Posted on 03/07/2003 9:31:03 PM PST by Dirk McQuickly
A report declassified by the UN yesterday contained the revelation that inspectors have recently discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone with a wingspan of 7.45m, the TIMES OF LONDON is reporting Saturday.
US officials are outraged that Hans Blix did not inform the Security Council about the remotely piloted vehicle in his oral presentation to Foreign Ministers and tried to bury it in a 173-page single-spaced report distributed later in the day.
You can see it in his face when he approaches the cameras. Big softball questions make him smile. A few factually based accusations of complicity will wipe that smile off of his face.
The stakes are high, aren't they. Irag is going to be looked back on as a watershed of some sort. It's such a clear test case to see who's right and who's wrong. Woe is the side that's wrong.
Posted on 03/08/2003 1:12 AM CST by mr. mojo risin
Iraqi drone 'could drop chemicals on troops' From James Bone in New York
A REPORT declassified by the United Nations yesterday contained a hidden bombshell with the revelation that inspectors have recently discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone with a wingspan of 7.45m, suggesting an illegal range that could threaten Iraq’s neighbours with chemical and biological weapons. US officials were outraged that Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, did not inform the Security Council about the drone, or remotely piloted vehicle, in his oral presentation to Foreign Ministers and tried to bury it in a 173-page single-spaced report distributed later in the day. The omission raised serious questions about Dr Blix’s objectivity.
“Recent inspections have also revealed the existence of a drone with a wingspan of 7.45m that has not been declared by Iraq,” the report said. “Officials at the inspection site stated that the drone had been test-flown. Further investigation is required to establish the actual specifications and capabilities of these RPV drones . . . (they) are restricted by the same UN rules as missiles, which limit their range to 150km (92.6 miles).
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, told the Security Council in February that Washington had evidence that Iraq had test-flown a drone in a race-track pattern for 500km non-stop.
In another section of the declassified report, the inspectors give warning that Iraq still has spraying devices and drop tanks that could be used in dispersing chemical and biological agents from aircraft. “A large number of drop tanks of various types, both imported and locally manufactured, are available and could be modified,” it says.
The paper, obtained by The Times, details the possible chemical and biological arsenal that British and US Forces could face in an invasion of Iraq. The paper suggests that Iraq has huge stockpiles of anthrax, may be developing long-range missiles and could possess chemical and biological R400 aerial bombs and Scud missiles, and even smallpox.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told his fellow Security Council Foreign Ministers that the document was a“chilling read”.
General Powell resorted to reading passages from the paper out loud in the Council chamber. He pointed out that it chronicled nearly 30 times when Iraq had failed to provide credible evidence to substantiate its claims, and 17 instances when inspectors uncovered evidence that contradicted those claims. But his draft copy, dating from a meeting of the inspectors’ advisory board last week, did not contain the crucial passage about the new drone.
The decision by Dr Blix to declassify the internal report marks the first time the UN has made public its suspicions about Iraq’s banned weapons programmes, rather than what it has been able to actually confirm. “Unmovic has credible information that the total quantity of biological warfare agent in bombs, warheads and in bulk at the time of the Gulf War was 7,000 litres more than declared by Iraq. This additional agent was most likely all anthrax,” it says.
The report says there is “credible information” indicating that 21,000 litres of biological warfare agent, including some 10,000 litres of anthrax, was stored in bulk at locations around the country during the war and was never destroyed.
The paper, a collection of 29 “clusters” of questions for Iraq, offers some reassurance about Iraq’s missing botulinum toxin, which Unmovic believed is “unlikely to retain much, if any, of its potency” if it has been stockpiled since 1991.
This is what I saw early, early this morning.
Exactly. Why is anybody surprized?
"But the fact remains that Saddam Hussein could not have asked for a more pliable character than Hans Blix. And in a very real sense, Saddam did choose him.
First, Mr. Blix's softness on Iraq is not at all an inevitable consequence of the fact that he is a Swede, as am I. His passport does not create illusions about Saddam Hussein; his character does. Rolf Ekeus is also a Swedish diplomat. But when he was in charge of the inspectors he understood the appalling brutality and systematic lying of Saddam's regime.
Indeed, in 1999, Mr. Ekéus made the shortlist for Mr. Blix's current position but was vetoed by Russia, then France. As the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, writes in his book, "Saddam Defiant," the Russians were taking marching orders directly from Baghdad. In Mr. Butler's book, Ambassador Sergei Lavrov is quoted as saying that Russia "blocked the Ekéus nomination because Iraq did not want him!" He goes on to say that all appointments were to be treated the same way -- approval from Iraq was mandatory. When Hans Blix's candidacy was discussed, no veto arrived from Baghdad.
With the go ahead from Saddam, Russia and France threw their support behind Mr. Blix and he was soon approved by the Security Council. The Clinton administration seems to have been too paralyzed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal to put up a fight. Thus, you could say that Hans Blix was handpicked by the very regime he was to inspect and disarm."
Nah, they did it to themselves; he just happened to have pushed them where they didn't want to go!
Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers
Received the golden earnest of our death;
Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt
And his whole kingdom into desolation
But, actually it's better this way. Had it been revealed, the French would have said that it proves inspections are working.
Now, it's clear that inspectors are enabling. That's an important difference.
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