The Politics of WAR
Issues
made political surrounding the war in Iraq
There is a movement on the left to cast our lot in with Europe or Russia – anyone but us. The following essays address this;
United Nations and Sovereignty – Steve Marquis
French Duplicity - Neil Cavuto
The Left has largely rejected God and absolute truth in favor of intellect - so called. Sophistry, in fact, takes a high seat where integrity used to reign omnipotent. Read then the next few short essays for a better perspective on what is real and what is really important.
Atheism and the Left – Steve Marquis
Who should you believe - Cynthia Allen
Some folks just don’t get it that in a democratic state, it take a compendium of issues to move the great forces of war into motion. Some reasons may be compelling to some and different issues compelling to others. Collin Powell’s pre-war expository laid out a whole set of compelling issues- each in their own right compelling. The pre and post war inspector’s reports and grateful Iraqis do nothing but bolster our President’s impassioned positions.
UN Speech Reasons for War - Collin Powell
Iraq and Terrorist Connections - Commentary by
Steve Marquis
WMD - What did Hans Blix & David Kay report
WMD What did
Hans Blix report (quotes in blue)
WMD What
did David Kay report to Congress (quotes in blue)
Consider the voices of the your neighbors who were willing to sacrifice all for the greater good.
Iraq, Act or Cower What would you do? (RAW) – Marquis
What we started -Operation Iraqi Freedom – Neil Cavuto
Why We Must Fight — and Now! William J. Bennett
Lastly in this set, I suggest you read the famous speech from the Patriot Patrick Henry. He too was speaking to a divided crowd heavily sided with pacifists. Some things change little over the generations of man.
To Anti-War Pacifists - Give Me Liberty or Give
Me Death - Patrick Henry
United Nations and Sovereignty – Steve Marquis
A lot of glib talk is tossed around about international law. The next line would be some argument about whether or not our actions are in keeping with the so-called international law. The implication is that there really is such a thing. If we actually had a treaty with another nation or with a group of nations IE the UN - signed by our president and ratified by the Congress then and only then could it be argued that something is “Legal” or “Illegal.” There is an ambition originating largely from wanaby nations to transfer sovereignty (in particular our sovereignty) to a world government. To understand why this is a bad idea, we just need to examine the theory of our federation of states.
We were able to create a United States Federal government based on 3 key requirements: 1) Across the constituent states, there must be a common moral basis. In our case it is commonly called Judeo-Christian religions.
2) The constituent states must have similar legal and government systems
3) Each constituent state needs to be financially solvent
You can imagine how you would feel if say California was governed by a Fascist dictatorship with an equal federal vote with your popularly elected senator. Or how would your comfort level be if the legal system in California was a single judge with no appeal VS your own state with the Jury system.
Amazingly that’s exactly the kind of situation that exists with the UN where countries that don’t even remotely share our human values (like Libya) have head up the UN Human Rights commission. The Security Council might have some Lilliputian country with the same voting power as a very large state representing a large part of the world. On the other hand you might have a Dictator nation with veto power on the same security panel with a nation like our own which is highly responsive to the will of its constituents.
Clearly without the 3 key conditions for a viable federation being met, we should quit validating phony authority and stop inching our way toward conferring our sovereign powers to the UN ( for this context UN stands for Useless Nations)
There is one last issue that may well be the most important yet – and that is the check and balance to ultimate tyranny that separate peoples with unique cultures and governments provide. Man has not shown himself to be any more civilized now that thousands of years ago. It is somewhat ironic that the Bible records God as being responsible for confounding the languages thousands of years ago to keep the people of that time from oppressing the people with a ‘world’ government.
Until God Himself reins as the benevolent dictator, it would be most wise to place our safety and well being in the hands of the President of these United States.
French Duplicity - Neil Cavuto
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Why do the French make things so easy for me?
Have you heard this one?
Never
mind that France wanted nothing to do with getting rid of Saddam and wants
everything to do with rebuilding Iraq after Saddam. Here's the kicker: France
says Britain and the U.S. should not have a role -- it's up to the United
Nations to decide.
So,
let me see if I've got this right. France offered not one soldier, not one
plane, not one tank, or ship, convoy or grenade. Not one missile. Not one drop
of blood. And yet, France is going to decide the new Iraq?
Well
pardon me, Pepe, but I don't think so.
I
don't know what amazes me more: How callous the French are, or how arrogant
they are. People are still dying in Iraq and they are already tripping over their
corpses to cash in on Iraq?
France
couldn't lift a hand to a rifle to help us, but is more than willing to go for
a few of their precious Euros to screw us?
We
fight and die to free a people whose suffering you more than happily ignored.
And they saunter in to set up shop so that they can merrily profit?
Please
tell me the French word for chutzpa!
France
schemes to sell brie, after we've given blood?
France
plots business storms, while our guys are choking in sandstorms?
France
notifies the world they're ready to do deals, while we have servicemen in this
country notifying families of killed soldiers they're ready to do funerals?
What
the French lack in guts, they more than make up for in nerve.
France
wouldn't help the Iraqi people when they needed rescuing, but is more than
willing to dive in and take the money because maybe France needs rescuing.
The
French are as morally bankrupt as I hope soon they will be
financially bankrupt.
Pity
the poor country that calls you a friend and realizes the hand it's holding, is
only digging for spare change.
Unilateralism - Radley Balko
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Top of the Document
4) Uni- vs.
Multi-lateralism
Another
one from the antiwar crowd, unique in that it’s wrong on two levels. The
argument says:
1)
We’re acting unilaterally.
2)
That’s a bad thing.
Well,
first, we aren’t acting unilaterally. We’re acting against the
objections of France, Russia, China and Germany.
We
all, of course, know well of Germany’s pacifist tradition (that’s sarcasm).
Russia’s still in its own brutal war with Muslim rebels in Chechnya, even as it
threatened a U.N. veto. China’s still suppressing Muslims in its Xinjiang
province. And, as former undersectretary of defense Jed Babbin said recently,
"Going to war without France is like going hunting without an
accordion."
Thirty
countries are on record as supporting the war effort, including Italy, Spain,
Britain, and most of Eastern Europe.
More
importantly: So what?
Our
national sovereignty is too important to place in the hands of a body of
international bureaucrats -- a body that exalts brutal dictators like
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, that allows a country with an active slave trade (the
Sudan) to sit on its human rights commission, and that allows Libya to chair
it.
I’m
not happy that we went to war. But if we had to, I think take solace, not
umbrage, that we did it over the objection of the United Nations.
All
of these arguments are rather ridiculous, a couple of them down right
hysterical. I feel silly even attempting to refute them. But they’re being
thrown out by otherwise serious people, and so it’s important to put them into
context.
Atheism and the Left – Steve Marquis
Atheism and Creation Worship; The New Age Religion of the Left
Without God and
a concept of man as an eternal being, there can be no concept of good; only
relative merits as defined by the circumstances of the moment. Only the law of
the jungle is absolute. The fundamental reason for the near epidemic of
atrocities and mayhem committed by largely young people in the last few decades
is the lack of appreciation for individual destiny. It took about 2 generations for a enough of the population to buy
into the new philosophy for society to realize the damage to its very fabric.
This started with my own generation in the 60’s, who for the 1st
time, where actively proselytized with the anti-god concepts. When a substantial part of my generation
failed to pass on to our children faith in God as a basis for right and wrong,
it only took the laws of statistics to guarantee that events like Columbine
became household words.
Advocates for the new state religion using “half-science”, reduced man to the state of the animals and argued that man and his choices and personalities are but electro-chemical reactions. They pontificate that destiny and agency are dominated by genes, not choice. They choose to emphasize that your circumstances, not choices, are responsible for your actions. They preach this from the public school pulpits and reinforce their theology by promoting tort abuse( remember you are a victim of environment, not your own choices) .
They teach that animals should be saved, elevated and worshiped as your gods but that our old, the infirm and the very young should be sacrificed on surgical alters for convenience and pleasure.
Since, in the minds of our new-age religionists, there is no life outside this life, death then is the ultimate disaster and so cling to it that even murderers have their ever pardon. There is no excuse for war and any life is better than no life. How far the evangelists of the left have come from the moving words of Patrick Henry’s impassioned pleas, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The scriptures of almost any religion echo uplifting words like, “Oh death were is thy sting” and to “the grave where is your victory” and so teach simply that “the only real sting of death is sin”.
Who should you believe - Cynthia Allen
Peace
with Strength - Who is smarter?
The
Hollywood group is at it again. Holding anti-war rallies, screaming about the
Bush Administration, running ads in major newspapers, defaming the President
and his Cabinet every chance they get, to anyone and everyone who will listen.
They publicly defile them and call them names like "stupid" ,
"morons", and "idiots". Jessica Lange went so far as to
tell a crowd in Spain that she hates President Bush and is embarrassed to be an
American.
So, just how ignorant are these people who are running the country? Let's look
at the biographies of these "stupid", "ignorant" ,
"moronic" leaders, and then at the celebrities who are castigating
them:
President George W. Bush: Received a Bachelors Degree from Yale
University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot
for the Texas Air National Guard. He began his career in the oil and gas
business in Midland in 1975 and worked in the energy industry until 1986. He
was elected Governor on November 8, 1994, with 53.5 percent of the vote. In a
historic re-election victory, he became the first Texas Governor to be elected
to consecutive four-year terms on November 3, 1998 winning 68.6 percent of the
vote. In 1998 Governor Bush won 49 percent of the Hispanic vote, 27 percent of
the African-American vote, 27 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of women. He
won more Texas counties, 240 of 254, than any modern Republican other than
Richard Nixon in 1972 and is the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to
win the heavily Hispanic and Democratic border counties of El Paso, Cameron and
Hidalgo. (Someone began circulating a false story about his I.Q. being lower
than any other President. If you believed it, you might want to go to
URBANLEGENDS.COM and see the truth.
Vice President Dick Cheney: Earned a B.A. in 1965 and a M.A. in 1966,
both in political science. Two years later, he won an American Political
Science Association congressional fellowship. One of Vice President Cheney's
primary duties is to share with individuals, members of Congress and foreign
leaders, President Bush's vision to strengthen our economy, secure our homeland
and win the War on Terrorism. In his official role as President of the Senate,
Vice President Cheney regularly goes to Capital Hill to meet with Senators and
members of the House of Representatives to work on the Administration's
legislative goals. In his travels as Vice President, he has seen first hand the
great demands the war on terrorism is placing on the men and women of our
military, and he is proud of the tremendous job they are doing for the United
States of America.
