Posted on 07/09/2004 9:55:49 AM PDT by usmc1775
The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.
Intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, the bipartisan report concluded. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.
Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.
"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.
"This was a global intelligence failure."
Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons program. Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons, and only small amounts of chemical weapons have been found.
Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
If there was, it WOULD have been in the mainstream media.
========= RUSSIAN MISSILES FOUND IN IRAQ =========
Russian-made R-60, NATO AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles were found..
The Russian-made missiles are >6 feet long. Each carries 3.5 pounds of uranium.
wrapped around a high explosive warhead (13.2-pound) making a possible "dirty bomb".
Photographs made available by the Polish Army on July 2, 2004
which shows artillery shells found by Polish troops
in Iraq on June 16, 2004. Artillery shells found by Polish troops in Iraq
definitely 7/2/4contained the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin, the Polish army said
on Friday.
Partial list - Also found in Iraq:
* A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service
that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
* A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials
working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
* Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home,
one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
* New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF),
and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
* Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in
resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
* A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission
that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
* Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles,
a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists
have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
* Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -
well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed
Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology
related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles,
and other prohibited military equipment.
Still missing based on the UNSCOM report to the UN Security Council in January 1999,
when the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had been unable to account for:
up to 360 tons of bulk chemical warfare agents, including 1.5 tons of VX nerve agent;
up to 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals, including approximately 300 tons which,
in the Iraqi chemical warfare program, were unique to the production of VX;
growth media procured for biological agent production (enough to produce
over three times the 8,500 litres of anthrax spores Iraq admitted to UN inspectors to having manufactured);
over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents;
20 al-Hussein missles with a range of 650 km, in violation
of UN Security Council Resolution 687 (Iraq had told UNSCOM that it filled these warheads with anthrax and botulinum);
2,850 tons of mustard gas, 210 tons of tabun, and 795 tons of sarin and cyclosarin;
development of the Al-Samoud short-range missle (which had the capability to fly beyond the 150 km allowed by UN resolutions)
=========== Documents linking Atta, Saddam, Nidal, bin Ladin ===========
Handwritten letter dated Feb. 19, 1998 linking bin Laden and Saddam Hussein
discussing arrival of a secret envoy sent by bin Laden to Iraq.
The signature beneath the letter is a codename, "MDA" - the Mukhabarat.
========= Chemical Warhead found in Kirkuk =============
Chemical warhead found at an Iraqi air base, marked with a green band,
the symbol for chemical weaponry. Trace amounts of a nerve agent were found
at two spots along the ~meter-long warhead. These amounts are consistent with
leakage from the chemically armed weapon. A 13-foot missile was found next to it.
========= Halabja =========
Dead children, previously playing in Halabja
Victims of Saddams' WMD in March 1988.
Huh? So all the news reports of finding sarin and mustard gas, etc. were untrue?
Somehow I doubt that.
"Yeah really. So, the handful of sarin/mustard shells found thusfar IN IRAQ don't exist??"
From the article; "Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons, AND ONLY SMALL AMOUNTS OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS have been found."
It's seems that no one here is buying that you are/were in the Corps. Most likely a dyke from DU.
Welcome to FR.
As far as I'm concerned, we found the WMD when we captured Saddam Hussein!
When were you in the Corps?...or are you still in? LOL
Semper Fi,
Kelly
PS check my tagline
So the real statement in all of this is that if you want to stay a brutal dictator, you had better keep your rising arrogance in check.
bump
We all know too, that the reason we were unprepared for the attack was the wall erected even higher than before by none other than Gore-lick.
I am ashamed of the Republican Party whose effort to 'get along' has succeeded in making the IRAQ WAR a MISTAKE and 911 PREVENTABLE. It is utterly sickening.
SO, somebody needs to take the Landrieu challenge--- don't ya think??
Personally, I don't even give a shit if Iraq had them or not. I think we needed a strategic foothold in the middle east TO HELP FIGHT TERRORISM, we figured Iraq would be easy enough to take over (be that as Saddam wasn't very well liked), and on top of that profitable.
I think America is missing the point.
Saddam needs a little truth serum in his morning tea
"Considering that he survived the 1st Gulf war, he probably thought he was untouchable."
Considering that he had the UN on his side profiting from his corrupt regime, he thought he was untouchable. He did not understand GWB.
"I have been on her like a chicken on a junebug."
Y'all keep up the good work, ya hear!
Moderator, do I smell ozone?
Great data.
Another data point - the 'no bio weapons' is also refuted
by last september finds of bio-toxins in saddam' bio-weapons programs (Kay report).
Saying there were no WMDs in Iraq is a lie. Instead, it should be saying 'we didnt find the chem and bio weapons stockpiles we feared might have been there. We found a lot of other stuff, some of which we didnt expect, and we found enough to prove there was a WMD proliferation threat that inspections did not find.'
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