Powell: No WMD will be found

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

I'm sure the families of 1000 dead troops and the countless innocent citizens of Iraq will be happy to know there was never a threat. At least we are letting North Korea build up their weapons program so when we attack them there is less pie on our face

Makes you wonder what other things the GW admin was wrong about despite their strong language?


Powell: Unlikely WMD Stocks Will Be Found in Iraq

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made the case to the world that pre-war Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said on Monday he now thought these will probably never be found.

"I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles," Powell told lawmakers when asked about the intelligence behind his Feb. 5, 2003, U.N. Security Council speech laying out U.S. arguments for the war with Iraq that began six weeks later.

Powell's latest comments appeared to be his most explicit to date suggesting that the central argument for President Bush decision to invade Iraq -- the belief it possessed weapons of mass destruction -- was flawed.

As early as January Powell said it was an "open question" whether or not such arms would be found and he conceded the possibility Iraq might not have had any when the war began.

Bush himself had often said that even if no such weapons are found he did the right thing in invading Iraq in March 2003 and toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, arguing that the country has been liberated from brutal dictatorship.

U.S. officials have also said that whether or not it had stockpiles in 2003, Iraq was a threat because it had possessed and used chemical weapons in the past, notably to kill 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988 (So why didn't we use this excuse in 1991?).

The war in Iraq, in which more than 1,000 U.S. troops have died, and the violent insurgency that has developed since the U.S. invasion are a major issues in Bush's reelection battle against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Powell made his comments as Charles Duelfer, the CIA - named leader of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is working on a report about his findings that was expected to be completed in the next few weeks.

Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, said as he left the post in January that he believed there were no large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when Washington went to war.

While he had reservations about the state of Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons when he spoke before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, Powell insisted at that time that it had stocks of both biological and chemical weapons.

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more," Powell said then, at one point holding up a vial of simulated biological agent -- an image broadcast around the world.

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," he said at the time.

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you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[tunaplanet 0]

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Powell: No WMD will be found

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I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles

Who sees the differences in those 2 statements?

Forty-two

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

what about this one:

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more," Powell said then, at one point holding up a vial of simulated biological agent -- an image broadcast around the world.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[mnischalke 0]

That statement has been proven to be correct.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[tunaplanet 0]

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That statement has been proven to be correct.

Maybe he doesn't watch the news.

Forty-two

[ChasingBlueSky 0]

Quote

Quote

That statement has been proven to be correct.

Maybe he doesn't watch the news.

I have my Tivo set to record many news programs. Its fun watching Fox and CNN with thier talking points. I also watch the BBC news. I tend to keep the Daily Show for at least a week at a time.

Yes, SH HAD those weapons. In the 20th century.

_________________________________________
you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me....
I WILL fly again.....

[mnischalke 0]

yeah, guess not.

I can tell you that I have at least one friend who is very happy that whatever Iraqi engineer put the Sarin into the two mortars that exploded near him didn't know a thing about mixing Sarin with a binary agent to prevent it from burning up with the explosion.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[livendive 8]

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That statement has been proven to be correct.

Please elaborate. I've yet to hear of the discovery of biological weapons or the capability to rapidly produce many more.

Blues,
Dave

"I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!"
(drink Mountain Dew)

[billvon 3,120]

> That statement has been proven to be correct.

Please post a link to something that details the biological weapons facility we discovered in Iraq after we invaded. (Remember, just because you saw it on FOX doesn't mean it's correct.)

[billvon 3,120]

>Who sees the differences in those 2 statements?

I do! It will be another few months before he says the former.

[tonyhays 86]

To liberal sheep that doesn't count. It has to be massive stockpiles for it to count as a WMD

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

[mnischalke 0]

How about from the CIA?

Unbiased enough for you?

David Kay's Testimony.

Quote

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. The discovery of 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 UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

*A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

*A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

*Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.


*New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

*Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

*A line of UAVs 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.

*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 UN.

*Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.


*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...

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[TypicalFish 0]

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To liberal sheep that doesn't count. It has to be massive stockpiles for it to count as a WMD

I guess to conservative sheep twelve gas shells that are twenty years old DO?

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[billvon 3,120]

>Unbiased enough for you?

Inaccurate. The biological weapons factories he described do not exist; they were not found despite the CIA's (and the administration's) claims that they knew exactly where they were.

I don't know if you noticed this, but the CIA failed miserably in determining the state of Iraq's WMD programs before the war. Repeating incorrect information does not make it any more correct.

[tonyhays 86]

If the shell that mnischalke's friend was near was mixed/used/whatever properly and several thousand people died, would you be singing a different tune?

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

[mnischalke 0]

yeah, you're right. 100,000 dead kurds weren't really dead at all. They were play acting.

hmmmm why this then?

Quote

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[mnischalke 0]

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I guess to conservative sheep twelve gas shells that are twenty years old DO?

Research how many kids are killed in Afghanistan by 25-year-old mines. Most weapons do not have a shelf life like a loaf of bread.

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[pajarito 0]

Quote

Quote

Powell: No WMD will be found

Quote

I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles

Who sees the differences in those 2 statements?

Oh...oh..oh....I do..I do...

[billvon 3,120]

>100,000 dead kurds weren't really dead at all. They were play acting.

Those were chemical weapons. The statement was:

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more."

That statement is wrong. You can make up some of your own statements and prove them right, but in terms of what Powell said, he was wrong.

His last statement was interesting. "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent." Works if you assume 'conservative' is synonymous with 'wrong.'

[TypicalFish 0]

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If the shell that mnischalke's friend was near was mixed/used/whatever properly and several thousand people died, would you be singing a different tune?

What does one have to do with the other? My point is that there should be SOME standard of proof or level of threat besides , "Oh, well we found some shells, see?". Where are those huge quantities that made Saddam such a threat that we had to invade? I am not saying they aren't there (or weren't), but there still needs to be SOME accountability, don't you think?

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[TypicalFish 0]

Quote

Quote

I guess to conservative sheep twelve gas shells that are twenty years old DO?

Research how many kids are killed in Afghanistan by 25-year-old mines. Most weapons do not have a shelf life like a loaf of bread.

NOT the point I was making. The public was led to believe that there were EXTENSIVE stockpiles that could be deployed almost instantaneously. I think the question is: "Where are they"?

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET

[tunaplanet 0]

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I think the question is: "Where are they"?

I covered this earlier. We found some. It's old news. I specifically remember us finding Russian-made R-60s with 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a high explosive warhead.

Guess that wouldn't be considered a WMD, huh?

Forty-two

[mnischalke 0]

Damn, you're right again.

I guess the large amounts of casein, yeast extract, thioglycollate broth and peptone Iraq imported since 1991 were because they were trying to find the cure for cancer, huh?

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[mnischalke 0]

If a kid can lose a matchbox car in a six-inch deep sandbox, I guess we have some work cut out for us to prove it to you huh?

mike

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills--You know, like nunchuk skills, bow-hunting skills, computer-hacking skills.

[TypicalFish 0]

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If a kid can lose a matchbox car in a six-inch deep sandbox, I guess we have some work cut out for us to prove it to you huh?

Absolutely. What is wrong with wanting proof that my country did not go to war over a supposition? Especially when the ADMINISTRATION can't agree on the validity of that supposition.

And liberals are the "sheep"?

"I gargle no man's balls..." ussfpa on SOCNET