Secretary
of State Colin Powell: Educated in the New York City public schools, graduating
from the City College of New York (CCNY), where he earned a Bachelor's Degree
in geology. He also participated in ROTC at CCNY and received a commission as
an Army second lieutenant upon graduation in June 1958. His further academic
achievements include a Master of Business Administration Degree from George
Washington University. Secretary Powell is the recipient of numerous U.S. and
foreign military awards and decorations. Secretary Powell's civilian awards
include two Presidential Medals of Freedom, the President's Citizens Medal, the
Congressional Gold Medal, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal,
and the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal. Several schools and
other institutions have been named in his honor and he holds honorary degrees
from universities and colleges across the country. (Note: He retired as Four
Star General in the United States Army)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Attended Princeton University on
Scholarship (AB, 1954) and served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as a Naval
aviator; Congressional Assistant to Rep. Robert Griffin (R-MI), 1957-59; U.S.
Representative, Illinois, 1962-69; Assistant to the President, Director of the
Office of Economic Opportunity, Director of the Cost of Living Council,
1969-74; U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1973-74; head of Presidential Transition
Team, 1974; Assistant to the President, Director of White House Office of
Operations, White House Chief of Staff, 1974-77; Secretary of Defense, 1975-77.
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge: Raised in a working class
family in veterans' public housing in Erie. He earned a scholarship to Harvard,
graduating with honors in 1967. After his first year at The Dickinson School of
Law, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an infantry staff
sergeant in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning to
Pennsylvania, he earned his Law Degree and was in private practice before becoming
Assistant District Attorney in Erie County. He was elected to Congress in 1982.
He was the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected to the U.S. House, and
was overwhelmingly re-elected six times.
National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: Earned her Bachelor's Degree in Political
Science, Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974;
her Master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the
Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.
(Note: Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating
at 19 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science (Cum Laude). She earned a
Master's Degree at the University of Notre Dame and a Doctorate from the
University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her
advanced degrees are also in Political Science.) She is a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates
from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, and the
University of Notre Dame in 1995. At Stanford, she has been a member of the
Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the
Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover
Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995)
with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and
Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She
also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and
defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S.
Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000
Republican National Conventions. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of
German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the
Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East
European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to
the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international
affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special
Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on
the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender --Integrated Training in the Military.
She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the
Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the
University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and
the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member
of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in
East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the
Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, her past board service has
encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard,
the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation,
the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula
Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco. Born November
14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she resides in Washington, D.C.
So
who are these celebrities? What is their education? What is their
experience in affairs of State or in National Security? While I will defend to
the death their right to express their opinions, I think that if they are going
to call into question the intelligence of our leaders, we should also have all
the facts on their educations and background:
Barbra Streisand : Completed high school Career: Singing and acting
Cher: Dropped out of school
in 9th grade. Career: Singing and acting
Martin Sheen: Flunked exam to enter University of Dayton. Career:Acting
Jessica Lange: Dropped out college mid-freshman year. Career: Acting
Alec Baldwin: Dropped out of George Washington U. after scandal.
Career:Acting
Julia Roberts: Completed high school. Career: Acting
Sean Penn: Completed High school. Career: Acting
Susan Sarandon: Degree in Drama from Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. Career: Acting
Ed Asner; Completed High school. Career: Acting
George Clooney: Dropped out of University of Kentucky. Career: Acting
Michael Moore: Dropped out first year University of
Michigan. Career:Movie Director
Sarah Jessica Parker: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Jennifer Anniston: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Mike Farrell: Completed High school. Career: Acting
Janeane Garofelo: Dropped out of College. Career: Stand up comedienne
Larry Hagman: Attended Bard College for one year. Career: Acting
While
comparing the education and experience of these two groups, we should also
remember that President Bush and his cabinet are briefed daily, even hourly, on
the War on Terror and threats to our security. They are privy to information
gathered around the world concerning the Middle East, the threats to America,
the intentions of terrorists and terrorist-supporting governments. They are in
constant communication with the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, NATO, The United
Nations, our own military, and that of our allies around the world. We cannot
simply believe that we have full knowledge of the threats because we watch
CNN!! We cannot believe that we are in any way as informed as our leaders.
These celebrities have no intelligence-gathering agents, no fact-finding
groups, no insight into the minds of those who would destroy our country. They
only have a deep seated hatred for all things Republican. By nature, and no one
knows quite why, the Hollywood elitists detest Conservative views and anything
that supports or uplifts the United States of America. The silence was
deafening from the Left when Bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical factory
outside of Khartoum, or when he attacked the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and 1999. He
bombed Serbia itself to get
Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo, and not a single peace rally was held. When
our Rangers were ambushed in Somalia and 18 young American lives were lost, not
a peep was heard from Hollywood. Yet now, after our nation has been attacked on
its own soil, after 3,000 Americans were killed, by freedom-hating terrorists,
while going about their routine lives, they want to hold rallies against the war.
Why the change?
Another irony is that in 1987, when Ronald
Reagan was in office, the Hollywood group aligned themselves with disarmament
groups like SANE, FREEZE and PEACE ACTION, urging our own government to disarm
and freeze the manufacturing of any further nuclear weapons, in order to
promote world peace. It is curious that now, even after we have heard all the
evidence that Saddam Hussein has chemical, biological and is very close to
obtaining nuclear weapons, their is no cry from this group for HIM to disarm.
They believe we should leave him alone in his quest for these weapons of mass
destruction, even though it is certain that these deadly weapons will
eventually be used against us in our own cities.
So
why the hype out of Hollywood? Could these celebrities believe that since they
draw such astronomical salaries, they are entitled to also determine the course
of our Nation? That they can make viable decisions concerning war and peace?
Did Michael Moore have the backing of the Nation when he recently thanked
France, on our behalf, for being a "good enough friend to tell us we were
wrong"? I know for certain he was not speaking for me. Does Sean Penn
fancy himself a Diplomat, in going to Iraq when we are just weeks away from
war? Does he believe that his High School Diploma gives him the knowledge (and
the right) to go to a country that is controlled by a maniacal dictator, and
speak on behalf of the American people? Or is it the fact that he pulls in more
money per year than the average American worker will see in a lifetime? Does
his bank account give him clout?
The ultimate irony is that many of these celebrities have made a shambles of
their own lives, with drug abuse, alcoholism, numerous marriages and divorces,
scrapes with the law, publicized temper tantrums, etc. How dare they pretend to
know what is best for an entire nation! What is even more bizarre is how many
people in this country will listen and accept their views, simply because they
liked them in a certain movie, or have fond memories of an old television
sitcom!
It
is time for us, as citizens of the United States, to educate ourselves about
the world around us. If future generations are going to enjoy the freedoms that
our forefathers bequeathed us, if they are ever to know peace in their own
country and their world, to live without fear of terrorism striking in their
own cities, we must assure that this nation remains strong. We must make
certain that those who would destroy us are made aware of the severe
consequences that will befall them.
Yes, it is a wonderful dream to sit down with dictators and terrorists and join
hands, singing Cumbaya and talking of world peace. But it is not real. We did
not stop Adolf Hitler from taking over the entire continent of Europe by simply
talking to him. We sent our best and brightest, with the strength and
determination that this Country is known for, and defeated the Nazi regime.
President John F. Kennedy did not stop the Soviet ships from unloading their
nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 with mere words. He stopped them with action,
and threat of immediate war if the ships did not turn around. We did not end
the Cold War with conferences. It ended with the strong belief of President
Ronald Reagan... PEACE through STRENGTH!
Who is Smarter?
Cynthia Allen
ARC Partners, Inc.
6339 E. Greenway Suite 102-341
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
480-951-6004
fax:480-951-2082
www.arcsearch.com
email: cynthia@arcsearch.com
Member of CRA
Healthcare recruiting since 1991
UN Speech Reasons for War - Collin Powell
'A Policy of Evasion and Deception'
eMediaMillWorks
Wednesday, February 5, 2003
Following is the full text of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations on Iraq.
POWELL: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished colleagues, I would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the special effort that each of you made to be here today.
This is important day for us all as we review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.
Last November 8, this council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years.
Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an innocent party, but a regime this council has repeatedly convicted over the years. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No council member present in voting on that day had any allusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.
And to assist in its disarmament, we called on Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors from UNMOVIC and IAEA.
We laid down tough standards for Iraq to meet to allow the inspectors to do their job. This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives.
I asked for this session today for two purposes: First, to support the core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As Dr. Blix reported to this council on January 27th, quote, ``Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it,'' unquote.
And as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq's declaration of December 7, quote, ``did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998.'' My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq's involvement in terrorism, which is also the subject of Resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions.
I might add at this point that we are providing all relevant information we can to the inspection teams for them to do their work.
The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.
I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling. What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraqis' behavior--Iraq's behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort--no effort--to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.
Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq.
The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq's elite military unit, the Republican Guard. Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard between these two officers.
First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is coming, and they know what he's coming for, and they know he's coming the next day. He's coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things.
But they're worried. ``We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?''
What is their concern? Their concern is that it's something they should not have, something that should not be seen.
The general is incredulous: ``You didn't get a modified. You don't have one of those, do you?''
``I have one.''
``Which, from where?''
``From the workshop, from the Al Kendi (ph) Company?''
``What?''
``From Al Kendi (ph).''
``I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left.''
``We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left.''
Note what he says: ``We evacuated everything.''
We didn't destroy it. We didn't line it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.
``I will come to you tomorrow.''
The Al Kendi (ph) Company: This is a company that is well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity. Let me play another tape for you. As you will recall, the inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16. On January 20, four days later, Iraq promised the inspectors it would search for more. You will now hear an officer from Republican Guard headquarters issuing an instruction to an officer in the field. Their conversation took place just last week on January 30.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)
1/8Speaking in Arabic. 3/8
(END AUDIO TAPE)
POWELL: Let me pause again and review the elements of this message.
``They're inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.''
``Yes.''
``For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.''
``For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?''
``Yes.''
``And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.'' Remember the first message, evacuated.This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind.
If you go a little further into this message, and you see the specific instructions from headquarters: ``After you have carried out what is contained in this message, destroy the message because I don't want anyone to see this message.''
``OK, OK.''
Why? Why?
This message would have verified to the inspectors that they have been trying to turn over things. They were looking for things. But they don't want that message seen, because they were trying to clean up the area to leave no evidence behind of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. And they can claim that nothing was there. And the inspectors can look all they want, and they will find nothing.
This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two isolated events, quite the contrary. This is part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime.
We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called quote, ``a higher committee for monitoring the inspections teams,'' unquote. Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament. Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs.
The committee reports directly to Saddam Hussein. It is headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Its members include Saddam Hussein's son Qusay.
