WMD's Found in Iraq

[Unabogie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300530.html

"U.S. military photos of the alleged lab showed a bare concrete-walled room scattered with stacks of plastic containers, coiled tubing, hoses and a stand holding a large metal device that looked like a distillery. Black rubber boots lay among the gear.

The operation was the biggest suspected chemical-weapon lab found so far in Iraq, Boylan said. A lab discovered last year in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah contained a how-to book for chemical weapons and an unspecified amount of chemicals.

The spokesman said the operation was new, not dating from before the U.S.-led invasion. The Bush administration used allegations that Hussein's government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found."


Yep, that's right. Bush said that Iraq was a haven for both Al Qaeda and WMD's, therefore we had to invade. But neither was there before the invasion.

Now, Iraq has a become a haven for both Al Qaeda and WMD's. Ironic, huh?

Discuss.

 

[demon]

More WMD finally found but not in Saddam`s underpants...

This is a "feel-good" story if ever I`ve heard one..
Personally, if I was there, I'd be insisting on Kevlar y-fronts.



quote:
British troops combating the heat and dust of Iraq and Afghanistan have a new weapon in their armoury, defence officials announced on Thursday -- germ-fighting underwear.
The antimicrobial underpants have been introduced by the ministry of defence as part of a new desert uniform for soldiers.
They are the first undergarments issued to British troops, who traditionally have had to supply their own.
Colonel Silas Suchanek, who led the team that procured the new equipment, said the unisex trunks are made from artificial fibres for comfort, with silver particles woven into the material to prevent sweating.
"It is coated to prevent bacterial infection and we have tried to arrange the seams so that they don't chafe," he said...

...Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram said the new equipment will make Britain's troops "among the best equipped in the world, ready to face environments ranging from desert conditions in Iraq [and] monsoon conditions in Brunei to winter in the Balkans."
"Support for the modern serviceman or -woman starts from the skin out," Ingram said.
The defence ministry said the new underwear is already being issued to troops. The rest of the equipment will be introduced by March
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/other_news/&articleid=248466

 

[peptoabysmal]

Here's a snippet from a memo that has yet to be proven to be a forgery (like some other memos...)

4. According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Iraqi intelligence established a highly secretive relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later with al Qaeda. The first meeting in 1992 between the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and al Qaeda was brokered by al-Turabi. Former IIS deputy director Faruq Hijazi and senior al Qaeda leader [Ayman al] Zawahiri were at the meeting--the first of several between 1992 and 1995 in Sudan. Additional meetings between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda were held in Pakistan. Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house. The report claimed that Saddam insisted the relationship with al Qaeda be kept secret. After 9-11, the source said Saddam made a personnel change in the IIS for fear the relationship would come under scrutiny from foreign probes.

Case Closed

Please tell me you haven't made yourself believe all of these supplies and equipment for WMD have been smuggled into Falluja after the war started.

 

[Crossbow]

Here's a snippet from a memo that has yet to be proven to be a forgery (like some other memos...)


Case Closed

Please tell me you haven't made yourself believe all of these supplies and equipment for WMD have been smuggled into Falluja after the war started.

OK, I will tell you.

It is because you are doing the exact same thing that got us into this stupid mess to begin with!

The pro-war types use single source, unconfirmed data that fits their preconceptions in order to justify the killing of tens of thousands and the spending of hundreds billions in order to justify the war they want. Simply look at the first sentence you quoted "According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer"
Therefore there is no attribution,
no double-checking, and
no corrobrating evidence.

Yet you, and the other pro-war people, look at this sort of data as a great and wonderful thing that pleases you endlessly.

If you want a serious and substantive study as to how these attitudes have caused the trouble we are in, then I suggest that you look at the WMD report at"

www.wmd.gov

 

[Cain]

OK, I will tell you.

It is because you are doing the exact same thing that got us into this stupid mess to begin with!

The pro-war types use single source, unconfirmed data that fits their preconceptions in order to justify the killing of tens of thousands and the spending of hundreds billions in order to justify the war they want. Simply look at the first sentence you quoted "According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer"
Therefore there is no attribution,
no double-checking, and
no corrobrating evidence.

Yet you, and the other pro-war people, look at this sort of data as a great and wonderful thing that pleases you endlessly.

If you want a serious and substantive study as to how these attitudes have caused the trouble we are in, then I suggest that you look at the WMD report at"

www.wmd.gov

Psssht. Your current location is West Virginia. QED.

