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| Iraq |
| "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War" - Iraqi Scientist |
| 2003-04-21 |
| NYT Free Reg req'd, EFL A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said. I bet not all were... They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs. The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda. Well, that can't be true - Assad assured us, and Al-Qaeda cooperation would be a causus belli for the war The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein's government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990's, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq's giant weapons plants. An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties. The officials' account of the scientist's assertions and the discovery of the buried material, which they described as the most important discovery to date in the hunt for illegal weapons, supports the Bush administration's charges that Iraq continued to develop those weapons and lied to the United Nations about it. Finding and destroying illegal weapons was a major justification for the war. The officials' accounts also provided an explanation for why United States forces had not yet turned up banned weapons in Iraq. The failure to find such weapons has become a political issue in Washington. |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #4 Sammy, as you call him, was evil but not totally stupid; he went, in a large way, for dual use stuff so he could pretend to be not doing what he was really doing, I bet. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-9-1 11:32:18 AM |
| #3 Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? (RealPlayer or mp3) Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and the author of "Deadly Arsenals…Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction." He questions the whereabouts of the weapons and warns there’s a far more serious concern. |
| Posted by: Sassafrass 2003-04-21 19:14:34 |
| #2 Russia will insist that UN arms inspectors return to Iraq and verify that Baghdad has no weapons of mass destruction before sanctions imposed on the country can be lifted, a senior Russian diplomat said Monday. "This could be done within a couple of weeks as it is obvious that there are no such weapons there," an unnamed Foreign Ministry official told Itar-Tass. |
| Posted by: Better safe than sorry 2003-04-21 18:59:26 |
| #1 Makes sense: That's why the Iraqi Scientists didn't want to be interviewed alone, but the inspectors were able to roam freely. Once sanctions were lifted, he'd be able to restart the programs. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-04-21 11:36:16 |