This committee also includes Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam. In case that name isn't immediately familiar to you, General Saadi has been the Iraqi regime's primary point of contact for Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. It was General Saadi who last fall publicly pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi's job is not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing.
We have learned a lot about the work of this special committee. We learned that just prior to the return of inspectors last November the regime had decided to resume what we heard called, quote, ``the old game of cat and mouse,'' unquote.
For example, let me focus on the now famous declaration that Iraq submitted to this council on December 7. Iraq never had any intention of complying with this council's mandate. Instead, Iraq planned to use the declaration, overwhelm us and to overwhelm the inspectors with useless information about Iraq's permitted weapons so that we would not have time to pursue Iraq's prohibited weapons. Iraq's goal was to give us, in this room, to give those us on this council the false impression that the inspection process was working.
You saw the result. Dr. Blix pronounced the 12,200-page declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and practically devoid of new evidence.
Could any member of this council honestly rise in defense of this false declaration?
Everything we have seen and heard indicates that, instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing.
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.
Orders were issued to Iraq's security organizations, as well as to Saddam Hussein's own office, to hide all correspondence with the Organization of Military Industrialization. This is the organization that oversees Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Make sure there are no documents left which could connect you to the OMI.
We know that Saddam's son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam's numerous palace complexes. We know that Iraqi government officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists have hidden prohibited items in their homes. Other key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.
Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq's nuclear program.
Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council?
Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives. Where did they go? What's being hidden? Why? There's only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors.
Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors. While we were here in this council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.
We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.
Let me say a word about satellite images before I show a couple. The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of photo analysis takes experts with years and years of experience, pouring for hours and hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery specialists.
Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munitions facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells.
Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.
How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.
This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different bunkers.
Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone, it's been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.
The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.
This sequence of events raises the worrisome suspicion that Iraq had been tipped off to the forthcoming inspections at Taji (ph). As it did throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq today is actively using its considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its illicit activities. From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics. I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.
In this next example, you will see the type of concealment activity Iraq has undertaken in response to the resumption of inspections. Indeed, in November 2002, just when the inspections were about to resume this type of activity spiked. Here are three examples.
At this ballistic missile site, on November 10, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components. At this biological weapons related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly.
At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house cleaning at close to 30 sites.
Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be coming.
We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what they had or did not have?
Remember the first intercept in which two Iraqis talked about the need to hide a modified vehicle from the inspectors. Where did Iraq take all of this equipment? Why wasn't it presented to the inspectors?
Iraq also has refused to permit any U-2 reconnaissance flights that would give the inspectors a better sense of what's being moved before, during and after inspectors.
This refusal to allow this kind of reconnaissance is in direct, specific violation of operative paragraph seven of our Resolution 1441.
Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people. You know the basic facts. Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons as required by Resolution 1441.
The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, quote, ``Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.''
Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the inspectors of conducting espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating with U.N. inspectors was committing treason.
Iraq did not meet its obligations under 1441 to provide a comprehensive list of scientists associated with its weapons of mass destruction programs. Iraq's list was out of date and contained only about 500 names, despite the fact that UNSCOM had earlier put together a list of about 3,500 names.
Let me just tell you what a number of human sources have told us.
Saddam Hussein has directly participated in the effort to prevent interviews. In early December, Saddam Hussein had all Iraqi scientists warned of the serious consequences that they and their families would face if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death.
Saddam Hussein also said that scientists should be told not to agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.
In mid-November, just before the inspectors returned, Iraqi experts were ordered to report to the headquarters of the special security organization to receive counterintelligence training. The training focused on evasion methods, interrogation resistance techniques, and how to mislead inspectors.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.
For example, in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there. On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.
In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to replace the workers who'd been sent home. A dozen experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein's guest houses. It goes on and on and on.
As the examples I have just presented show, the information and intelligence we have gathered point to an active and systematic effort on the part of the Iraqi regime to keep key materials and people from the inspectors in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The pattern is not just one of reluctant cooperation, nor is it merely a lack of cooperation. What we see is a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work.
My colleagues, operative paragraph four of U.N. Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall constitute--the facts speak for themselves--shall constitute a further material breach of its obligation. We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test--to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they early on indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed to be an early test.
They failed that test. By this standard, the standard of this operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable.
Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately.
The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: ``Enough. Enough.''
The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world. Let me now turn to those deadly weapons programs and describe why they are real and present dangers to the region and to the world.
First, biological weapons. We have talked frequently here about biological weapons. By way of introduction and history, I think there are just three quick points I need to make.
First, you will recall that it took UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry--to pry--an admission out of Iraq that it had biological weapons.
Second, when Iraq finally admitted having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount--this is just about the amount of a teaspoon--less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shutdown the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope. Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax, but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.
And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.
Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has provided little evidence to verify anthrax production and no convincing evidence of its destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.
One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.
Although Iraq's mobile production program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.
The source was an eye witness, an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the inspectors might arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if he finds him. His eye-witness account of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier. We have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. Here you see both truck and rail car-mounted mobile factories. The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by such facilities are highly detailed and extremely accurate. As these drawings based on their description show, we know what the fermenters look like, we know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like. We know how they fit together. We know how they work. And we know a great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted.
As shown in this diagram, these factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and rail cars along Iraq's thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq's extensive system of underground tunnels and bunkers.
We know that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of--there may be more--but perhaps 18 that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.
It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities?
Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.
By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production facilities.
We know from Iraq's past admissions that it has successfully weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.
But Iraq's research efforts did not stop there. Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus (ph), tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox.
The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disburse lethal biological agents, widely and discriminately into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying.
In 1995, an Iraqi military officer, Mujahid Sali Abdul Latif (ph), told inspectors that Iraq intended the spray tanks to be mounted onto a MiG-21 that had been converted into an unmanned aerial vehicle, or a UAV. UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons. Iraq admitted to producing four spray tanks. But to this day, it has provided no credible evidence that they were destroyed, evidence that was required by the international community.
There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.
UNMOVIC already laid out much of this, and it is documented for all of us to read in UNSCOM's 1999 report on the subject.
Let me set the stage with three key points that all of us need to keep in mind: First, Saddam Hussein has used these horrific weapons on another country and on his own people. In fact, in the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Second, as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents. If we consider just one category of missing weaponry--6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war--UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.
Dr. Blix has quipped that, quote, ``Mustard gas is not (inaudible) You are supposed to know what you did with it.''
We believe Saddam Hussein knows what he did with it, and he has not come clean with the international community. We have evidence these weapons existed. What we don't have is evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are. That is what we are still waiting for.
Third point, Iraq's record on chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.
The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law. UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery. Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX. And on January 27, UNMOVIC told this council that it has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.
We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and legitimate production can go on simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again.
These inspections would be unlikely, any inspections of such facilities would be unlikely to turn up anything prohibited, especially if there is any warning that the inspections are coming. Call it ingenuous or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately designed their chemical weapons programs to be inspected. It is infrastructure with a built-in ally.
Under the guise of dual-use infrastructure, Iraq has undertaken an effort to reconstitute facilities that were closely associated with its past program to develop and produce chemical weapons.
For example, Iraq has rebuilt key portions of the Tariq (ph) state establishment. Tariq (ph) includes facilities designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons program and employs key figures from past programs.
That's the production end of Saddam's chemical weapons business. What about the delivery end?
I'm going to show you a small part of a chemical complex called al-Moussaid (ph), a site that Iraq has used for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field.
In May 2002, our satellites photographed the unusual activity in this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles are again at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity. What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time. So it's not just the photo, and it's not an individual seeing the photo. It's the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.
This photograph of the site taken two months later in July shows not only the previous site, which is the figure in the middle at the top with the bulldozer sign near it, it shows that this previous site, as well as all of the other sites around the site, have been fully bulldozed and graded. The topsoil has been removed. The Iraqis literally removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical weapons activity.
To support its deadly biological and chemical weapons programs, Iraq procures needed items from around the world using an extensive clandestine network. What we know comes largely from intercepted communications and human sources who are in a position to know the facts.
Iraq's procurement efforts include equipment that can filter and separate micro-organisms and toxins involved in biological weapons, equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent, growth media that can be used to continue producing anthrax and botulinum toxin, sterilization equipment for laboratories, glass-lined reactors and specialty pumps that can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and precursors, large amounts of vinyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents, and other chemicals such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor.
Now, of course, Iraq will argue that these items can also be used for legitimate purposes. But if that is true, why do we have to learn about them by intercepting communications and risking the lives of human agents? With Iraq's well documented history on biological and chemical weapons, why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don't, and I don't think you will either after you hear this next intercept.
Just a few weeks ago, we intercepted communications between two commanders in Iraq's Second Republican Guard Corps. One commander is going to be giving an instruction to the other. You will hear as this unfolds that what he wants to communicate to the other guy, he wants to make sure the other guy hears clearly, to the point of repeating it so that it gets written down and completely understood. Listen.
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1/8Speaking in Foreign Language. 3/8
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POWELL: Let's review a few selected items of this conversation. Two officers talking to each other on the radio want to make sure that nothing is misunderstood:
``Remove. Remove.''
The expression, the expression, ``I got it.''
``Nerve agents. Nerve agents. Wherever it comes up.''
``Got it.''
``Wherever it comes up.''
``In the wireless instructions, in the instructions.''
``Correction. No. In the wireless instructions.''
``Wireless. I got it.''
Why does he repeat it that way? Why is he so forceful in making sure this is understood? And why did he focus on wireless instructions? Because the senior officer is concerned that somebody might be listening.
Well, somebody was.
``Nerve agents. Stop talking about it. They are listening to us. Don't give any evidence that we have these horrible agents.''
Well, we know that they do. And this kind of conversation confirms it.
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.
Let me remind you that, of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads, that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged iceberg. The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?
Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people.
And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them.
We also have sources who tell us that, since the 1980s, Saddam's regime has been experimenting on human beings to perfect its biological or chemical weapons.
A source said that 1,600 death row prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments. An eye witness saw prisoners tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them, blood oozing around the victim's mouths and autopsies performed to confirm the effects on the prisoners. Saddam Hussein's humanity--inhumanity has no limits.
Let me turn now to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program.
On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
To fully appreciate the challenge that we face today, remember that, in 1991, the inspectors searched Iraq's primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time. And they found nothing to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
But based on defector information in May of 1991, Saddam Hussein's lie was exposed. In truth, Saddam Hussein had a massive clandestine nuclear weapons program that covered several different techniques to enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas centrifuge, and gas diffusion. We estimate that this elicit program cost the Iraqis several billion dollars. Nonetheless, Iraq continued to tell the IAEA that it had no nuclear weapons program. If Saddam had not been stopped, Iraq could have produced a nuclear bomb by 1993, years earlier than most worse-case assessments that had been made before the war.
