General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
Okay, we found a buried MiG-25, isn't that a "large and capable" air
force?

You need to calibrate your "humor" switch.

Why? One aircraft isn't an "air force", especially not one buried in
sand. Claiming "We said he had a massive air force! Look! See his air
force!" falls down somewhat.

I'm not really seeing anything funny - I've got family currently being
shot at because of this.

Yet which we knew he was working on.

Which he claimed was R&D only, with no weapons listed as produced from the
effort.

Of course, Iraqi accounting was always honest and believable?

Trouble is, R&D produces prototypes, which were "suspected" and not
accounted for, and one of which *may* have turned up. (But if this was a
serious WME threat, where's the rest of the stockpile, and the
production line?)

This was a weapon. It was not reported.

And the discrepancy was noted years ago.

Bad on him; you can defend
Saddam all you want in this regard, but it is clear he did not provide a
"full, final, and complete" accounting of all WMD's he had built,

Of course he didn't! Trouble is, even *he* didn't know what he had.


And it was claimed that he was hiding hundreds of tons of chemicals and
entire production lines, and that was why we had to invade and secure
that threat Right Now. Forty-five minutes from order to firing, with
weapons able to reach as far as Cyprus - the UK Government claimed that
was its experts' judgement. (Trouble is, when analysts say 'probably
not' and the political advisors suggest 'can we delete that "not" to
tighten up the sentence?' then the message changes a little in
transit...)

As it turns out... "whoops", to date.

Or that predated 687.

Big question mark. Saddam did not declare any rounds produced of this nature
at any time--being as his disclosures did include some pretty "low density"
items (numbers in the single and double digits for other systems), then why
was this left out?

You've got him in custody, ask him.

Neither UNSCOM nor the later UNMOVIC were able to reach
any kind of definitive conclusion about exactly *what* the Iraqis had or had
not been able to do, or did, in terms of manufacturing 155mm binary rounds.

Which makes insisting that they must be recent, something of a stretch,
no? They were strongly suspected of having a R&D effort aimed at such
rounds, and Iraq denied it, but then if you believe the Hussein regime
then the US military was exterminated outside Baghdad and are currently
having their bellies barbecued in Hell.

Perhaps yet again it might be wise to wait for the results of the
detailed analysis before making too many firm claims.

Interestingly, Saddam did not see fitt to even acknowledge the R&D effort
(which he was required to do) until after it was discovered via some
documentaion by UNSCOM inspectors. But hey, you still want to defend him
here, right?

No, I'm just accustomed to the fact that he was both an accomplished
liar and that he may not have known as much as he believed about the
projects he sponsored.

Shades of the Hitler days: you can report "encouraging progress" on the
250,000-ton fantasy battleship and get more funding to stay in Kiel, or
you can admit it's a ludicrous pipedream and you and your entire design
team can pick up your rifles and go fight on the Eastern Front.

We're stuck with what we can find after a year and a half of searching,
for the "true picture" of what he had. Is the US so grossly incompetent
that, having much of the regime's top staff in custody and under
interrogation, that it can't get *one* of them to admit to one of the
Vast Concealed Stockpiles or the Hidden Underground Factories?

Because out of 200,000 rounds produced, one round turning up is absolute
proof?

Back to the old, "How many weapons does a violation make?" argument, eh?

Yep. One elderly shell isn't a threat. That's a fact we can both agree
on. You measure chemical weapons in terms of tons of agent.

Do I scent desperation here?

No, you scent disbelief that folks are still trying to defend Saddam and
claim that he was not guilty of continuing proscribed WMD activities, or of
hiding those that he had already conducted and wanted to keep out of sight.

So, where are the weapons? There was supposed to be a threat. Where is
it?

From "Hussein may be exporting kilotons of WME to his US-hating
neigbbours" we're down to "we've found one or two decade-old shells".

That would be your quote, I presume? I mean, we all now know how willing you
are to doctor/create a quote and assign it to another poster, right?

I don't doctor quotes. If I quote, I make it properly attributable so it
can be checked. If you don't see a name on it, then it's not a quote.
(Who would I be quoting? If I write "Kevin Brooks is a big fat poopie
head" then who, precisely, is supposed to have said this and how could
you challenge them?)

