Free Republic

TEHRAN, Iran — U.N. inspectors entered a once-secret uranium enrichment facility with bunker-like construction and heavy military protection that raised Western suspicions about the extent and intent of Iran's nuclear program. The visit Sunday by the four-member International Atomic Energy Agency team, reported by state media, was the first independent look inside the planned nuclear fuel lab, a former ammunition dump burrowed into the treeless hills south of Tehran and only publicly disclosed last month. The inspectors are expected to study plant blueprints, interview workers and take soil samples before wrapping up the three-day mission. No results from the inspection...

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. inspectors have found traces of plutonium, of possible use in atom bombs, at an Iranian nuclear waste site as Tehran pursues a nuclear program despite the risk of sanctions, an IAEA report said on Tuesday.

The United Nations mission currently in Lebanon to verify the departure of Syrian troops and intelligence forces from the country has been coordinating its travel in a manner that offers military installations advanced notice of the team's arrival, allowing any remaining Syrian intelligence agents to hide or flee, sources on the ground with the mission told WorldNetDaily. Although Syria claimed it removed its intelligence forces from Lebanon with last week's reported withdrawal of troops, former Lebanese prime minister Michel Aoun and several Lebanese opposition leaders told WND this week Damascus continues to secretly maintain intelligence agents in the country. ''I...

UN inspector 'took £60,000 Iraq bribes' Iraqi oil officials have accused a United Nations inspector of taking almost £60,000 in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime as his henchmen and foreign business partners siphoned millions from the UN's oil-for-food programme, it was reported yesterday. An inquiry by officials in the State Oil Marketing Organisation - a body which, under Saddam, was a key player in schemes that allegedly diverted billions in oil revenues from the UN-run programme - accused an inspector contracted through the Dutch company Saybolt of falsifying documents in return for bribes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saybolt was...

The report offered new details about the al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship and the commission also backtracked somewhat from an earlier staff report, which found no evidence of a "collaborative relationship." In the final report, the phrase was modified to say, "no collaborative operational relationship." Adding the word "operational" was an important shift. The panel found no proof that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's organization worked together to attack their common enemy, the United States. But the commission did find that the two had frequent contacts and a fairly well-developed relationship. There were Iraq-al-Qaeda ties. Bush looked at the evidence of links...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons experts have found 20 engines used in banned Iraqi missiles in a Jordan scrapyard along with other equipment that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, an official said Wednesday. The discoveries were revealed to the U.N. Security Council by acting chief U.N. inspector Demetrius Perricos during in a closed-door briefing. The text was obtained by The Associated Press. The U.N. team was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check...

I heard this on Fox News - HIGH LEVELS of RADIATION detected (announcer said they were off the scale!) in huge underground office complex (described as a complete underground city) somewhere south of Baghdad; Described as a Nuclear City (found by US Marines). This could very well be the smoke leading to the smoking gun of Iraq's Nuclear WMD program.

<p>The Bush administration, eager to prove that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, is engaged in a heated internal debate over whether to seek a return of the United Nations weapons inspection team to help expose the regime's suspected arsenal of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, according to government and UN officials.</p>

Washington's false claims> San Jose, Calif. -- As U.N. weapons inspectors flee Iraq, some are angry at the Bush administration for what they contend was a concerted effort to cut short their work, bad-mouth their efforts and make false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Some inspectors are "scandalized" at the way they say President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, have "politicized" the inspection process, according to a U.N. official close to the inspectors. None of the nuclear-related intelligence trumpeted by the administration has held up under scrutiny, inspectors say. From suspect aluminum tubes...

Blix lists 12 disarmament tasks left for Iraq UNITED NATIONS - Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix produced a "to do" list of 12 disarmament tasks Iraq should fulfill as he began to withdraw his inspection ahead of a likely war. Blix's "key remaining disarmament tasks" are required under a 1999 resolution that calls for a work programme Iraq is to undertake. The 83-page report was distributed to UN Security Council members today and obtained by Reuters. Blix asks for explanations from Iraq in the following areas: Scud missiles and associated biological and chemical warheads; SA-2 missile technology; research and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq March 13 — A U.N. weapons inspector was killed and another was injured Thursday in a car crash in Iraq, officials said.A car carrying the two inspectors crashed head-on into a truck on a highway south of Baghdad, according to a statement from Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, the liaison with the inspectors.The inspectors whose nationalities were not given were returning to Baghdad after inspecting the al-Noamaniya tomato canning factory, 30 miles south of Baghdad, it said.One inspector died an hour after being airlifted to a military hospital in Baghdad. The other was taken to a hospital in an...

Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged By Joby WarrickWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, March 8, 2003; Page A01 A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions. ..... Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been...

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but I saw a piece of video today that showed an Iraqi man jumping into the vehicle of the UN inspectors. This poor man apparently had a book that he wanted the world to see. This reportedly documented torture and abuse that he had witnessed or suffered personally.The inspectors sat on their collective asses and allowed the Iraqi "police" to drag him out of the vehicle and off to whatever terrible fate awaited him.I couldn't help but wonder if a similar thing happened on some street in Germany many years ago. A...

Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has opened a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement with a scathing attack on the West, calling the U.S.-led war on terrorism a pretext for an attempt to dominate the world. Mr. Mahathir told leaders and ministers from 114 non-aligned nations gathered in Kuala Lumpur today that "no single nation should be allowed to police the world." The Malaysian leader says war is a "primitive" way of settling disputes between nations and should be outlawed, adding that the United Nations should be the arbiter of all international disputes and take the lead in disarming the entire...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 9 -- The top U.N. arms experts said tonight that they were unable to reach agreement with Saddam Hussein's government on several key issues they had traveled here to resolve in a bid to build support for continuing weapons inspections. The two chief U.N. inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, failed to achieve three top goals during two days of meetings with senior Iraqi officials: the disclosure of significant new evidence about Iraq's past weapons programs, safety guarantees from Iraq for reconnaissance aircraft to aid in inspections; and a high-level declaration criminalizing the production of nuclear, chemical...

Freepers, Everyone was all a twitter about Colin Powell’s “Stevenson Moment” yesterday however; are we forgetting the significant possibility of experiencing a “Fitzwater Moment” today? Back in the First Gulf War, only 28 hours elapsed between the violation of UN sanctions and the missiles flew over Baghdad. On January 16, Marlin Fitzwater uttered his famous sentence on national TV, “The liberation of Kuwait has begun”, and walked away from the cameras. With every tick of the clock, Saddam has another second to relocate and protect his arsenal of death. With every tick of the clock, Saddam has another second to...

UNITED NATIONS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The top U.N. disarmament officials are expected to go to Baghdad at the end of the week despite a letter they wrote that appeared to put conditions on the trip, U.N. officials said. Iraq on Sunday rejected any conditions for the visit, part of last-ditch efforts to secure Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions as the United States prepares for possible war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction it says Baghdad has. The trip, expected on Saturday, falls a few days before another key report by the inspectors to the U.N. Security Council on February 14. It...

Inspectors in Baghdad to Press Saddam Top U.N. Arms Officials Arrive in Baghdad to Demand Better Cooperation From Saddam to Avoid WarBAGHDAD, Iraq Jan. 19 — The chief U.N. arms inspectors arrived in Baghdad on Sunday for urgent talks with Iraqi officials bearing a long list of questions about Iraq's weapons programs and a demand for better cooperation from Saddam Hussein's government. Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei left a U.N. base in Cyprus for what ElBaradei described as a last-ditch effort to persuade Iraq to "give us what we need" before their Jan. 27 report to the Security Council on...

Reaction on Iraq to be swift In 2 weeks, U.S. expected to declare that Hussein not cooperating 01/18/2003 From Wire Reports WASHINGTON - The Bush administration expects to declare in two weeks that Iraq is not cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted as saying Friday. Mr. Powell's remarks seemed to indicate that President Bush is rejecting appeals by European allies and chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to give the inspections more time before considering military action against Iraq. Dr. Blix is due to report to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27 about...

The same day the UN inspectors made their "no smoking gun" comment, ABC aired a sidebar about some Aluminum tubes that Bush had listed as evidence of Iraq doeing nuclear weapons development. The inspectors found the tubes with fins attached and said that the US was wrong. The tubes were for conventional weapons developemnt only. The problem I had with the whole story was the fact that the tubes in question were described as "high purity Aluminum" Pure aluminum has a very low tensile strength. Tensile strength should generally be as high as possible for a rocket body. High purity...