In 1995, as a result of another defector, we find out that, after his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had initiated a crash program to build a crude nuclear weapon in violation of Iraq's U.N. obligations.
Saddam Hussein already possesses two out of the three key components needed to build a nuclear bomb. He has a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design.
Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have been focused on acquiring the third and last component, sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. To make the fissile material, he needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium.
Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed.
These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium. By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for.
Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.
Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes. First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use. Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq.
I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things: First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.
Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don't think so. Second, we actually have examined tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad. What we notice in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. Why would they continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?
The high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium.
In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant. Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams. That's the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq's gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War. This incident linked with the tubes is another indicator of Iraq's attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq.
People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material. He also has been busy trying to maintain the other key parts of his nuclear program, particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists.
It is noteworthy that, over the last 18 months, Saddam Hussein has paid increasing personal attention to Iraqi's top nuclear scientists, a group that the governmental-controlled press calls openly, his nuclear mujahedeen. He regularly exhorts them and praises their progress. Progress toward what end?
Long ago, the Security Council, this council, required Iraq to halt all nuclear activities of any kind. Let me talk now about the systems Iraq is developing to deliver weapons of mass destruction, in particular Iraq's ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
First, missiles. We all remember that before the Gulf War Saddam Hussein's goal was missiles that flew not just hundreds, but thousands of kilometers. He wanted to strike not only his neighbors, but also nations far beyond his borders.
While inspectors destroyed most of the prohibited ballistic missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past decade, from sources inside Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers.
We know from intelligence and Iraq's own admissions that Iraq's alleged permitted ballistic missiles, the al-Samud II (ph) and the al-Fatah (ph), violate the 150-kilometer limit established by this council in Resolution 687. These are prohibited systems.
UNMOVIC has also reported that Iraq has illegally important 380 SA-2 (ph) rocket engines. These are likely for use in the al-Samud II (ph). Their import was illegal on three counts. Resolution 687 prohibited all military shipments into Iraq. UNSCOM specifically prohibited use of these engines in surface-to-surface missiles. And finally, as we have just noted, they are for a system that exceeds the 150-kilometer range limit.
Worst of all, some of these engines were acquired as late as December--after this council passed Resolution 1441.
What I want you to know today is that Iraq has programs that are intended to produce ballistic missiles that fly of 1,000 kilometers. One program is pursuing a liquid fuel missile that would be able to fly more than 1,200 kilometers. And you can see from this map, as well as I can, who will be in danger of these missiles.
As part of this effort, another little piece of evidence, Iraq has built an engine test stand that is larger than anything it has ever had. Notice the dramatic difference in size between the test stand on the left, the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the large exhaust vent. This is where the flame from the engine comes out. The exhaust on the right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left. The one on the left was used for short-range missile. The one on the right is clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers.
This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath the test stand.
Saddam Hussein's intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.
Now, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
Iraq has been working on a variety of UAVs for more than a decade. This is just illustrative of what a UAV would look like. This effort has included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the MiG-21 (ph) and with greater success an aircraft called the L-29 (ph). However, Iraq is now concentrating not on these airplanes, but on developing and testing smaller UAVs, such as this.
UAVs are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons. There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs. And of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth. One of these lies is graphically and indisputably demonstrated by intelligence we collected on June 27, last year.
According to Iraq's December 7 declaration, its UAVs have a range of only 80 kilometers. But we detected one of Iraq's newest UAVs in a test flight that went 500 kilometers nonstop on autopilot in the race track pattern depicted here.
Not only is this test well in excess of the 150 kilometers that the United Nations permits, the test was left out of Iraq's December 7th declaration. The UAV was flown around and around and around in a circle. And so, that its 80 kilometer limit really was 500 kilometers unrefueled and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations under 1441.
The linkages over the past 10 years between Iraq's UAV program and biological and chemical warfare agents are of deep concern to us. Iraq could use these small UAVs which have a wingspan of only a few meters to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or if transported, to other countries, including the United States.
My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq's continued flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on. And that has to do with terrorism.
Our concern is not just about these elicit weapons. It's the way that these elicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against innocent people around the world.
Iraq and terrorism go back decades. Baghdad trains Palestine Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives. Saddam uses the Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in order to prolong the Intifada. And it's no secret that Saddam's own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks or attempted assassinations in the 1990s.
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
You see a picture of this camp. The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch--image a pinch of salt--less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.
Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.
During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an Al Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, ``good,'' that Baghdad could be transited quickly.
We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved in moving more than money and materiale.
Last year, two suspected Al Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide. From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.
We, in the United States, all of us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development--we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October, a despicable act was committed that day. The assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder. After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.
And now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go.
As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.
According to detainee Abuwatia (ph), who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasks at least nine North African extremists from 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks.
Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested.
The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network.
Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins.
The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence, again, proved him right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.
We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.
We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and Al Qaida. Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an Al Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that Al Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad. Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaida.
We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
Saddam became more interested as he saw Al Qaida's appalling attacks. A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by Al Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to Al Qaida members on document forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001, the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the Al Qaida organization.
Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and Al Qaida's religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and Al Qaida together, enough so Al Qaida could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that Al Qaida could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.
And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.
Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaida.
Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.
This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes first-hand from his personal involvement at senior levels of Al Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaida leader Muhammad Atif (ph), did not believe that Al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name. And this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new. The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.
With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.
When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.
My friends, this has been a long and a detailed presentation. And I thank you for your patience. But there is one more subject that I would like to touch on briefly. And it should be a subject of deep and continuing concern to this council, Saddam Hussein's violations of human rights.
Underlying all that I have said, underlying all the facts and the patterns of behavior that I have identified as Saddam Hussein's contempt for the will of this council, his contempt for the truth and most damning of all, his utter contempt for human life. Saddam Hussein's use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century's most horrible atrocities; 5,000 men, women and children died. His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to '89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of some 2,000 villages. He has also conducted ethnic cleansing against the Shi'a Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs whose culture has flourished for more than a millennium. Saddam Hussein's police state ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced disappearance cases than any other country, tens of thousands of people reported missing in the past decade.
Nothing points more clearly to Saddam Hussein's dangerous intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbors. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.
For more than 20 years, by word and by deed Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way. For Saddam Hussein, possession of the world's most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he most hold to fulfill his ambition.
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?
The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
My colleagues, over three months ago this council recognized that Iraq continued to pose a threat to international peace and security, and that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its disarmament obligations. Today Iraq still poses a threat and Iraq still remains in material breach. Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued defiance of this council.
My colleagues, we have an obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with. We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not so far taking that one last chance.
We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the citizens of the countries that are represented by this body.
Thank you, Mr. President.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Iraq and Terrorist Connections - Commentary by Steve Marquis
What President Bush has stated and all his surrogates from the beginning is that Iraq was one of the central crossroads for support and abetting of terrorism in the mid-east region. This included references to support for Al-cada. President Bush asserted that our military would deal with any nation on the earth that actively harbored or supported terrorists deemed a threat to the United States.
Given the state of belligerence of Iraq and the probability of its position or attempts to obtain WMD, President Bush set our militaries sites on Iraq. Because of the poor state of intelligence, lack of proof of direct involvement in 911 kept the administration’s comments to only statements about support for terrorism and/or Al-cada generally. The news media reported many more such connections even if the administration did not. The American people have weighed that evidence in addition to the official statements from the administration and largely supported the military action to liberate Iraq. Here is some of that evidence: I will break it down to key links and references.
One final note; evidence to date (as of 2/6/04) has demonstrated Saddam’s dedication to continuing his WMD programs in a state of preparedness for quick restart. Saddam’s lack of cooperation and continued subterfuge with inspectors could only lead President Bush and any dispassionate observer to the conclusion that Saddam had was hiding not just future WMD capability but had hidden stocks of the unaccounted weapons. President Bush said clearly “What’s the difference?” when asked about programs vs. stockpiles. Hurray to President Bush for putting our safety and the freedom of the oppressed Iraqi people above the demands of European power grabbing globalists. I for one of many was not prepared to wait for the next 911 to find out how the Baghdad cat-n-mouse game was going to turn out. I was proud to be the father of one of the brave men who brought that freedom to Iraq
General
Timeline:
· http://college.hmco.com/currentconflict/instructors/terrorism/timeline.html
Overview of Sadam’s life
· http://college.hmco.com/currentconflict/instructors/history/hussein.html
Compilation of media articles on Iraq and terrorism
· http://www.intelmessages.org/Hack/ZAp Iraqi Involvement in Sept 11 Attacks 03.htm
Compilation of media articles specifically on Iraq and 911
· Cheney Says Iraq Was 'Geographic Base' for Sept. 11 Attacks -- Washington Post http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_03/5571.
· Spain Links Suspect in 9/11 Plot to Iraqi Intelligence http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_02/4188.html
· Czechs Say that Mohamed Atta Did Meet with Iraqi Intel
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_02/4189.html
· 'Iraq and Al Qaeda; There's More Evidence of a Link than the Critics Admit' -- Wall Street Journal
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages_03/5635.html
http://www.intelmessages.org/Messages/National_Security/wwwboard/messages/621.html
WMD - What did Hans Blix & David Kay report
WMD What did Hans Blix report (quotes in blue)
Enlightening comments regarding President Bush’ arguments to liberate Iraq from Saddam:
Unlike South Africa, which
decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons, and welcomed inspection as
a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have
come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was
demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the
world and to live in peace.
As we know, the twin
operation, declare and verify, which was prescribed in Resolution 687, too
often turned into a game of hide and seek. Rather than just verifying
declarations and supporting evidence, the two inspecting organizations found
themselves engaged in efforts to map the weapons programs and to search for
evidence through inspections, interviews, seminars, inquiries with suppliers
and intelligence organizations.
As a result, the
disarmament phase was not completed in the short time expected. Sanctions
remained and took a severe toll until Iraq accepted the oil-for-food program,
and the gradual development of that program mitigated the effects of the
sanctions.
Note that these following questions remained. These are questions addressed by our Presidents informed judgment to liberate Iraq.
One of three important
questions before us today is, how much might remain undeclared and intact from
before 1991 and possibly thereafter? The second question is, what, if anything,
was illegally produced or procured after 1998, when the inspectors left? And
the third question is how it can be prevented that any weapons of mass
destruction be produced or procured in the future.
Note that Hans cannot make any concrete conclusion based on the evidence at his disposal.