_The Weekly Standard_ has an excellent track record on both the war and the run up to the war. You may now resume celebrating the 9/11 attacks, you terrorist-enabler.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Please tell me you haven't made yourself believe all of these supplies and equipment for WMD have been smuggled into Falluja after the war started.

Well, that's what the news story and this "military spokesman" Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan are saying. Do we have any reason to suppose that Boylan is lying?

It is certainly true that the "foreign fighters" only arrived after the invasion, so it's only reasonable to suppose that the same is true of their supplies and equipment.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Well, that's what the news story and this "military spokesman" Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan are saying. Do we have any reason to suppose that Boylan is lying?

It is certainly true that the "foreign fighters" only arrived after the invasion, so it's only reasonable to suppose that the same is true of their supplies and equipment.

First of all I wasn't explicit enough in my original question so here it is re-stated:

Please tell me you haven't made yourself believe all of these supplies and equipment for WMD have been smuggled into Falluja from outside of Iraq after the war started.

I believe that the story is saying that the lab itself was built after the war started. That I can believe. Sadam has had a long and documented history of aquiring materials for WMD, producing WMD and using them against the Iranians and Kurds.

First of all, why smuggle it in across the border when there are tons of supplies that haven't been secured? Second, I think the story is a bit misleading in the way it is written. That is why I ask the question.

Yes, dirtbag terrorists crossed the border to join Jihad against the US, if that's what you mean by "foreign fighters". There are still some factions fighting us who were already in Iraq and remain. It's not all illegal aliens doing the "fighting".

 

[peptoabysmal]

OK, I will tell you.

It is because you are doing the exact same thing that got us into this stupid mess to begin with!

The pro-war types use single source, unconfirmed data that fits their preconceptions in order to justify the killing of tens of thousands and the spending of hundreds billions in order to justify the war they want. Simply look at the first sentence you quoted "According to a May 2003 debriefing of a senior Iraqi intelligence officer"
Therefore there is no attribution,
no double-checking, and
no corrobrating evidence.

Yet you, and the other pro-war people, look at this sort of data as a great and wonderful thing that pleases you endlessly.

If you want a serious and substantive study as to how these attitudes have caused the trouble we are in, then I suggest that you look at the WMD report at"

www.wmd.gov

Hold it right there, kimosabe. First of all, "pro-war" is a bit of a misnomer; at best, or an ad-hom at worst. Second ; "Yet you, and the other pro-war people, look at this sort of data as a great and wonderful thing that pleases you endlessly." is a complete strawman.

I was and still am, in support of removing Saddam from power and trying to give the people of Iraq a decent government.

The story I pointed out had nothing to do with WMD, it had to do with Saddam hussein's alleged ties to al-Queda. What I marvel at is that this should have been a big story and the source either proven or disproven. It was completely ignored by most news media. On the other hand, if there is a memo that might indicate that Bush may have missed a day of duty in the National Guard, oh, my God, stop the presses! Tell me again how there is such bias in my sources...

To address your indirection:
(from www.wmd.gov)

Our review revealed failings at each stage of the intelligence process. Many past discussions of the Iraq intelligence failure have focused on intelligence analysis, and we indeed will have much to say about how analysts tackled the Iraq WMD question. But they could not analyze data that they did not have, so we begin by addressing the failure of the Intelligence Community to collect more useful intelligence in Iraq.

Well, duh. Iraq was a closed society.
D'oh! It looks like some of the materials to make the non-existant WMD are missing:
U.N.: Weapons Material Missing


Mass graves... men, women and children shot in the head as if for sport and then bulldozed over.
Rape rooms.
Torture chambers.
Kurd citizens killed like insects.
Abu Nidal.
Ansar al-Islam.
ALF.
Hamas.
Checks to families of Palestinian suicide bombers for tens of thousands of dollars.
Oil for food used to bribe members of the UN and not used to feed Iraqi citizens.
Chemical warfare against Iran.

Now that is a mess!

 

[Tricky]

First of all I wasn't explicit enough in my original question so here it is re-stated:

Please tell me you haven't made yourself believe all of these supplies and equipment for WMD have been smuggled into Falluja from outside of Iraq after the war started.

I believe that the story is saying that the lab itself was built after the war started. That I can believe. Sadam has had a long and documented history of aquiring materials for WMD, producing WMD and using them against the Iranians and Kurds.

First of all, why smuggle it in across the border when there are tons of supplies that haven't been secured? Second, I think the story is a bit misleading in the way it is written. That is why I ask the question.

Yes, dirtbag terrorists crossed the border to join Jihad against the US, if that's what you mean by "foreign fighters". There are still some factions fighting us who were already in Iraq and remain. It's not all illegal aliens doing the "fighting".

But Pepé, a very exhaustive search turned up no WMDs or really anything that could be turned into WMDs. And the report says that this operation is post-invasion.

Can you seriously interpret this as evidence that Bush was right about WMDs? Even if some of the "supplies" were found already in Iraq (an assumption for which there is scant evidence), the factory is new.

It's staring you in the face. Usable WMDs did not exist in Iraq before the invasion, but they exist there now. Thus, the goal of making Iraq a safer place is, to be very generous, unresolved.

 

[Dan Beaird]

-- germ-fighting underwear.

The germ fighting BVD's aren't there to protect against WMD's, but rather the day to day risk of infection and skin disease caused by infrequent opportunities to bath or change uniforms as well as constant skin irritation and chafing from sand and marching. A number of groups within the special operations community have worn these things for a few years. You can probably imagine that a simple infected rash can take out a soldier just as efficiently as an IED.

 

[peptoabysmal]

But Pepé, a very exhaustive search turned up no WMDs or really anything that could be turned into WMDs. And the report says that this operation is post-invasion.

You are right in the first part "a very exhaustive search turned up no WMDs" in that no new weapons or weapons ready to fire were found. There is no doubt about that. On this part "really anything that could be turned into WMDs", you couldn't be more wrong.

Can you seriously interpret this as evidence that Bush was right about WMDs? Even if some of the "supplies" were found already in Iraq (an assumption for which there is scant evidence), the factory is new.

Absolutely not. It is not evidence that Bush was right or wrong about WMD's. Bush did not go into the field and do the investigation nor did he do any of the compiling of the data. The "exhaustive" study on www.wmd.gov shows that the intelligence was flawed, the intelligence that any president in office wouold need to make such a decision.

It's staring you in the face. Usable WMDs did not exist in Iraq before the invasion, but they exist there now. Thus, the goal of making Iraq a safer place is, to be very generous, unresolved.

They found a lab. I didn't see anything in the original story posted which indicated there are usable WMD's there now.

They found (from the original post link)

Monday's early morning raid found 11 precursor agents, "some of them quite dangerous by themselves," a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, said in Baghdad

Here is the conclusion of the original post on this thread that I am addressing: "Yep, that's right. Bush said that Iraq was a haven for both Al Qaeda and WMD's, therefore we had to invade. But neither was there before the invasion."

I'm saying that terrorism and support for terrorism and WMD and material for WMD all existed in Iraq before the war started. I don't care that al-Queda was called by a different name "Ansar al-Islam" in Iraq. I don't care if al-Queda was even in or had a relationship with Iraq. (though it has been proven that Saddam and al-Queda had a "relationship") Saddam supported terrorists who did damage across the globe.

The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden
Tell me how is it that Saddam and Bin Laden discussed everything except 9/11?

It is a fact that Saddam not only had WMD, but that he used them against civilians and in a war against Iran... similar weapons to those described in the story this thread is about.

What is really amazing is that somehow, no matter how much of the old materials and even a few live rounds of the old WMD we found, it was not good enough to declare a find of WMD. Now, in this story, a find of "...containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians..." (from the story) is suddenly good enough evidence to be called a "new" WMD find. The old ammo dumps were loaded with 55 gallon drums of pesticide nerve agents. Big bug problem in the ammo dumps? Maybe... I've seen Iraq camel spiders... ick!

I don't believe this material was smuggled into Iraq post-invasion. Smuggled into Falluja, yes, but not from outside Iraq. Why, when there is so much of it in Iraq already? It wouldn't make any sense. This story labels the find a "post-invasion cache" which I feel is misleading.

Why is the UN worried now?
U.N.: Weapons Material Missing

With more than 100,000 Iranian victims (1) of Saddam Hussein's Chemical and Biological weapons during the eight-year war with Iraq, Iran is the world's top afflicted country by Weapons of Mass Destruction, only after Japan.

The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans of Iran.

Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were hit by Mustard gas.

Iran - Iraq war WMD