http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html - - - Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.
Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions. "This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war." The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq. He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue. "It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them. - - - So much for "no WMDs found". While I agree these are small potatoes compared to what we believed we'd find, it's quite possible we haven't found everything, and it's possible what we thought he had was hidden somewhere else. And even these "small potatoes" can kill. But in any case, for those who are interested here is a factul reference in the declassified summary one can point to in order to refute the "no WMDs found" argument. You cannot say "no WMDs were found" all you can say is "only about 500 chemical WMD munitions were found so far." If these had been found right away, when every stray fart was screened for WMD content in the initial post-invasion search, then our political dialog would be very different right now... But they were found well after the official news cycle, as evidenced by how little play this got in the media yesterday. I also don't think it's reasonable to say they were "secure" before the invasion but the invasion made them "insecure". They were dispersed to god-only-knows-where so that the inspections would never find them, either, which raises the question in my mind if Hussein even knew where all of them were. As Leland might say, "plausible deniability". And I definitely don't think it's fair to say "Bush lied" -- clearly he believed there was significant stockpiles there and on that basis made a good part of his decision (Geore Tenet's "slam dunk"), which is one reason why he's not trumpeting this. The idea that this was all fabrication of some pinheads at PNAC also doesn't float because, for one thing, these WMDs are real, and the suspicions about Iraq's capabilities and potential collaboration with Al Qaeda have been around for years and were equally pumped by Democrats and Republicans in their turn. I will gladly pull out the quotes again, not to mention the 1998 ABC News story centered around the 1998 indictment of Bin Laden that alleges that very connection, all over again. It's funny how they sunk down the memory whole when it was politically convenient. Talk about an inconvenient truth... - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