I told you this already - I'm willing to be charitable and accept you
ignored it in a fit of pique, but if you prefer I'll find a less amiable
interpretation.

I find false accusations unpleasant, personally, but again you may just
have been indulging in histrionics and refused to read it.

There were supposedly vast factories and stockpiles of chemical and/or
biological weapons. It seems our intelligence was incorrect, since those
vast stockpiles and the factories that produced them remain elusive.

Our intel in those regards may indeed have been incorrect.

You don't think?

But that does not
change the FACT that Saddam was violating the requirements set forth before
him.

I'm sure he had some unpaid parking tickets too. So what? Less than a
ton is "research quantities" for other nations interested in
self-defence against chemical weapons, and there's the minor
_realpolitik_ that Iraq still has a border and a recent bloody war with
Iran, who is *also* an enthusiastic producer of chemical weapons. Tricky
to handle that one, unless you want to commit US troops to protecting
the Shi'a south against an Iranian rescue from Iraq's hateful
oppression...


There was meant to be a major threat. There was, allegedly, "solid
evidence" confirming it. There were significant quantities of weapons
and we claimed to know where they were.

Whoops.

Gee, I wonder *why* he was so interested in ricin, which is admittedly
not likely to be the best of battlefield agents, but would likely perform
nicely if used by terrorist types, or his own intel folks (you remember, the
same guys who were implicated in that kill-the-former-President scheme?).

Because it's cheap and easy. You can cook up ricin in a domestic kitchen
(we arrested a group doing just that in London). You can talk up how
hugely lethal it is and how many thousands you could kill with Just This
Test-Tube! While carefully skipping over the inconvenient problems of
administration (best-known ricin victim is Georgi Markov - you're going
to get an agent close enough to a President to jab an umbrella in his
leg?) Ricin just needs castorbeans and some commercial equipment to
produce.

Chicken and egg - were they after ricin for its enormous battlefield
effectiveness, or were they proudly developing a hugely lethal
biological weapon for the glory of Saddam Hussein (may blessings rain
from Heaven on His name) with resources they could easily get hold of
and which they'd get funding and prestige for?

The claim was that there was a clear and obvious threat. Where was it?

Saddam continuing to work towards proscribed goals is good enough for me. I
personally don't think he was the kind of guy I'd want to be controlling
*any* WMD's, in whatever quantities; you may differ, but I could care less
to be honest.

I'd be worried about the *confirmed* threats, but that's just me.

Then of course there were the other (non-WMD) related reasons
for conducting this operation--the ones that you can't seem to understand do
indeed exist?

The ones you won't state?

Or perhaps I'm mistaken and you *did* state them - in which case I
apologise (again) for missing them. Could you point me to them, please?
(asked again)

What made Iraq so special compared to more evident proliferators and
producers of WME?

I asked eighteen months ago and never got an answer.

Because your question remains as stupid now as it was then--and yes, you got
an answer, you just can't seem to (or more accurately don't want to) grasp
it.

No, I didn't. "It's Iraq and it's a special case." was the best summary.
Which may be true, but the evasiveness is an automatic hackle-raiser.

No standard playbook for handling threats/potential threats in the
geopolitical realm--it is all situationally dependent. I suspect you can
understand that, but apparently as usual you just find it easier to ignore
the obvious in your quest to, for some unknown reason, defend Saddam as the
poor whipping boy.

Or perhaps I'm more interested in real issues than demonising Saddam
Hussein?

BTW, did you notice that the Saudis have again been in
AQ's target ring?

But how can this be? Aren't all the al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq? How can
there be terrorists in other countries?

You remember--the country that IIRC you were claiming was
more of a threat to the US and more deserving of US action than Iraq?

That's okay - the hugely efficient Saudi military and security services
will handle the problem.

If they can't, the large US presence in the country will handle it.


(Your last sentence is extremely troubling, though. How much do you
actually understand about the general situation in Saudi Arabia, and the
particulars of the House of Saud's relationship with the Wahabbi sect
and al-Qaeda's reaction to all the above? Or do you really believe that
"because al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi then the house of Saud must be their
sworn enemies and our true and trusted allies?")


--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk