New Article On Speicher Case.

"Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time.
The United States just didn't believe him.

So it took the most powerful military in the world
18 years to find the remains of the only U.S. Navy
pilot shot down in an aerial battle in the 1991 Gulf
War.

Michael "Scott" Speicher's bones lay 18 inches
deep in Iraqi sand, more or less right where a group
of Iraqis had led an American search team in 1995.

The search for Speicher was frustrated by two
wars, mysteriously switched remains, Iraqi
duplicity and a final tip from a young nomad in
Anbar province."

See:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091128/...hidden_in_sand

On Nov 29, 1:12*pm, wrote:
"Saddam Hussein was telling the truth, this time.

Which of these men lied and which told the truth on WMD: Saddam
Hussein, Tony Blair or George Bush?


Glad they found his remains.

Eunometic wrote:

Which of these men lied and which told the truth on WMD: Saddam
Hussein, Tony Blair or George Bush?


Hussein lied, Blair and Bush did not.

On Nov 29, 9:22*am, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:
Eunometic wrote:

Which of these men lied and which told the truth on WMD: *Saddam
Hussein, Tony Blair or George Bush?

Hussein lied, Blair and Bush did not.

Ah, so, desuka

Blair told Iraq had no WMD
GORDON RAYNER, LONDON
November 27, 2009

FORMER British prime minister Tony Blair received intelligence that
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had been ''dismantled''
10 days before Britain invaded Iraq, the Chilcot inquiry has been
told.

The British Foreign Office did not believe Iraq had nuclear missiles,
but Mr Blair told Parliament Saddam was still a threat to the Middle
East with chemical and biological weapons that could be launched at 45
minutes' notice.

But Sir William Ehrman, the director of international security at the
Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002, told the inquiry into the Iraq war:
''We were getting, in the very final days before military action, some
[intelligence] on chemical and biological weapons that they were
dismantled and [Saddam] might not have the munitions to deliver it.

''On March 10 [2003] we got a report saying the chemical weapons might
have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn't yet ordered their
reassembly, and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal
of agents.''

Despite the information, coalition forces invaded Iraq on March 20,
2003.

The issue of Iraq's ability to produce or use weapons of mass
destruction is central to the inquiry, which must determine whether Mr
Blair misled Parliament over reasons for going to war.

Tim Dowse, the head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office
between 2001 and 2003, told the inquiry Iraq had not been "top of the
list" for nations causing concern about the spread of weapons of mass
destruction in the two years before the invasion.

Mr Dowse said Iran, North Korea and Libya had caused far greater alarm
than Saddam's regime. He said that when he came to the job in 2001,
both Libya and Iran had been placed ahead of Iraq.

And while Saddam had supported Palestinian terrorist groups, the
assessments worked on by his officials described the regime's contacts
with al-Qaeda as "quite sporadic".

"After 9/11, we concluded Iraq actually stepped further back. They did
not want to be associated with al-Qaeda. They weren't natural
allies,'' he said.

The Foreign Office ranked Iraq only the fourth most dangerous rogue
state trying to develop WMD in 2001.

Sanctions made it virtually impossible for Saddam to restart his
nuclear program, the inquiry heard, and even without sanctions it
would likely have taken five years for it to build a nuclear weapon.
The hearing continues.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/blair...1126-juj4.html

On Nov 30, 1:22*am, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:
Eunometic wrote:

Which of these men lied and which told the truth on WMD: *Saddam
Hussein, Tony Blair or George Bush?

Hussein lied, Blair and Bush did not.

Not according to General(Rtd) Sir Hugh "Michael" Rose KCB, CBE, DSO,
QGM often known as Mike Rose.

As well as commanding 22 SAS, he was Commander UNPROFOR Bosnia in 1994
during the Yugoslav Wars.

He has called for Tony Blair prosecution as a war criminal.

That would be equivalent to Collin Powel calling for the impeachment
of President Bush.

Misleading Parliament is taken very seriously in westminister systems.

In article
,
(Eunometic) wrote:

Not according to General(Rtd) Sir Hugh "Michael" Rose KCB, CBE, DSO,
QGM often known as Mike Rose.

As well as commanding 22 SAS, he was Commander UNPROFOR Bosnia in 1994
during the Yugoslav Wars.

He has called for Tony Blair prosecution as a war criminal.

Good fellow! I'd missed that.

That would be equivalent to Collin Powel calling for the impeachment
of President Bush.

Misleading Parliament is taken very seriously in westminister systems.

Indeed. The clearest case of that is thus:

He told Parliament that Saddam Hussain's Iraq could strike at the UK
with WMD in 45 minutes.

That claim was created by conflation and exaggeration of several pieces
of information, viz:

a) The Iraqi military had a special communications system that was
supposed to be for passing orders to WMD-equipped units. That was
supposed to deliver messages from the president (Saddam) to the units
within 45 minutes. Well, you'd kind of expect any nation that thought it
had WMD to have something like that.

b) The most optimistic estimates of the maximum range of Iraq's extended
Scuds, with no serious payload, /might/ allow them to reach the British
sovereign base areas in Cyprus. Which are, sort of, part of the UK.

c) It seemed distinctly possible that Iraq had chemical weapons and
possibly biological ones. The UK government claimed that this was a
certainly known fact.

This is rather different from chemical-tipped Scuds raining down on
London, but that was the impression that was carefully given. Mr Blair
may have avoided outright lying to Parliament, by carefully-chosen
words, but misleading it was clear at the time, to those following he
details of the news.

The only way under British law - I'm making no claims about US law -
that an attack on Iraq was legal without the UN resolution that never
happened was in immediate self-defence. So those WMD really needed to be
there. And they weren't.

Since then, I have made it my business to try to keep my MP -
fortunately, not a Labour one - updated on actual facts as opposed to
spin on defence matters. And I might consider voting Labour again when
the Parliamentary Labour Party (the caucus of all Labour MPs) votes to
send Mr Blair for trial at the International Criminal Court, or other
competent body. The matter does not seem as important as that to most of
the population, since Labour were re-elected in 2005. But it is that
important to me.

--
John Dallman, , HTML mail is treated as probable spam.