These reports do not
contend the weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq; but nor do they
exclude that possibility. They point to lack of evidence and
inconsistencies which raise question marks, which must be straightened out if
weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise. They deserve to
be taken seriously by Iraq rather than being brushed aside as evil machinations
of UNSCOM.
Weaponizing Nerve Agents continued after the Gulf War
UNMOVIC,
however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are
indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization,
and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the
documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in
laboratory production, was higher than declared.
There are
also indications that the agent was weaponized. In addition, there are
questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals,
which Iraq states were lost due to bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally
destroyed by Iraq.
Chemical bombs were being dropped after the Gulf War!
The document indicates that
13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and
1998, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this
period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical
agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tons. In the
absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are
now unaccounted for.
Rocket delivery systems for WMD were being worked on after the Gulf war – even very recently.
The discovery of a number
of 122 mm chemical rocked warheads in a bunker at the storage depot 170
kilometers southwest of Baghdad was much-publicized. This was a relatively new
bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved here in the past two
years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. Investigation of
these rockets is still proceeding. Iraq states that they were overlooked from
1991 from a batch of some 2,000 that were stored there during the Gulf War.
This could be the case. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg.
The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve, but rather points to the issue
of several thousand of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
What about Bio- WMDs?
I turn to
biological weapons. I mentioned the issue of anthrax to the council on previous
occasion, and I come back to it, as it is an important one. Iraq has declared
that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which, it
states, it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided
little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its
destruction.
There
are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and
that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It
might still exist.
Was Iraq falsifying WMD documents?
Iraq did not declare a
significant quantity, some 650 kilos, of bacterial growth media, which was
acknowledged, as reported, in Iraq's submissions to the Amorim panel in
February of 1999. As a part of its 7 December 2002, declaration, Iraq
resubmitted the Amorim panel document, but the table showing this particular
import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to
be deliberate, as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered….This
is not evidence. I note that the quantity of the media involved would suffice
to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax.
What about proscribed Medium range missile technology?
[The] Al-Samoud II, &
Al Fatah. … missiles have been tested to a range in excess of the permitted
range of 150 kilometers …Some of both types of missiles have already been
provided to the Iraqi armed forces. The Al-Samoud's diameter was increased from
an earlier version to the present 760 millimeters. This modification was made
despite a 1994 letter from the executive chairman of UNSCOM directing Iraq to
limit its missile diameters to less than 600 millimeters.
These missiles might well
represent prima facie cases of proscribed systems. The test ranges in excess of
150 kilometers are significant, …Iraq reconstituted a number of casting
chambers, which had previously been destroyed under UNSCOM's supervision. …
they could produce motors for missiles capable of ranges significantly greater
than 150 kilometers.
Also associated …is the import which has been taking place during the last two
years of a number of items despite the sanctions, including as late as
December. Foremost among these is the import of 300 rockets engines, which may
be used for the Al-Samoud 2.
Iraq has also declared the
recent import of chemicals used in propellants, test instrumentation, and guidance
and control system. …What is clear is that they were illegally brought into
Iraq.
Is Iraq withholding documentation?
we are
told; all documents relating to the biological weapons program were destroyed
together with the weapons.
However,
Iraq has all the archives of the government and its various departments,
institutions and mechanisms. It should have budgetary documents, requests for
funds, and reports on how they have been used. It should also have letters of
credit and bills of lading, reports on production and losses of material.
Has Iraq dispersed its hardware or documentation throughout the civilian population to avoid detection?
The recent inspection find
in the private home of a scientist of a box of some 3,000 pages of documents,
much of it relating to the laser enrichment of uranium, support a concern that
has long existed that documents might be distributed to the homes of private
individuals. This interpretation is refuted by the Iraqi side, which claims
that research staff sometimes may bring home papers from their workplaces. On
our side, we cannot help but think that the case might not be isolated, and
that such placements of documents is deliberate to make discovery difficult and
to seek to shield documents by placing them in private homes.
Was Iraq hiding their personnel from interview?
Some 400 names for all
biological and chemical weapons programs, as well as their missile programs,
were provided by the Iraqi side. This can be compared to over 3,500 names of
people associated with those past weapons programs that UNSCOM either
interviewed in the 1990s, or knew from documents and other sources.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/iraq/blix_report.html
WMD What did David Kay report to Congress (quotes in
blue)
Enlightening comments supporting Pres Bush’ arguments to liberate Iraq from Saddam:
How big was their WMD program and
when did it cease operation?
Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two
decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were
elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued
even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Was our knowledge complete and
totally accurate and if not why not?
We need to recall that in the 1991-2003 period
the intelligence community and the U.N./IAEA inspectors had to draw conclusions
as to the status of Iraq's WMD program in the face of incomplete, and often
false, data supplied by Iraq or data collected either by U.N./IAEA
inspectors operating within the severe constraints that Iraqi security and
deception actions imposed or by national intelligence collection systems
with their own inherent limitations. The result was that our understanding
of the status of Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties
and had to be heavily caveated.
Have we found
stocks yet and if not why not? Is there anything hindering the effort?
we are not yet at the point where we can say
definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed
before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone…
Our search efforts are being hindered by six
principal factors:
1. From birth all of Iraq's WMD activities were
highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets
through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program.
2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of
material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and
ran trans- to post-conflict.
3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed
important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning
Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of
this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the
clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime.
4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the
pre/trans-conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related
materials with them.
5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely
to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and
difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is
important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching
for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not
much larger than a two-car garage.
6. The environment in Iraq remains far from
permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting
threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject
of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG
facilities or teams:
What have we found and what have we not found in the
first three months of our work??
We have discovered dozens
of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that
Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in
late 2002.
What? How could that be that we didn’t find that
before?
…these deliberate concealment efforts have come
about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning
information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of
equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared
to the U.N.
What are some
examples of Concealment? If they had no WMD programs, why the cat and mouse
game before the liberation
[Found] A clandestine network of laboratories and
safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment
subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW (chemical biological
weapons) research.
[Found] A prison laboratory complex, possibly
used in human testing of BW (bioweapons) agents, that Iraqi officials working
to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the
U.N.
[Found] Reference strains of biological organisms
concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological
weapons.
[Found] New research on BW-applicable agents,
brucella and Congo Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and
aflatoxin were not declared to the U.N.
[Found] Documents and equipment, hidden in
scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment
by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.
[Found] A line of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)
not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that
they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km
beyond the permissible limit.
[Found] Continuing covert capability to
manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD-variant missiles, a
capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that
cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N.
[Found] Plans and advanced design work for new
long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 km – well beyond the
150-km range limit imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have
allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara,
Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
[Found] Clandestine attempts between late-1999
and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-km range
ballistic missiles – probably the No Dong – 300-km range anti-ship cruise
missiles and other prohibited military equipment.
In addition to the discovery of extensive
concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of
documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories and
companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence
– hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces
of use – are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.
For example, on 10 July 2003, an ISG team
exploited the Revolutionary Command Council Headquarters in Baghdad. The
basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on
well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage
despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes.
Upon arrival, the exploitation team encountered
small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were
intentionally destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed.
Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction,
rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent
Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.
All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation
teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment,
shredding and burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates from
office doors. Although much of the deliberate destruction and sanitization of
documents and records probably occurred during the height of OIF combat
operations, indications of significant continuing destruction efforts have been
found after the end of major combat operations, including entry in May 2003 of
the locked gated vaults of the Ba'ath Party intelligence building in Baghdad
and highly selective destruction of computer hard drives and data storage
equipment, along with the burning of a small number of specific binders that
appear to have contained financial and intelligence records, and in July 2003 a
site exploitation team at the Abu Ghurayb Prison found one pile of the
smoldering ashes from documents that was still warm to the touch.
Was Sadam
building a covert compartmentalized system capable of restarting production
quickly?
…after 1996 [Iraq] further compartmentalized its
program and focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could
be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents
[We] have begun to unravel a clandestine network
of laboratories and facilities within the security service apparatus. This
network was never declared to the U.N. and was previously unknown. We are
still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to
large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons, but this clandestine capability
was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing
R&D – all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW
production.
The IIS also played a prominent role in
sponsoring students for overseas graduate studies in the biological sciences,
according to Iraqi scientists and IIS sources, providing an important avenue
for furthering BW-applicable research. This was the only area of graduate work
that the IIS appeared to sponsor.
Did they blend legitimate and illegitimate research?
Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent
R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as
surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents. Examples
include: B. thurengiensis (Bt) with B. anthracis (anthrax), and medicinal
plants with ricin. In a similar vein, two key former BW scientists, confirmed
that Iraq under the guise of legitimate activity developed refinements of
processes and products relevant to BW agents. The scientists discussed the development
of improved, simplified fermentation and spray drying capabilities for the
simulant Bt that would have been directly applicable to anthrax, and one
scientist confirmed that the production line for Bt could be switched to
produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.
Did we find equipment and materials for WMD?
Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed
equipment and materials from U.N. inspectors when they returned in 2002. …One
noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been
declared to the U.N. Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from
which a biological agent can be produced. This discovery – hidden in the home
of a BW scientist – illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty
of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge
production of deadly weapons. The scientist who concealed the vials containing
this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but
refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.
What about alternative usages for
those mobile labs we found?
We have not yet been able to corroborate the
existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of
and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has
yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant and BW
production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes
from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have
discovered rules out their potential use in BW production. We have made
significant progress in identifying and locating individuals who were
reportedly involved in a mobile program, and we are confident that we will
be able to get an answer to the questions as to whether there was a mobile
program and whether the trailers that have been discovered so far were part of
such a program…We made significant progress in identifying and locating
individuals who were reportedly involved in the mobile program, and we are
confident that we will be able to get an answer to the questions as to whether
there was a mobile program and whether the trailers that have been discovered
so far were part of such a program.
Have we found weaponized chemical warheads?
Multiple sources with varied access and
reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally
controlled CW program after 1991…We are carefully examining dual-use,
commercial chemical facilities to determine whether these were used or planned
as alternative production sites…We have multiple reports that Iraq retained
CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard – a long-lasting
chemical agent – but we have to date been unable to locate any such
munitions…there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points
(ASPs), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated
600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance.
Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined. As Iraqi practice
was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same
ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is
enormous.
Was Saddam trying to regain or restore & replenish
CW?
While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams
have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the
possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003. When
Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it
would take to produce new chemical agents and weapons, he told ISG that after
he consulted with CW experts in OMI (Iraq's Military Industrial Organization)
he responded it would take six months for mustard. Another senior Iraqi chemical
weapons expert, in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Odai Hussein for CW
for the Fedayeen Saddam, estimated that it would take two months to produce
mustard and two years for sarin.
