Gould 0738 wrote:

I did not know Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, but since you
believe he was, shouldn't we go after his top 50 henchmen?

You introduced the "top 50 Iraqis" into the discussion about responding to
9-11.
Even though our government implied that SH conspired with his sworn, mortal
enemy, OBL, to pull of 9-11, the case seems weak at best.

I thought we were discussing 9-11, but to answer your question anyway, if I
was a betting man, I would guess they are over in Syria or buried out in the
middle of the desert. Do you honestly believe that SH was not stockpiling
weapons of MD?

If he had any, they were manufactured outside of Iraq and brought in.

Not necessarily.


The last
time we were able to detect any trace of WMD manufacture in Iraq was 1998.

By what means?


Inspectors last year not only did not find any weapons, they were unable to
detect even the slightest chemical or biological trace of any recent
manufacturing activity. The ordinance has a 3- 5year shelf life.

Key phrase: "were unable to find". That does not mean that they were not
there, only that the inspectors failed to find them. You seem to imply
that the Iraqi's were "up front" and honest when it came time to show
the inspectors around. Like I said before, it's a BIG desert.



Item from Radio Netherlands (hopefully an acceptably objective source) follows:

*******
With the battle for Baghdad fizzling out without the use of chemical weapons by
Iraqi troops, Washington's critics are demanding to know what has happened to
Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction. Former chief UN weapons
inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter is one of those who has heaped scorn upon
President George Bush's administration for going to war. In this interview with
RN's Saskia van Reenan, Mr Ritter, a former US marine officer, explains why he
sees US justifications for waging war as dishonest excuses for empire-building.

Scott Ritter is suspect already. He seems to have his own agenda, which
he is actively promoting. He's done a 180 degree turnaround since his
days as an inspector. There are also enough skeletons in his closet, to
cast doubt upon his true motives.


"The threat that Iraq poses from weapons of mass destruction I think has been
clearly exposed as a lie. We were told to expect chemical weapons to rain down
on troops as soon as they crossed over the border from Kuwait into Iraq, but
that didn't happen. We were then told that as we closed in on the so-called
‘red line' around Baghdad – the 50-mile circle – that as soon as we
breached that, chemical weapons would be used. That didn't happen. Then we said
chemical weapons would be used as a last-gasp defence of Baghdad but that
didn't happen. What chemical weapons? We were told that the presidential
palaces were brimming over with weapons of mass destruction, but we now occupy
many of the presidential palaces and we've found nothing."

"If Iraq were to have weapons of mass destruction today, they would have had to
reconstitute a manufacturing base since 1998, since weapons inspectors left. No
one has provided any information of a substantive nature that sustains that
allegation. Clearly Iraq had the potential, they had time, they had four years
between the time I left and other inspectors left in 1998 and the time that the
new UNMOVIC inspectors returned in the fall of 2002."

They had those same 4 years to become creative with techniques to hide
those same weapons.

Does any sane person believe that Saddam Hussein, with his past history
and his personality type, would be willing to just "give up" his own
imperialistic aspirations? Or would it be more fitting of his
personality, for him to attempt subterfuge?



"I have clearly stated that Iraq could reconstitute a limited capability within
six months, so the potential is there for Iraq to have done this, but that
potential doesn't automatically translate into reality, and we did have
inspectors on the ground for almost four months, and they found nothing.

It's easy to not find something, if you are not looking in the right
places.

Furthermore they investigated over a dozen sites highlighted by the Central
Intelligence Agency as being prime suspects for producing weapons of mass
destruction and they have found nothing."

(sidebar begins)
DISSENSION IN THE RANKS: Scott Ritter began his fall from grace in the eyes of
the US establishment in the first Gulf War, when as a junior military
intelligence analyst he began filing reports contradicting the official US
estimates of the number of Scud missiles destroyed. Later appointed chief UN
weapons inspector in Iraq, he resigned in 1998, claiming that President Bill
Clinton was too lenient on Saddam Hussein's regime. Since then, Mr Ritter has
performed what his critics see as an about-face; he now says it is highly
unlikely Baghdad possesses dangerous amounts of weapons of mass destruction.

One wonders what event precipitated his "about face"......


( Side bar ends-Ritter's comments continue):

"Clearly Iraq could have hidden something, we know that Iraq tried to hide
things from us in the past, but this 5 to 10 percent of unaccounted-for
material doesn't mean that Iraq didn't account for it, it means that we can't
verify the Iraqi accounting. Iraq claims to have destroyed everything, they
just can't prove that they destroyed everything. We can prove that 90 to 95
percent were accounted for."

Of course, that's only the stuff that we KNEW about......


"But let's talk about that missing material. In the field of biological
materials, anthrax. Iraq produced anthrax in liquid bulk form, it has a shelf
life of three years under ideal storage conditions, the last known batch came
out in 1991.

Key word: "known".


I might be a simple marine, not able to do adequate mathematics,
but I think 1991 plus three gives you 1994. What anthrax does Iraq have? None
of the anthrax they produced prior to 1991 can be viable today, it simply can't
be."

Unless, of course, they made more since......


"The nerve agent sarin: there's talk of 1000 tonnes of Iraqi nerve agent
unaccounted for, because there's 6500 munitions that we can't account for
dating from 1983 to 88. The problem is, that even if Iraq tried to hide that
stuff, it can't be viable today because that nerve agent has a shelf-life of
five years. So even though we can't give a final disposition of that 5 to 10
per cent that's unaccounted for, I can tell you this; regardless of what
happened to it, it's not worth anything today, it can't hurt anyone. So I come
back to the basic question: what weapons of mass destruction?"

***********************

Now, Bill, this guy was only the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq for a
while. Surely, he can't know as much as Rush Limbaugh or the other rw radio
spinmeisters about WMD.

He appears certainly naive to the very real possibility that Iraq has
had opportunities to make and hide new WMD. Ritter's logic appears to be
cemented in the snapshot of what he knew in 1998 (Assuming that he had
the whole picture then), and he does not even consider the posibility
that they might have made more on the QT, not to mention underground
alliances with other like minded regimes.

You have been quick to point out that our mightly military has thusfar
failed to find both OBL and SH. Yet you seem perfectly satisfied that
the UN weapons inspectors were able to find all of Iraq's weapons. That
logic seems a bit contradictory.

Dave