Posted on 09/24/2003 12:11:02 PM PDT by stupidUN
This I just found on BBC. We all know they can't be trusted but it is worth reading. I know they are wrong, besides if not there then Syria.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq by the group looking for them, according to a Bush administration source who has spoken to the BBC. This will be the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group's interim report, the source told the presenter of BBC television's Daily Politics show, Andrew Neil.
Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".
Mr Neil said the draft report - which the source said is due to be published next month - concludes it is highly unlikely that weapons of mass destruction were shipped out of the country to places like Syria before the US-led war on Iraq.
The bottom line is that the team has found no weapons of mass destruction
Andrew Neil Daily Politics
Analysis: High stakes for Blair
It will also claim Saddam Hussein mounted a huge programme to deceive and hinder the work of UN weapons inspectors, he said.
Mr Neil said, according to the source, the report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material".
They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.
But, Mr Neil added, the report would publish computer programmes, files, pictures and paperwork which it says shows that Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to develop a weapons of mass destruction programme.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told the Reuters news agency he expected the report would "reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out".
Reuters also reported a senior US official saying the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was expected to report finding "documentary evidence" that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programmes.
"Whether they will find or disclose anything on the weapons themselves, I doubt," said the official.
'Savage blow'
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "This is speculation on an as yet unpublished report.
"I await the report eagerly from Mr Kay (head of the survey group), as does the international community."
Mr Straw argued the whole international community had agreed Iraq's weapons programmes had posed - the issue had been what to do about it.
Mr Neil said the report is being finalised and could undergo changes People did not need the ISG report for evidence of that threat, he said. It was already shown in volumes of reports from UN inspectors.
A Number 10 spokesman said "we don't have this text", but asked if the prime minister had seem the report, remarked: "We are not going into details of process."
Mr Neil, a former editor of the Sunday Times, stressed the Daily Politics had not seen the draft report, and was reporting what a single source had said its findings were likely to be.
He said the report was still to be finalised and could undergo some changes, but the source had been told the content of some key passages which are not expected to be substantively altered.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said if these details of the report were true, it would be a "savage blow" to the prime minister.
'Fake facilities'
The inspectors have uncovered no evidence that any weapons were actually built in the immediate years before the war, the leak of the report suggests.
It is alleged that Saddam's programme of deception involved fake facilities and infrastructure to deceive and hinder the work of UN weapons inspectors.
The group may well conclude that Iraq had an elaborate and secret effort to maintain elements of its weapons programmes - in 'suspended animation' if you like
Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent
Read his full analysis on search
Documents have been uncovered showing weapons facilities were concealed as commercial buildings, the report is likely to say.
The Iraq Survey Group took over the job of finding WMD from the US military in June.
The survey group, led by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector and now a special adviser to the CIA, is a largely US operation, although it includes some British and Australian staff.
Its 1,400 personnel are made up of scientists, military and intelligence experts and its work is shrouded in secrecy.
Its focus is intelligence, using documents and interviews with Iraqi scientists to build up a picture of the secret world of Iraq's weapons programmes.
The survey group has been under a good deal of pressure to prove the Bush administration's case that Iraq's weapons posed a significant threat.
Gary Samor, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, recently told the BBC that UN inspection teams should have been sent back into Iraq as there would be much scepticism about the ISG's findings.
Are you sure you weren't just channeling Dr. Kelly?
Our troops will leave when their job is done.
It could well be true that there were no missiles armed with WMDs. It could be true that there were no weapons in existence that were fully ready to arm those missiles.
In that case, the monumental task for intelligent people will be to win the public opinion argument that proof of weapons programs in advanced stages is a smoking gun.
I fear that task will be as successfully accomplished as convincing public opinion the equal truth that it was Gore, not Bush, who involved the courts in the 2000 election.
Yeah, like that has any credibility.
U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located....they are in the Bekaa Valley just as Debka and Israeili intelligence said months ago.Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.
Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in tomorrow's new weekly edition.
U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebaon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time. (CIA DUH ALERT)
"a Bush administration source who looked very much like Tom Daschel, has spoken to the BBC...." :)
If that's the case, why would they have be buried? Saddam is known for his deception and dual use chemicals would fit his modus operandi.
Of course, if they did that, they wouldn't have gazillions of spun reports stretching back for weeks and weeks to overwhelm the public opinion with masses of unnamed unsupported reports or to "support" their cause when the naysayers come out looking like the morons they are.
They're morons because even that equipment found under the rose garden was sufficient cause for war- it violated the agreements that put the Gulf War on hold. Not to mention that Blix did find delivery systems in the form of rockets designed to disperse small particles. I reckon the official UN excuse for the dispersal design was that it was to distribute baby powder to sweaty Iraqi troops. Or perhaps dried baby formula to the needy. Yet delivery systems is what they are.
Blix never did find all those rockets he said Iraq was making with the high tolerance, corrosion resistant aluminum tubes we said were for more likely for centrifuges. You would think the "rockets" or at least unused tubes would have turned up by now, given the number Iraq purchased. Yet they have not. So what is the explanation for their absence?
Sometimes you have to wonder if our way-too-secure western societies , by enabling liberals to breed and live to ripe old ages, have unwittingly hindered natural selection and allowed humanity to de-evolve.
I used to think that come about May of 2004 we were going to be hit with a succession of developments that would be very much in Bush's favor. Say, first a dead Bin Laden. Then maybe, a dead Saddam. Next, maybe, WMD being found. Followed up with direct linking of Iraq to most of these terrorist groups. I thought by then oil would be flowing like cheap wine and good times would be on the horizon. All the while the democrats would be exposed for the traitorous lunatics that they are.
I highly doubt we will see any of this now.
No, this is just what happened. The chemicals were most likely insecticides which are actually nerve agents for bugs. My question was why would they bury insecticides? They were not found in any kind of disposal site but hidden in a yard. These chemicals, with some minor tweaking could be used against humans, thus the possibility of their being created with a dual use in mind. Current WMD thought is that alot of Saddam's arsenal was dual use and this incident seems to support that thought.
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