No uranium, no munitions, no missiles, no programmes

kirill wrote:


"Peter Glasø" wrote:

Yes,Saddam turned out to be a really nice
guy after all.And he is sorely
missed,right?

It was worth every single of those 20,000+ civilian
lives to remove this
ex-CIA puppert, right?


"Michael Petukhov"
skrev i melding
om...
http://www1.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_art...=21801&lang=en

No uranium, no munitions, no missiles, no
programmes

05 October 2003

As the first progress report from the Iraq
Survey Group is released,
Cambridge WMD expert Dr Glen Rangwala finds
that even the diluted
claims made for Saddam Hussein's arsenal
don't stand up


Last week's progress report by American
and British weapons inspectors
in Iraq has failed to supply evidence for
the vast majority of the
claims made on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
by their governments
before the war.

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group
(ISG), told congressional
committees in Washington that no official
orders or plans could be
found to back up the allegation that a nuclear
programme remained
active after 1991. Aluminium tubes have
not been used for the
enrichment of uranium, in contrast to US
Secretary of State Colin
Powell's lengthy exposition to the UN Security
Council in February. No
suspicious activities or residues have been
found at the seven sites
within Iraq described in the Prime Minister's
dossier from September
2002.

The ISG even casts serious doubt on President
Bush's much-trumpeted
claim that US forces had found three mobile
biological laboratories
after the war: "technical limitations" would
prevent the trailers from
being ideally suited to biological weapons
production, it records. In
other words, they were for something else.

There have certainly been no signs of imported
uranium, or even
battlefield munitions ready to fire within
45 minutes. Most
significantly, the claim to Parliament on
the eve of conflict by Jack
Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that "we know
that this man [Saddam
Hussein] has got ... chemical weapons, biological
weapons, viruses,
bacilli and ... 10,000 litres of anthrax"
has yet to find a single
piece of supportive evidence.

Those who staked their career on the existence
in Iraq of at least
chemical and biological weapons programmes
have latched on to three
claims in the progress report.

First, there is the allegation that a biologist
had a "collection of
reference strains" at his home, including
"a vial of live C botulinum
Okra B from which a biological agent can
be produced". Mr Straw
claimed the morning after the report's release
that this agent was
"15,000 times more toxic than the nerve
agent VX". That is wrong:
botulinum type A is one of the most poisonous
substances known, and
was developed in weaponised form by Iraq
before 1991. However, type B
- the form found at the biologist's home
- is less lethal.

Even then, it would require an extensive
process of fermentation, the
growing of the bug, the extraction of the
toxin and the weaponisation
of the toxin before it could cause harm.
That process would take
weeks, if not longer, but the ISG reported
no sign of any of these
activities.

Botulinum type B could also be used for
making an antidote to common
botulinum poisoning. That is one of the
reasons why many military
laboratories around the world keep reference
strains of C botulinum
Okra B. The UK keeps such substances, for
example, and calls them
"seed banks".

Second, a large part of the ISG report is
taken up with assertions
that Iraq had been acquiring designs and
under- taking research
programmes for missiles with a range that
exceeded the UN limit of
150km. The evidence here is more detailed
than in the rest of the
report. However, it does not demonstrate
that Iraq was violating the
terms of any Security Council resolution.
The prohibition on Iraq
acquiring technology relating to chemical,
biological or nuclear
weapons was absolute: no agents, no sub-systems
and no research or
support facilities.

By contrast, Iraq was simply prohibited
from actually having
longer-range missiles, together with "major
parts, and repair and
production facilities". The ISG does not
claim proof that Iraq had any
such missiles or facilities, just the knowledge
to produce them in
future. Indeed, it would have been entirely
lawful for Iraq to develop
such systems if the restrictions implemented
in 1991 were lifted,
while it would never have been legitimate
for it to re-develop WMD.

Third, one sentence within the report has
been much quoted: Iraq had
"a clandestine network of laboratories and
safe houses within the
Iraqi intelligence service that contained
equipment subject to UN
monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW
research". Note what that
sentence does not say: these facilities
were suitable for chemical and
biological weapons research (as almost any
modern lab would be), not
that they had engaged in such research.
The reference to UN monitoring
is also spurious: under the terms of UN
resolutions, all of Iraq's
chemical and biological facilities are subject
to monitoring. So all
this tells us is that Iraq had modern laboratories.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=450121

Source: Dr Glen Rangwala The Independent
Saddam was no CIA puppet-his thugs hanged as many "CIA Spies" as they did
"Israeli Spies", or spies for somebody. Sure we helped him out in the 80s
back when Iran was considered Public Enemy #1 by the US, but alliances in
the Mideast shift with the sands. I hope you're not some rabble-rouser who
thinks the mass graves and torture chambers found after the invasion are
hoaxes or "wildly exaggerated." as some apologists for the Butcher of Baghdad
claim.

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