Posted on 10/14/2014 8:07:35 PM PDT by ironman
The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West.
The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified. The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.
The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The forerunner of ISIS was establishing a lab to produce toxins in northern Iraq Some members of the group then as now were officials in Iraq’s intelligence services and had cells operating both in Baghdad and the north. Their lab was in the north near the border with Iran. Iraq was providing them with funds and other support while Iran was permitting them free passage between Iraq and Afghanistan before the invasion. Those associated with the lab and the group were involved in the assassination of Lawrence Foley a USAID official in Jordan, and also with a plot involving ricin cream that was intended to target mass transit in the UK and elsewhere, if I recall correctly a bobby was murdered in a terror raid on their safehouse in London. They were also directly linked with the Milan Italy terrorist cell which was recorded by the Italians prior to 9/11 talking to each other about the upcoming 9/11 attack, though the recordings evidently were not translated in time to be of use. And they were also directly linked with al Qaeda’s anthrax guy, I think he was out of Malaysia.
Obeidi was an Iraqi nuclear scientist who is known to have worked in Libya’s nuclear program and thus with the yellowcake from Niger ; it was his garden in Iraq where the prototype of an enrichment centrifuge was found buried after the invasion, along with quantities of plans, documents and research materials Iraq might find useful in the future.
“The forerunner of ISIS was establishing a lab to produce toxins in northern Iraq”
When was this supposed to have occurred and who exactly is the forerunner of ISIS?
A theory : At the time the discovery of WMD would have given the UN legal authority to maintain sanctions on Iraq even with Saddam deposed and otherwise interfere in Iraq’s governing affairs. The UN could not use the international agreements meddle without the presence of WMD. And at the time the UN was embroiled in the Iraq Oil for Food scandal and its inspection team was led by the Egyptian el Baradei, who is close to Iran’s regime. He is the arms inspector who later joined with the Arab spring revolt along with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow Mubarak. Anyway, this UN deal was big news at the time as the UN was desperately trying to get a role in the formation of the interim government, etc, and was trying everythin to get a foot in the door.
” this is a real treasure-trove of information about the Saddam/Bin Ladin connections”
? Where do you find even a single bit of hard evidence linking Saddam to bin Laden? I waded through that 2005 Iraq Survey Group report that always gets waved about but which no one ever reads. There is nothing in that report linking Saddam to bin Laden or al Qaeda.
Saddam’s terrorism consisted of killing Iraqis at home and abroad whom he saw as a threat to his regime. Saddam was a secularist who regarded Islamic radicals with suspicion. Saddam had Christians in prominent positions in his own government which ought to be your first clue that Islam was of little interest to him.
If Saddam had just received the tubing then he didn’t have a uranium processing facility up and running and producing enriched uranium. Ergo any yellowcake that he had was still yellowcake.
And have you ever seen a picture of this tubing or a stockpile of yellowcake? I’ve never seen such a picture. Evidently cameras must be hard to find in Iraq.
I didn’t say it wasn’t yellowcake. I said Saddam had procured tubing. He was preparing for the day sanctions would be lifted... which was apparently coming soon since so many nations were already flagrantly violating sanctions and the pressure to lift them for “humanitarian reasons” was enormous. In the meanwhile through the Qadeer Khan Network at least 7 rogue states could together pursue their goals as a sort of team, compartmentalized, with no state needing to have a complete program.
The forerunner of ISIS was Zarqawi’s group al Tawhid al Jihad [also known as al Tauhid and IIRC, Bayat al Imam] and Mullah Krekar’s group Ansar al Islam. Zarqawi had a training camp in Afghanistan adjacent to OBL’s and his group operated frequently in Jordan as well as Germany and was known for the Millennium plot to bomb a Jordanian hotel frequented by Americans. Krekar’s group operated in northern Iraq and Syria, had some Baathists in its ranks, and had cells in Europe, Krekar himself perched safely in Oslo. Ansar’s group took in Zarqawi’s and Zarqawi eventually ran the merged group, which drew heavily from Europe for recruits which they brought into Iraq via Syria. They adopted at various times other names - al Qaeda in Iraq, Jund al Sham, and Islamic State, etc, before getting to ISIS. After Saddam Hussein was executed Zarqawi finally swore the oath to bin Laden but Zarqawi was killed along the way and others took the lead. They have links both to Hizbollah and alQaeda in spite of the religious differences.
So the chemical weapons that didn’t exist, the ones that “Bush lied” about did exist- nice. Thanks for telling us now “journalist” geniuses.
I don’t think anyone thought he had the enrichment centrifuges up and running as we could detect that the same way we detected Iran doing it. The contention at the time of the runup to war was that Iraq was still trying to procure centrifuge components, and perfect a centrifuge design, hence the shipments of high tolerance tubing- the tolerances on the inside being exceedingly high. The press dutifully repeated Iraq’s claim that the tubing was just for Palestinian-style rockets and indeed I believe Iraq showed them some rockets made from the stuff but the regime had gradually upped the internal tolerance requirements over different orders to the point that the expense of premium materials, corrosive resistance and milling didn’t make sense for cheap explosive rockets. The material was not the ideal choice for the job as centrifuge parts but Iraq couldn’t get its hands on the good stuff and was making do.