Was Saddam doing CW experimenting on humans?
Additional information is beginning to
corroborate reporting since 1996 about human testing activities using chemical
and biological substances, but progress in this area is slow given the concern
of knowledgeable Iraqi personnel about their being prosecuted for crimes against
humanity.
Do we have evidence of active production or retained stocks?
Multiple sources with varied access and
reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally
controlled CW program after 1991… We have multiple reports that Iraq retained
CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard – a long-lasting
chemical agent – but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions.
What about Saddams efforts to acquire Nuclear capability?
With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the
testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government
officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to
obtain nuclear weapons. They have told ISG that Saddam Hussein remained firmly
committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam
would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some
indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions. At least one senior
Iraqi official believed that by 2000 Saddam had run out of patience with
waiting for sanctions to end and wanted to restart the nuclear program. The
Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), beginning around 1999, expanded its
laboratories and research activities and increased its overall funding levels.
According to documents and testimony of Iraqi
scientists, some of the key technical groups from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons
program remained largely intact, performing work on nuclear-relevant dual-use
technologies within the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). Some scientists
from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program have told ISG that they believed that
these working groups were preserved in order to allow a reconstitution of the
nuclear weapons.
Several scientists – at the direction of senior
Iraqi government officials – preserved documents and equipment from their
pre-1991 nuclear weapon-related research and did not reveal this to the
U.N./IAEA. One Iraqi scientist recently stated in an interview with ISG that it
was a "common understanding" among the scientists that material was
being preserved for reconstitution of nuclear weapons-related work.
The ISG nuclear team has found indications that
there was interest, beginning in 2002, in reconstituting a centrifuge
enrichment program.
We do not yet have information indicating whether
a higher government authority directed Sa'id to initiate this research and,
regretfully, Dr. Sa'id was killed on April 8th during the fall of Baghdad
when the car he was riding in attempted to run a coalition roadblock. Hmmm Now Why would the head of their
Nuclear team try to run an armed road block???
What about banned delivery systems?
…the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence
to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system
improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached
U.N. restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War… Detainees and
cooperative sources indicate that beginning in 2000 Saddam ordered the
development of ballistic missiles with ranges of at least 400 kilometers and up
to 1,000 kilometers and that measures to conceal these projects from UNMOVIC
(the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) were
initiated in late 2002, ahead of the arrival of inspectors.
Amazing what can take place right under the noses of UN
inspectors!
Iraq ha[d] reinitiated work on converting SA-2
Surface-to-Air Missiles into ballistic missiles with a range goal of about 250
kilometers. Engineering work was reportedly underway in early 2003, despite the
presence of UNMOVIC.…we have obtained enough information to make us confident
that this design effort was under way… One cooperative source has said that he
suspected that the new large-diameter solid-propellant missile was intended to
have a CW-filled warhead
Detainees and cooperative sources indicate that
beginning in 2000 Saddam ordered the development of ballistic missiles with
ranges of at least 400 kilometers and up to 1,000 kilometers and that measures
to conceal these projects from UNMOVIC (the United Nations Monitoring,
Verification and Inspection Commission) were initiated in late 2002, ahead of
the arrival of inspectors.
Sounds to me that where there is fuel, there must be some
surviving or reviving missiles.
Two other sources contend that Iraq continued to
produce until 2001 liquid fuel and oxidizer specific to Scud-type systems. The
cooperating source claims that the al-Tariq factory was used to manufacture
Scud oxidizer (IRFNA) from 1996 to 2001, and that nitrogen tetroxide, a chief
ingredient of IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid), was collected from a
bleed port on the production equipment, was reserved and then mixed with highly
concentrated nitric acid plus an inhibitor to produce Scud oxidizer.
These efforts extended the HY-2's range from its
original 100 kilometers to 150 to 180 kilometers. Ten modified missiles were
delivered to the military prior to OIF and two of these were fired from Umm
Qasr during OIF – one was shot down and one hit Kuwait.
What about banned Unmanned Aviation Vehicles?
Several Iraqi officials stated that the RPV-20
flew over 500 kilometers on autopilot in 2002, contradicting Iraq's declaration
on the system's range. The al-Rashid group was developing a competing line of
UAVs. This program was never fully declared to the U.N. and is the subject of
ongoing work by ISG.
ISG has discovered evidence of two primary cruise
missile programs. The first appears to have been successfully implemented,
whereas the second had not yet reached maturity at the time of OIF… These
efforts extended the HY-2's range from its original 100 kilometers to 150 to
180 kilometers. Ten modified missiles were delivered to the military prior to
OIF and two of these were fired from Umm Qasr during OIF – one was shot down
and one hit Kuwait.
The second program, called the Jenin, was a much
more ambitious effort to convert the HY-2 into a 1,000-kilometer-range
land-attack cruise missile. The Jenin concept was presented to Saddam on Nov.
23, 2001, … To prevent discovery by the U.N., Iraq halted engine
development and testing and disassembled the test stand in late 2002
Note:
North Koreas impending complicity in banned missile delivery systems.
Documents found by ISG describe a high-level
dialogue between Iraq and North Korea that began in December 1999… and included
an October 2000 meeting in Baghdad… [regarding] the transfer of technology for
surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometers (probably No Dong)
and land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300 kilometers. The document quotes
the North Koreans as understanding the limitations imposed by the U.N., but
being prepared "to cooperate with Iraq on the items it specified."
Where outside companies and countries assisting in illegal
missile development?
[We] identified a large volume of material and testimony by
cooperating Iraq officials on Iraq's effort to illicitly procure parts and
foreign assistance for its missile program …Entities from another foreign
country were involved in supplying guidance and control systems for use in the
al-Fatah (Ababil-100). …They worked in Baghdad for about three months in late
1998 and subsequently continued work on the project from abroad. An actual
contract valued at $10 million for machinery and equipment was signed in June
2001, initially for 18 months, but later extended. This cooperation
continued right up until the war.
,,,there is little doubt from the evidence
already gathered that there was substantial illegal procurement
Iraq undertook a program aimed at increasing the
HY-2's range and permitting its use as a land-attack missile… Ten modified
missiles were delivered to the military prior to OIF and two of these were
fired from Umm Qasr during OIF – one was shot down and one hit Kuwait.
The second program, called the Jenin, was a much
more ambitious effort to convert the HY-2 into a 1,000-kilometer-range
land-attack cruise missile. The Jenin concept was presented to Saddam on Nov.
23, 2001, and received what cooperative sources called an "unusually quick
response" in little more than a week. … To prevent discovery by the U.N.,
Iraq halted engine development and testing and disassembled the test stand in
late
Documents indicate Iraqi interest in the transfer
of technology for surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometers (probably
No Dong) and land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300 kilometers. The document
quotes the North Koreans as understanding the limitations imposed by the U.N.,
but being prepared "to cooperate with Iraq on the items it
specified."
In late 2002 at Saddam's behest a delegation of
Iraqi officials was sent to meet with foreign export companies, including one
that dealt with missiles. Iraq was interested in buying an advanced ballistic
missile with 270-kilometer and 500-kilometer ranges.
The ISG has also identified … Iraq's effort to
illicitly procure parts and foreign assistance for its missile program. These
include significant level of assistance from a foreign company and its network
of affiliates in supplying and supporting the development of production
capabilities for solid rocket propellant and dual-use chemicals.
Entities from another foreign country were
involved in supplying guidance and control systems for use in the al-Fatah
(Ababil-100).
Some conclusions by David Kay
1. Saddam, at least as judged by those
scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs,
had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons
of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who
claim no direct knowledge of any ongoing prohibited activities readily
acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the
external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge
receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would
take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.
2. In the delivery systems area there were
already well advanced, but undeclared, ongoing activities that, if OIF had
not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges
at least up to 1,000 kilometers, well in excess of the U.N. permitted range
of 150 kilometers. These missile activities were supported by a serious
clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn.
3. In the chemical and biological weapons area we
have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine ongoing research and
development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities
of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities
would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities
and provided a technically trained cadre.
Let me conclude by returning to something I began
with today. We face a unique but challenging opportunity in our efforts to
unravel the exact status of Iraq's WMD program. The good news is that we do not
have to rely for the first time in over a decade on the incomplete, and often
false, data that Iraq supplied the U.N./IAEA; data collected by U.N. inspectors
operating with the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions
imposed; information supplied by defectors, some of whom certainly fabricated
much that they supplied and perhaps were under the direct control of the Iraqi
Intelligence Service; data collected by national technical collections systems
with their own limitations. The bad news is that we have to do this under
conditions that ensure that our work will take time and impose serious physical
dangers on those who are asked to carry it out.
Why should we take the time and run the risk to
ensure that our conclusions reflect the truth to the maximum extent that is
possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq? For those of us that are
carrying out this search, there are two reasons that drive us to want to
complete this effort.
First, whatever we find will probably differ from
prewar intelligence. Empirical reality on the ground is, and has always been,
different from intelligence judgments that must be made under serious
constraints of time, distance and information. It is, however, only by
understanding precisely what those difference are that the quality of future
intelligence and investment decisions concerning future intelligence systems
can be improved. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is such a
continuing threat to global society that learning those lessons has a high
imperative.
Second, we have found people, technical information
and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and
regions could accelerate global proliferation. Even in the area of actual
weapons there is no doubt that Iraq had at one time chemical and biological
weapons. Even if there were only a remote possibility that these pre-1991
weapons still exist, we have an obligation to American troops who are now there
and the Iraqi population to ensure that none of these remain to be used against
them in the ongoing insurgency activity.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20031002-1830-kay-text.html
Nerve Gas found
Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq |
|
Monday,
May 17, 2004
|
BAGHDAD,
Iraq — A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent (search) recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the
U.S. military said Monday.
Bush
administration officials told Fox News that mustard gas (search) was also recently discovered.
Two
people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin
incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the
shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical
exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.
"The
Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round
containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt (search),
the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The
round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was
discovered by a U.S. force convoy."
The
round detonated before it would be rendered inoperable, Kimmitt said, which
caused a "very small dispersal of agent."
However,
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results were from a field test,
which can be imperfect, and said more analysis was needed. If confirmed, it
would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States
based its case for war.
A
senior Bush administration official told Fox News that the sarin gas shell is
the second chemical weapon discovered recently.
Two
weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of
an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) — a U.S.
organization searching for weapons of mass destruction — and
others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made
the gas "ineffective."
They
believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which
former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made
his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year.
Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That,
combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas.
