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Originally Posted by aimeecc
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You are doing what was required - provide supporting facts. Now you are indignant because forced to do what your were required? I am amused ... an emotion.
Your Washington Post citation discusses what would be an insurgent lab attempting to create some unknown chemicals. Why do you post this as proof of Saddam's WMD program? It is clearly not. A slew of dangerous chemicals not assembled to produce anything. Meanwhile we make semiconductors with same chemicals that were also used as chemical weapons. Does that prove I too am building a WMD? And still none of this has anything to do with Saddam as aimeecc claims. Even that Fallujah lab was apparently created after Saddam was gone.
Your usa.today article from 2004 of what Polish troops suspected was later found, as I recall, to not be weaponized chemicals. Meanwhile, periodically found were empty shells that were once part of Saddam's WMD program. Empty shells because that WMD program was destroyed by UN sanctions - again contradicting aimeecc's assertions.
David Kay who led the ISG effort strongly believed he would find these WMDs. But as reported repeatedly, no such weapons - including chemical weapons - were found.
One fact that still puzzles all is where something like 35% of the chemical weapons went. It was well known (except where spin remains popular) from interviews that Saddam ordered the destruction of his WMDs in 1995. Also known is that records of what and how much were destroyed where were poorly maintained or did not exist.
When he resigned in January 2004 as head of ISG, and from Fiasco by Thomas Ricks
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David Kay ... announced that he concluded that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons stockpiles in the 1990s, but had tried to bluff about still having them in order to maintain an image of power. "Everyone was wrong", Kay said. ...
In October 2004, Charles Duefler, who succeeded Kay as head of the ISG, produced the groups final findings. There was no such arsenal, the weapons inspector concluded in a one-thousand page report. Saddam has eliminated his weapons in the early 1990s, but had tried to perserve the intellectual and physical ability to restart the weapons programs at some point. Duelfer also said that he had found no evidence of an effort to buy uranium from other countries. And he testified to the Senate that, as some analysts had suspected, the aluminum tubes Iraq was buying, which the Bush administration had made central to the arugment that Iraq was developing a nuclear capability, were indeed for conventional military rockets.
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Kay further explains where so much of these false rumors come from.
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"This was a vice president who was well read in the intelligence and knew the details of the WMD issue" ... But Kay did see a problem in Cheney's analytical view: "He kept remembering little facts that he thought proved big conclusions. The problem with intelligence is that little facts often don't prove anything, let alone something big. They're just pieces of puzzles - sometimes just pieces that don't even make a puzzle."
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Let's move on to that Duefler report - the final ISG report in October 2004. Key findings from Regime Strategic Intent:
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Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted. ...
Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD ...
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991 ... Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. ...
The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam.
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IOW Saddam would have restarted his WMD programs due to an Iranian threat. But he had no plans and had no actions. aimeecc ignored that important fact. Saddam had no plans and had no actions. Saddam needed sanctions to end so that he could address his Iranian threat. He had no intent to attack America despite popular myth (spin) that suggested otherwise. Saddam did everything necessary to meet UN restrictions while still bluffing - because Saddam's threat was Iran - not America or Israel.
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While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.
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Above quote directly contradicts aimeecc's claims.
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Iraq’s CW program was crippled by the Gulf war and the legitimate chemical industry, which suffered under sanctions, only began to recover in the mid-1990s.
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Saddam did not even have capacity to start a legitamite chemical industry - let alone a weapons program.
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Iraq implemented a rigorous and formalized system of nationwide research and production of chemicals, but ISG will not be able to resolve whether Iraq intended the system to underpin any CW related efforts.
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As noted above, even I worked in transistor factories that use chemicals also used for chemical warfare. Using spin, both Saddam and I could be accused of a chemical weapons program.
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Because of the risk of discovery and consequences for ending UN sanctions, Iraq would have significantly jeopardized its chances of having sanctions lifted or no longer enforced if the UN or foreign entity had discovered that Iraq had undertaken any weaponization activities.
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Which means Saddam had no ongoing WMD programs or WMD weapons stored as amieecc would assume.
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Iraq initially chose not to fully declare its CW weapons and infrastructure, a decision usually attributed to Husayn Kamil and implemented by senior personnel including his senior deputy, Amer al-Sa’adi.
• Anticipating that inspections would be an ineffective and short-lived inconvenience, Iraqi leaders decided in early April 1991 to hide signifi cant components of the CW program, including weapons, precursors, and equipment.
• Following a particularly invasive IAEA inspection in late-June 1991, Saddam ordered Dr. Mahmud Faraj Bilal, former deputy of the CW program, to destroy all hidden CW and BW materials, according to an interview with Bilal after OIF.
• Available evidence indicates Iraq destroyed its hidden CW weapons and precursors, but key documentation and dual-use equipment were retained and were later discovered by inspectors. ...
In August 1995, ... Saddam’s son-in-law and head of Iraq’s WMD programs, Husayn Kamil, fled the country. Saddam made a decision at that time to declare virtually all hidden information and material they felt was significant on Iraq’s programs, turning over WMD documentation, including 12 trunks of CW documents.
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But then tw has been saying same all along. Saddam terminated all chemical weapons programs in direct contradition to posts by aimeecc.
aimeecc - your interpretation of the final SIG report forgets to include parts where Saddam then gave up all his chemical weapons. Forgetting that part is called telling a half truth - also described as spin. Such forgetfulness is also found among those others who use poltical agendas rather than facts. Saddam was not a threat to anyone in 2001. Why do you believe he had WMDs when he clearly did not? Why do you forget to mention the bottom line conclusions bluntly stated by both David Kay and by Deufler's reports? Saddam had no WMDs no matter how you spin it.