The admin didn’t claim Iraq had actually procured yellowcake- that was a straw man in the Wilson case. The assertion was that Iraq had sent a delegation to an unspecified African country to inquire about future purchases of yellowcake. The country in question has never been revealed but thanks to Joe Wilson the assumption was that it was Niger, though yellowcake could also be obtained from defunct mines in Congo and perhaps even from other African states... Mali, South Africa and Libya come to mind, and the Tinner family arrested in Switzerland for proliferating was tied in with South African shady figures.
In any case an official in Niger told Wilson that an Iraqi businessman had made a proposal to them which they interpreted as an inquiry about buying yellowcake.
Iraq admitted there was an Iraqi delegation to Niger in 1999 but claimed it was trying to make a trade deal for other things. Niger’s other exports as I recall were chickpeas and goat meat, or some such. It just so happened that Iraq’s admitted chickpea negotiator had more of a history for making rants on nuclear matters and the need for nuclear capability than for any expertise on agribusiness.
If you had read Saddam Hussein’s speeches in the years since 1998 posted on what was then the regime website Uruk.net you would have a hard time claiming he wasn’t interested in radical islam. They were loaded with Qurannic references and calls for jihad.
He was definitely trying to appeal to islamists and rally them to Iraq’s cause. He even made a point of having a Quran written in what he claimed piously, was his own blood.
He also began building a massive mosque- its minarets designed to look like scud missiles.
In the latter years of his regime he instituted sharia law as well, and at this time the prostitutes of Baghdad found themselves in deep trouble. Not yet Taliban style but definitely headed that way. Like any politician he could read the tea leaves and figure out which way the wind blows and how to use it. So his state run newspapers - headed by one of his sons began praising al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Yes, he had nominal Christians among his officials, at least one Tarik Aziz, the guy he used to bribe western officials and who has some VERY interesting nonchristian connections of his own.
Yes, recall how he was also a great enemy of Iran, fought a war with them even over control of a waterway. YEt to which country did Saddam send his air force when we struck in the Gulf War? And was it not France and Iraq which had harbored the Ayatollah Khomeini before the overthrow of the Shah?
Saddam was a very flexible boy.
At the time of our invastion he was hosting the head of ANO, Abu Nidal, known for his spate of hijackings. He’d hosted him since Qadaffi kicked him out of Libya years before. But Abu Nidal couldn’t talk to us after 9/11 since the Iraqis said he committed suicide ... by shooting himself in the head five times. And to which country fled the head of the terrorist ring which bombed the World Trade Center in 1993? Which country provided that terrorist with a home and a pension? The 1993 WTC bombing terrorist cellsw spiritual leader sits in our prison, while al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri’s brother in Egypt calls for us to release him to the muslim brotherhood.
And to what country fled an Iraqi caught in Jordan after he had he met with two of the future 9/11 hijackers in Malaysia- a meeting where the bombing of the USS Cole was planned? When detained by Jordan the leftists of the world including Human Rights Watch all howled at Jordan for keeping the man until Jordan finally released him. He fled to Iraq. But before he fled in his possession was found the phone numbers of the perps of several terrorist plots and to the Jersey cell.
In fact the super dooper antiwar side’s deep cover spy Valerie Plame was supposedly involved in one of the tubing shipment interdictions in Jordan. Of course that could be complete nonsense. But no one disputes Iraq was procuring tubing, not even Iraq. The dispute was between the one side which accepted Iraq’s explanation that it was for rockets [in a country already full of such conventional stuff] and the side which noted that using those tubes for common rockets was a bit like using gold foil for toilet paper. It’s dual use but some uses are more plausible than others. Either way as I recall this was still a violation of the sanctions, and I think a German company caught hell for it, but it was not as obvious as trying to order maraging steel.
so you ignored everything I just posted....
There were also a number of major Al Quada-associated terrorists who were harbored/healed in Iraq after being wounded in Afghanistan.
After air strikes under Clinton destroyed the Russian-made air defenses, he began reaching out to a variety of terrorist entities in a big way - and as I recall, openly sent payments to families of suicide bombers striking Israel.
If I posted 25 links to articles that I claimed would support my position how long would it take for you to wade through them to see if they really had anything valid in them? It would be a nice way for me to “prove” that I was right simply by flooding you with alleged proof.
Pick a couple that you think make your case instead of implying that sheer quantity means anything.
If Iraq had been processing uranium then there wouldn’t be any dispute about what the tubing was for. We would have discovered the lab.
In the run-up to Gulf War II were we were led to believe that Saddam was building nuclear weapons. The truth is that at best Saddam was buying parts to eventually build a lab.
Read the 2005 Iraq Study Group report for yourself. It repeatedly states that Saddam was not motivated by Islam. The Iraq Study Group was created by the Bush administration and they weren’t covering for Saddam.
Saddam considered himself to be the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar and he was spending a fortune on rebuilding Babylon. The bricks in the reconstructed buildings are inscribed to both Saddam and Nebuchadnezzar.
Saddam quoting the Koran in his speeches is as meaningless as Obama quoting the Bible. Both are designed to win the support of their audience. Saddam would use any group that he thought would advance his own interests. But his interests were not the advancement of Islamic fundamentalism.
Yes, I agree that the will.
Thanks for the additional comments. I agree with them.
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