US says Iraq arms plan relied on deceit (What Kay will report?)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/28/us_says_iraq_arms_plan_relied_on_deceit/

Investigators searching for Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction will report next month that Saddam Hussein's regime spread nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons plans and parts throughout the country to deceive the United Nations, according to senior Bush administration and intelligence officials.

Once freed of inspections and international sanctions, the weapons programs were intended to be pulled together quickly to manufacture substantial quantities of deadly gases and germs, the investigators will argue, although the development of a nuclear weapon would probably take many months, if not years.

After more than four months of searching hundreds of sites in Iraq, the team of US military officers and intelligence agents headed by former UN arms inspector David Kay has not produced hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction. US officials have not ruled out that stocks of weapons will still be found or were secreted out of the country before the war.

But the investigators' conclusions, which have emerged from interviews with senior Bush administration officials and multiple intelligence sources with access to the team's findings, make the White House's best case so far that Hussein hid an outlawed weapons program. A primary justification for toppling the regime was the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The sources say Kay -- who has in the past hinted in general terms at Iraq's deception in hiding a weapons program -- will build a strong, but largely circumstantial case that Hussein dispersed his weapons programs. The case will be based on interviews with captured Iraqi leaders, documents from government files, discoveries including a pre-1991 nuclear centrifuge for enriching uranium found buried in a scientist's backyard garden, and components of possible weapons systems found in various areas of the country.

eom

This is the best they could come up with?

They could change a pencil into a WMD in a week. Ya gotta admit - thats really something...

And can anyone give me the scoop on "Saddam's Bombmaker" - Khidhir Hamza - that Hannity loved to trot out as proof of WMD's. I haven't seen him on any shows lately. Has he been completely debunked? Is he one of Chalabi's group?

...but Hamza left the nuclear program in 91 or 92. Went to Northern Iraq (out of Saddam control) not long after that, then left the country completely by 1995. So exactly what kind of "evidence" could he provide? Not much, outside of where the program was prior to the Persian Gulf War I. Funny, that's all they keep trotting out there. "We know Saddam had weapons." No one disputes he had them in the eighties and into the early nineties. I had a stripper girlfriend back then too, but it doesn't mean I'm still sleeping with her today!

"spread nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons plans and parts"?

Come on, any 10 year old could probably download such plans off the internet. And parts? Like that bottle of bleach in my laundry room?

We blew up a whole country and killed 1000's of people because someone might have kept some bleach and fertilizer, that could be turned into weapons of mass destruction, that could be launched within 45 minutes?

Um? Nixon resigned the presidency because some goons messed up a burglary. No one even got killed or hurt. We impeached Clinton because he cheated on his wife. Again, no one killed or injured at least not physically. Yet, W repeatedly lying and starting a war based on those lies is still okay?

It will be more of exactly the same bullshit Powell pulled at the UN...

Non-scientist David Kay is taking a starting position of WMD programs and working backward to create an evidence trail of deception. I'll wait until the entire report comes out, but from the Globe piece, it sounds weak.

How would the Liyin Liars reacted to this information or this question:

"So Mr Lying President now that you know you are operating on false information spread by Sadam in order to fake out his enemies in the middle east will you call off the invasion since it seems there is no real threat posed by Sadam?"

Does anyone really believe that they would have changed anything they have done to date?

They would have come up with some other lie to keep the public in fear!

he has an ax to grind{the one his corporate masters give him} and he's cagey. he is certainly capable of lying about the extent of the dangers of the ''weapons programs''. and will do convincingly -- since he'll be preaching to the converted -- and the media isn't going to know if he's lying or not.
there's going to be no one around to provide a reality check.

I try to read his blog at least a couple of times a week.

Denial and Deception Practices of WMD Proliferators: Iraq and Beyond, Washington Quarterly, Vol 18 No. 1 Winter 1995, pp 88-105.

One wonders how Operation Rockingham will figure into all this.

and sanctions in place? Sounds like they were working.

The unfortunate truth is that they will release this and the vast majority of people will accept that they "found" what they told us they would find. The most important thing for bushco is that they generate some news stories with the words "found" and "WMD" in the same sentence without that pesky NOT in between. If they have to tack "programs" and all kinds of qualifiers into the fine print -- or the lower paragraphs that no one reads -- that's just fine.

Be prepared with your facts to refute this argument because it is most certainly coming. On or about September 15.

Have they been allowed access to the magical documents?

That word has backfire written all over it. The Bushies and their leader (Cheney) have no case if they find no real WMDs, no real link to al Qaeda. Yes, there was deceit regarding Saddam's ability to threaten the U.S. all right.

"Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the argument over going to combat "was whether the threat was so imminent and dangerous that we had to go to war. If Kay says there was potential there, that refutes the administration's rationale for going to war. No one ever argued there was nothing there. I still suspect we'll find remnants of the program, perhaps nerve or mustard gas or anthrax samples.""
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I will definiately watch to see how the administration talks about the Kay report to be released in the next few weeks. I believe it is to be released in the next few weeks.

White House website says, among other things, "500 tons of sarin, mustard gas and VX" in Iraq.

My calculator says 500 tons = one million pounds.

Hussein spread one million pounds of sarin across the desert?

Damn.

I hope Kay wears his rubbers. Hot out there.