simply not the case, and IAEA’s own previous findings directly contradict this claim. IAEA’s plans for ongoing monitoring in Iraq (discontinued in December 1998 when the inspectors left the country and were not allowed to return) were, as Director-General ElBaradei noted in June 1998, “predicated on the assumption that Iraq has the technical ability to design and construct a nuclear weapon and takes into account the large intellectual resource in Iraq in the corps of scientists and engineers who worked in Iraq's clandestine nuclear program.”[8] The Agency’s own October 1997 review of its inspections in Iraq concluded that "Iraqi programme documentation records substantial progress in many important areas of nuclear weapon development, making it prudent to assume that Iraq has developed the capability to design and fabricate a basic fission weapon, based on implosion technology and fueled by highly enriched uranium."[9]
An unsigned CIA memo on Oct. 5 advised that "the CIA had reservations about the British reporting" on Iraq's alleged attempts in Niger, Hadley said. A second memo, sent on Oct. 6, elaborated on the CIA's doubts, describing "some weakness in the evidence," such as the fact that Iraq already had a large stock of uranium and probably wouldn't need more, Hadley said.He had the uranium and the means to enrich it. So much for the "imminent use" claim...
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