It
also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news;
they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.
An
official at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in New York said the commission is
surprised to hear news of the mustard gas.
"If
that's the case, why didn't they announce it earlier?" the official asked.
The
UNMOVIC official said the group needs to know more from the Bush administration
before it's possible to determine if this is "old or new stuff. It is
known that Iraq used sarin during the Iraq-Iran war, however.
Kimmitt
said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's
government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war (search). Experts believe both the sarin and mustard
gas weapons date back to that time.
"It
was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had
been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an
ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it
indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.
The
incident occurred "a couple of days ago," he added. The discovery
reportedly occurred near Baghdad International Airport.
Washington
officials say the significance of the find is that some chemical shells do
still exist in Iraq, and it's thought that fighters there may be upping their
attacks on U.S. forces by using such weapons.
The
round was an old "binary-type" shell in which two chemicals held in
separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin, Kimmitt said.
He
said he believed that insurgents who rigged the artillery shell as a bomb
didn't know it contained the nerve agent, and that the dispersal of the nerve
agent from such a rigged device was very limited.
The
shell had no markings. It appears the binary sarin agents didn't mix, which is
why there weren't serious injuries from the initial explosion, a U.S. official
told Fox News.
"Everybody
knew Saddam had chemical weapons, the question was, where did they go.
Unfortunately, everybody jumped on the offramp and said 'well, because we
didn't find them, he didn't have them,'" said Fox News military analyst
Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney.
"I
doubt if it's the tip of the iceberg but it does confirm what we've known ...
that he [Saddam] had weapons of mass destruction that he used on his own
people," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News. "This does
show that the fear we had is very real. Now whether there is much more of this
we don't know, Iraq is the size of the state of California."
But
there were more reasons than weapons to get rid of Saddam, he added. "We
considered Saddam Hussein a threat not just because of weapons of mass
destruction," Grassley said.
Iraqi
Scientist: You Will Find More
Gazi
George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime, told Fox News
he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either
buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the
device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.
George
said the finding likely will be the first in a series of discoveries of such
weapons.
"Saddam
is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's
gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west
to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George told
Fox News. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's
eyes.
"I'm
sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying
one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the
weapons.
Saddam,
when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas
filled artilleries but none that included sarin.
"I
think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas,
it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did ... it's not as
dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents
with other gases and substances, George said.
Officials:
Discovery Is 'Significant'
U.S.
officials told Fox News that the shell discovery is a "significant"
event.
Artillery
shells of the 155-mm size are as big as it gets when it comes to the
ordnance lobbed by infantry-based artillery units. The 155 howitzer can launch
high capacity shells over several miles; current models used by the United
States can fire shells as far as 14 miles. One official told Fox News that a
conventional 155-mm shell could hold as much as "two to five" liters
of sarin, which is capable of killing thousands of people under the right
conditions in highly populated areas.
The
Iraqis were very capable of producing such shells in the 1980s but it's not as
clear that they continued after the first Gulf War.
In
1995, Japan's Aum Shinrikyo (search) cult unleashed sarin gas in Tokyo's subways,
killing 12 people and sickening thousands. In February of this year, Japanese
courts convicted the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, and sentence him to
be executed.
Developed
in the mid-1930s by Nazi scientists, a single drop of sarin can cause quick,
agonizing choking death. There are no known instances of the Nazis actually
using the gas.
Nerve
gases work by inhibiting key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their
transmission. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered
quickly.
Antidotes
to nerve gases similar to sarin are so effective that top poison gas
researchers predict they eventually will cease to be a war threat.
Fox
News' Wendell Goler, Steve Harrigan, Ian McCaleb, Liza Porteus, James
Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Troops 'foil Iraq nerve gas bid'
|
Poland's
defence ministry claims its troops in Iraq have thwarted an attempt by
militants to buy a quantity of warheads containing nerve agents. The country's military intelligence chief
said troops had increased efforts to find the weapons when told they were on
the market for about $5,000 each. Gen Marek Dukaczewski said an attack using
warheads such as these was hard to imagine. But the US military
said the agent was so deteriorated it posed no threat.
Gen Dukaczewski was commenting on last
month's recovery by Polish troops of 17 warheads for a 1980s Soviet-era
rocket system. Tests indicated some warheads contain cyclosarin,
more powerful than sarin, Polish officials say. But the US military said that while two of
the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and
deteriorated as to be virtually harmless. "These rounds were determined to have
limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces," a
statement by the military said. Another 16 rockets found by the Polish
troops were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals, it
added, without explaining the discrepancy in numbers with the Polish version.
'Mortified' Gen Dukaczewski said the shells had been
purchased in June after individuals contacted officials in its military zone
in south-central Iraq.
"We were mortified by the information
that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000
apiece," he said. "An attack with such weapons would be
hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these
warheads." The general said the ammunition had been
buried in order to avoid it being discovered by UN weapons inspectors. They were located in a bunker in the Polish
sector, but officials refused to reveal their exact whereabouts. The former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein
produced cyclosarin in the 1980s to fight Iran but was bound by UN
resolutions following the 1991 Gulf War to destroy stocks and cease
production. However, inconclusive searches by
inspectors led the US to accuse Saddam Hussein of failing to surrender
chemical and biological weapons and were cited as one of the reasons for the
US-led invasion in 2003. In May this year, an artillery shell
apparently filled with sarin exploded at a roadside near Baghdad but caused
no serious injury. |
|
|
May 17, 2004
Sarin Artillery Shell Discovered In Iraq
It looks like the death of the WMD justification has been
somewhat exaggerated:
A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near
a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. Two people were treated
for "minor exposure," but no serious injuries were reported.
"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery
round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. "The round had been rigged
as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force
convoy.
Jon at QandO
(one of my favorite blogs) points out that only one shell has been found, and
it's likely of older manufacture -- so, he argues, it's insufficient to
re-energize the WMD argument all by itself. Fair enough, and after numerous
false alarms, rhetorical caution should be the order of the day anyway.
However, as the AP report notes, Saddam Hussein's regime was supposed to have
accounted for all of its WMD of prior manufacture after the first Gulf War, and
his failure to comply with repeated UN resolutions demanding that also was one
of the justifications for military action. This find certainly demonstrates
that rather than the "phantom WMD" argument made earlier -- where
Saddam's scientists just lied to him about having them -- is almost certainly
false.
Interestingly, John Kerry attacked the Bush argument just
three weeks ago on Hardball by arguing contradictorily that WMD had not been
found, but even if it is found, it wouldn't be in artillery
shells:
It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and --we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, two months from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery, so the fact is that as you peel it away I think it comes down to this larger ideological and neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect to Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could, and because they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with.
It appears that Kerry has some backpedaling to do -- as
well as other leading opponents of the war.
While I agree with Jon that one shell does not represent a
massive weapons program, one shell is enough to know that Iraq had produced WMD
as stated before, since no one manufactures a single, unique shell for one use,
especially one as complex as a binary-mixture shell. Since we never received
any data on their destruction, we are back again to the reasonable conclusion
that none of them were destroyed -- which definitely supports the
military action we took to depose Saddam.
I'm curious to see how the media treat this revelation.
Anyone believe that CBS will use it as its lead story tonight?
UPDATE: The BBC also carries
the story, and notes:
Gen Kimmitt said the dispersal of the nerve agent from a
device such as the homemade bomb was "limited".
"The former regime had declared all such rounds
destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," he said.
However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the
round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the
escalation of insurgent activity. He said the round dated back to the Iran-Iraq
war and coalition officials were not sure whether the fighters even knew what
it contained.
If ignorance was at play here, then it means that the shell
was plundered from a weapons cache somewhere, probably local to that area. CNN
says that this is not the first chemical-weapon shell discovered, either:
The general said the Iraqi Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, would determine if the shell's discovery indicated Saddam possessed chemical weapons before the U.S. invasion last year. Officials in Washington said another shell -- this one containing mustard gas -- was found 10 days ago in Iraq.
It appears that the WMD question is still very much on the
table. As our inspections (and the insurgents) deplete the standing weapons
stocks in Iraq, likely we will find much more. Even if the material turns out
to be old, it still demonstrates that the UN inspection process was about as
reliable as their administration of the Oil-For-Food Program.
UPDATE II: From Fox News:
"Everybody knew Saddam had chemical weapons, the question was, where did they go. Unfortunately, everybody jumped on the offramp and said 'well, because we didn't find them, he didn't have them,'" said Fox News military analyst Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney.
"I doubt if it's the tip of the iceberg but it does
confirm what we've known ... that he [Saddam Hussein] had weapons of mad
destruction that he used on his own people," Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, told Fox News. "This does show that the fear we had is very real.
Now whether there is much more of this we don't know, Iraq is the size of the
state of California." ...
Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under
Saddam's regime, told Fox News that he believes many similar weapons stockpiled
by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He
noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad
from the Syrian border.
George said the finding likely will just be the first in a
series of discoveries of such weapons. ...
Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in
fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.
"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a
nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did ... it's
not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister"
agents with other gases and substances," George said.
The shell was built for a 155-mm howitzer, the biggest
artillery piece in Iraq's arsenal. A 155 can toss shells as far as fourteen
miles, and the shell itself can contain as much as five litres of sarin --
enough to kill thousands of people.
Posted by Captain Ed at
May 17, 2004 10:40 AM
April 27, 2004
Poison gas plot against US Embassy in Jordan
Zarqawi: among the plotters
From the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
April 27, 2004 -- Diabolical al Qaeda terrorists confessed
yesterday to plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan
with sophisticated chemical bombs that could have wiped out 80,000 people.
Azmi al-Jayousi, leader of the terror cell, said the fiendish plan also targeted the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence and the prime minister's office.
The plot aimed to use trucks loaded with explosives and chemicals to unleash massive poison clouds, Jordanian officials said.
The authorities said a group of 10 suspects planned to pack the truck bombs with deadly cocktails of 71 lethal chemicals - including blistering agents, nerve gas and choking agents - and then simultaneously crash them into their targets.
A Jordanian government scientist said the well-trained terrorists - who had acquired 20 tons of chemicals - had planned to combine just the right amount of explosives to spread the lethal clouds without destroying the poisonous chemicals.
In a confession aired on Jordanian state TV, al-Jayousi, the head of the Jordanian cell of al Qaeda, admitted he was schooled in explosives and poisons in Afghanistan, then plotted in Iraq with Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
"I took explosives courses, high level, poisons, then I pledged allegiance to [al-Zarqawi], to obey him without any questioning," said al-Jayousi, who had marks on his face and neck.
Another suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, said al-Jayousi recruited him and asked him to buy and modify trucks so they could crash through gates and walls.
