45 minutes, yes or no?

[Drooper]

This is an interesting report:

Revealed: the Iraqi colonel who told MI6 that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes

An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.

Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year.

This "45 minute" claim is one of the more contentious pieces of information for which Tony Blair has come under fire.

It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

One thing that is obviously missing from the article is:

if these wepons were ditributed to the front line Iraqi forces, why haven't they been recovered and revealed as evidence of WMD?

 

[epepke]

One thing that is obviously missing from the article is:

if these wepons were ditributed to the front line Iraqi forces, why haven't they been recovered and revealed as evidence of WMD?

The most obvious possibility is that the Iraqi colonel was lying.

However, the usual accusation is that Blair, Cheney, etc. just made up the WMD stuff out of whole cloth.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Re: Re: 45 minutes, yes or no?

The most obvious possibility is that the Iraqi colonel was lying.

However, the usual accusation is that Blair, Cheney, etc. just made up the WMD stuff out of whole cloth.

Umm... maybe they should have corrobarated this before sending our lads of to get killed and maimed.

 

[Drooper]

Re: Re: 45 minutes, yes or no?

The most obvious possibility is that the Iraqi colonel was lying.

However, the usual accusation is that Blair, Cheney, etc. just made up the WMD stuff out of whole cloth.

Well, yes,that is obvious so I didn't bother saying so

And yes the usual accusation is that Blair etc. made it all up, hence the report is interesting.


What I did say was that it would be interesting to see where this might go; fishing for some more information.

 

[The Don]

The issue was, as I recall, that Blair (or Campbell or whoever) had insisted that the 45 minute claim was inserted into the dossier or at least was given more prominence within the dossier.

It was alleged that the security services were uncomfortable with doing this because the claim was from a single uncorroborated source.

 

[Drooper]

There were in fact claims that the "45 minutes" phrase was made up by Downing Street spin doctors.

 

[WildCat]

It could be that rebellious factions within the Iraqi military passed this story on to foreign intelligence agents to get them to do what they couldn't, overthrow Saddam.

 

[Graham]

What I don't understand is this:

Apparently these weapons were distributed to the various units and the unit commanders decided not to use them (independently or collectively?).

Their reasons for doing this?

The only reason that these weapons were not used, said Col al-Dabbagh, was because the bulk of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam.

So having disobeyed orders and not used the weapons, what did they do with them?

Apparently they (independently or collectively again?) took them off into the desert and hid them so that the US could not find them.

Why?

It doesn't seem likely that it was a co-odinated conspiracy against Saddam and that't not the impression I got from the article.

That means that however-many WMD-equipped units hid away their WMD in various parts of the country, in great haste (since the Americans were rolling across the country at the time) and yet not one of those hastily chosen stashes has been discovered and not one of those unit commanders and/or ordainary Iraqi soldiers that were involved in trasport and burial or whatever of the weapons has chosen to turn them over for the rewards offered by the US?

That doesn't seem likely to me.

Graham

 

[Drooper]

It could be that rebellious factions within the Iraqi military passed this story on to foreign intelligence agents to get them to do what they couldn't, overthrow Saddam.

This is one of the more interesting feasible conclusions.

Extrapolating this would be fascinating:


It was the Iraqis themselves who engineered the overthrow and Bush and Blair were hoodwinked into doing it for them.

 

[fishbob]

It was the Iraqis themselves who engineered the overthrow and Bush and Blair were hoodwinked into doing it for them.

This possibility was hinted at in a PFS Frontline show a couple of months ago. There was a little bit of discussion of the show here (can't find it right now).