Upon exploding, the truck bombs would have released a toxic cloud that would have extended for three miles over Amman, the capital.
Al-Jayousi said he received $170,000 from al-Zarqawi via messengers from Syria to finance the truck-bomb plot and used part of it to buy tons of chemicals.
"According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the intelligence department will be destroyed," al-Jayousi said.
The headquarters are within a mile of a large medical center, a shopping mall and a residential area.
In raids last Tuesday, Jordanian officials said they seized 20 tons of chemicals and explosives as well as three trucks with specially modified plows designed to crash through security barricades.
The chemicals included sulfuric acid, a powerful blistering agent that can also be used to increase the strength of explosions.
Posted at
April 27, 2004 09:06 AM
Tuesday, Apr. 20, 2004
11:43 PM EDT
Lab Tests Could Link Saddam's Missing WMDs to Jordan Plot
Laboratory tests on the
poison gas smuggled from Syria into Jordan by al Qaeda terrorists earlier this
month could determine whether their weapons came from Iraq, intelligence expert
John Loftus said Monday.
"What they captured
was a poison gas that consisted of several chemicals to be mixed
together," Loftus told nationally syndicated radio host John Batchelor.
"This has to be a poison gas of what they call the G-series; Sarin, Somin,
Taubin and VX."
The terrorism expert
noted that, "VX is the only kind of nerve gas where the chemicals could be
safely mixed together in the field."
On Saturday, Jordanian
officials announced that they had seized WMD components from the cars of the al
Qaeda terror plotters, which had been intercepted just 75 miles from the Syrian
border. Experts said that had the WMD plot succeeded, it could have killed
20,000.
Jordan's King Abdullah
confirmed that the al Qaeda vehicles had come from Syria,
Noted Loftus:
"Syria dopes not
make VX nerve gas - only Saddam Hussein did. So it looks as if now that Israeli
intelligence and British intelligence were right - that Syria did indeed get a
hold of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction just before the war."
Loftus said lab tests of
the al Qaeda weapons would be key to establishing a link between the WMDs found
in Jordan and Saddam's missing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq, Act or Cower What would you do? (RAW) – Marquis
What
would you do? Thoughts
contributed by Steve Marquis
You are on your way home from the firing range when on the side of the road you observe a young girl being assaulted and apparently raped by a very large ex-convict. She cries for help. You are a small man, but you do have one bullet left. You stop and order the man to stop and free the girl. He tells you to beat it – that this is a private affair and that you are trespassing. To make matters worse another man comes out of the house dragging his crying battered wife by the hair and yells at you that his brother’s not doing you any harm and that this is none of your business. Besides, he hollers, “Are you going to butt in everybody’s affairs? Anyway, you can’t prove nothin! You probably just want her for yourself - don’t you!? Well, find someplace else to be the macho-man. Besides, Bub, I know where you live!” The girl whimpers quietly again as the man on the ground begins to maul and tear at her.
What do you do? You have two terrible situations with only moments to act before the dirty deed is accomplished and - only one bullet:
A
· Do you call the head of neighborhood watch and request a resolution be discussed at the next meeting condemning the act?
· Do you tell him “One more minute and you’ll call the cops?”
· Call the county health inspectors to see if he’s been castrated or at least is using a condom?
· Organize a peace march?
· Protest the mayor for harsh conditions the ex-con’s family endured because of his imprisonment?
Or do you:
B
· To avoid accidentally hurting the girl, you put yourself at personal risk and get as close as possible. You take aim and shoot the slime ball. You then aim at the fiend on the porch and hope he doesn’t call your bluff. You also hope the shot brings additional help from the neighbors who up to now had been cowering in the windows.
Does this harsh melodramatic rendering of reality help to put what has been going on in proper perspective?
What we started -Operation Iraqi Freedom – Neil Cavuto
Operation Iraqi Freedom |
|
Fox News Wednesday, March 26, 2003 Let me tell you what I see: I
see coalition forces within 50 miles of Baghdad. I
see them controlling two-thirds of a country the size of California. I
see angry Iraqi civilians turning on their own duplicitous soldiers. I
see children getting candy and adults water. I
see the image of U.S. prisoners not scaring our soldiers, but emboldening
them. I
see clarity over sandstorms and truth over treachery. I
see countries that mocked us worming their way into life in Iraq after us. I
see second-guessing from wannabe generals who couldn't be more clueless and
senseless name-calling from countries who couldn't be more hapless. I
see people without guts criticizing those who are giving their guts. I
see people who've never known a day of battle pontificating on what we should
do in battle. I
see Iraqis daring to dream of the democracy they were refused to have and
some treacherous Iraqi neighbors fearing the very same democracy they refused
to offer. I
see more countries jumping on our bandwagon and others desperate to be on any
bandwagon. I
see leaders of countries still condemning us, but investors in those
countries still investing in us. I
see markets that will go up and economies that will improve because I see a
coalition of the willing, teaching a thing or two to a collection of the
pathetic. I
see prisoners and soldiers alike who will come home and a nation who will
greet them with open arms and sincere hugs. I
see a hard battle but a great victory. I
see past the sum of our fears, to the whole of our greatness. And
finally I see a great nation defined by the good things it does and not the
bad things others say. I see those who will call me just another Yankee Doodle Dandy. And I see this very grateful journalist more than happy to say, damn right. |
A noble war – Marquis
|
||||||||||
Why We Must Fight
— and Now! William
J. Bennett
|
|
Three
weekends ago, millions of demonstrators across the globe protested on behalf
of "human rights." Their marches, slogans, placards and speeches
did not declaim against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, did not cite the human
rights reports detailing his tyranny and torture, did not take account the
plaints of Iraqis fortunate enough to live in exile. Rather, they protested the U.S. and the
U.K. and their efforts to topple Saddam and liberate Iraq. Now, we are
seeing more television advertisements along these lines, and even a
"virtual march on Washington." Just
after the celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it is appropriate to
remember his lament: "The world has never had a good definition of the
word ‘liberty.’" With Saddam flouting international law, and
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair attempting to enforce
it, portrayals of Bush as Adolf Hitler — as we saw and heard in the
"human rights" protests — betray an ignorance of liberty, an
ignorance of right and wrong, an ignorance of commonsense. Because Bush and
Blair are putting together a coalition of countries to oust Saddam, they are
labeled the warmongers and tyrants. We live in a confusing time indeed. Lincoln
described liberty by a useful analogy: "The shepherd drives the wolf
from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a
liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of
liberty." Lincoln made it clear who the sheep was and who the wolf was.
It is equally important to recognize who the liberator is. Those
who march against the U.S. and the U.K. today, those who condemn Bush and
Blair and remain silent when it comes to Saddam, are in league with the
wolf’s view that the shepherds are destroying liberty. The people of Iraq
will soon know what Afghanis know. The true wolf was devouring Afghanis, the
true shepherd saved them. It
is worth remembering what those in the former Soviet republics know and what
the anti-American Western street has forgotten: It was, and is, U.S. and
British resolve that truly liberates the oppressed and that defends the lives
and liberties of the free against the appetites and ill-will of the world’s
dictators. In
1998 then-President Bill Clinton stated: "What if he [Saddam] fails to
comply [with disarmament] and we fail to act? He will conclude that the
international community has lost its will. He will then go right on building
up his arsenal. Someday, someway, I guarantee you, he'll use that arsenal." Last year, former
Vice President Al Gore stated, "[W]e know that he [Saddam] has
stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons
throughout his country." It
is not President Bush who woke up one day to discover that Saddam was
making and harvesting weapons of mass destruction. Yet it is Bush who is
blamed for doing something about it. Saddam may be mad, but he is not a
scientist. He does not collect chemical and biological weapons for mere
pleasure and intrigue. Just ask the survivors of Halabja. So when Saddam
acts, it will be Bush and America who are blamed for inaction, for
appeasement. We will be liable for such blame because we are the only ones
who can do something about it. We
are not at war with Muslims or Arabs around the world; we are at war with
some Muslim and Arab leaders who misinterpret their religion and put a
primacy on war over peace and slavery over freedom. But among the leadership
in the world’s moral democracies there is no misinterpretation, and nowhere
is that more true than in the case of the U.S. This
is not a new role for us, but is a unique role we proudly inherit as the
world’s liberator. As Wolf Blitzer pointed out: "Over the past two
decades, almost every time U.S. military forces have been called into action
to risk their lives and limbs, it's been on behalf of Muslims. ... [T]o
assist the Afghan mujahadin … during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, to
liberate Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion of 1990, to help Somali Muslims
suffering at the hands of a warlord in Mogadishu, to help Muslims first in Bosnia
and then in Kosovo who faced a Serb onslaught, and more recently to liberate
Afghanistan from its Taliban and Al Qaeda rulers." Those
who protest against the U.S. just now are legatees of those who protested
against the U.S. in the 1980s, when we fought the focus of evil then, the
Soviet Union. But ask a former Soviet, or East Berliner, if he is better off
now than he was, say, 15 years ago. Ask a Nicaraguan. Ask a Bosnian
Muslim. U.S. resolve can be thanked for all that, even as those who protested
our defense and military postures marched in favor of appeasement. Indeed,
we live in a strange time when the anti-nuclear movement and its leaders of
yesterday can today suggest a course of inaction such that Saddam will
be able to join North Korea in becoming a nuclear power. The only logical
conclusion one can reach is that for the protesters today, weapons in the
hands of the U.S. are to be met with outrage while weapons in the hands
of Saddam are to be met with silence. We
seek to liberate Iraq today, not only because for Saddam "[t]orture
is not a method of last resort in Iraq, it is often the method of first
resort,"
according to Kenneth Pollack, President Clinton’s director of Gulf Affairs at
the NSC. We seek to liberate Iraq because after Sept. 11, 2001, we were put
on notice. We were put on notice that civilized people can no longer live in
a bubble and hope for the best. We were put on notice that there are fanatics
and tyrants who want nothing from us but our death. And this notice requires
action: the action of the brave, the action of the unthanked, the action of
the free. In
Iraq as in other contemporary situations, the responsibility to act has been
ours because the ability has been ours. The responsibility has been ours
because oppressed people look to us for their deliverance. There is a duty in
being the nation that Abraham Lincoln, speaking of our Declaration of
Independence, called "a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very
harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression." That is who we happen to
be. And it is an honor. William J. Bennett, chairman of Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, is a former secretary of Education and the author of Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, re-released and updated in paperback (Regnery, 2003). |
To Anti-War Pacifists - Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death - Patrick Henry
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
March 23, 1775
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at the truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the numbers of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received?
Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlement assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.
There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!