UN: Saddam Shipped WMD Before War

kp59583

World Tribune

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported.
"It's being exported," Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal."

"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destinations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.
"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

The UNMOVIC report said Iraqi missiles were dismantled and exported to such countries as Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, one of at least 12, was discovered in a junk yard, replete with UN tags. In Jordan, UN inspectors found 20 SA-2 engines as well as components for solid-fuel for missiles.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Buchanan said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."

UN inspectors have assessed that the SA-2 and the short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile were shipped abroad by agents of the Saddam regime. Buchanan said UNMOVIC plans to inspect other sites, including in Turkey.

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

El Kapitano

More cheery WMD news, how come - in these days of ultra high res satellite photography and radar/infra red all weather imaging systems can this happen? I mean a photo of a site in May 2003 and then whoops "where did it go?" in February 2004 that's like taking your eye off the ball for nine months! WTF?

AND...how the fuck do you manage to ship an anti aircraft missile in a recognisable form (IE not crushed into a cube) from IRAQ to HOLLAND with UN tags on it?

This is the worst part of the whole sorry shitpile to me, while the intelligence (LOL) agencies where busy convincing the politikos to order a war Saddam and Co. were busy trading off nuclear materials, WMD equipment and anything else that could ensure a continued embittered middle east weapons scene and they didn't much care who it went to.

I personally don't think it is going to be too long before the real horrors start happening, chemical, biological and indeed so called dirty bombs are only too real and probably already availible to the ringleaders to hand to any idealogically unhinged individual who is willing to carry them into the (presumably) western target.

I pray to God for all of us I am wrong and am never proven right.

pr0digal jenius

you ship them by FedEx, duh!

Spader

"UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported.
"It's being exported," Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal"




So....are we talking scrapmetal or WMD´s?

Spader

raid517

Out of all of those enemies of democracy, the one I fear most is the Netherlands. Those guys are just plumb crazy. There's no telling what they will do.

Man people are shipping all sorts of junk out of Iraq. Even American servicemen are allowed to occasionally take souvenirs. Everyone knew that there were rockets and ground to air missiles in Iraq. These rightfully can be regarded as junk after the war is over - because UN and American weapons inspectors would have deliberately disabled them before classifying them as such.

The way you manage to ship anti aircraft missiles and other such items to Holland and other countries is by legally obtained CONTRACTS provided by the American administration in Iraq.

Its not exactly easy to move around freely in Iraq without having the US military show a keen interest in you. It's even harder to imagine anyone moving if the military even had the slightest hint that they were smuggling contraband - or even less credibly a whole bunch of WMDS as you appear to be implying.

A few questions to consider.

Which photos specifically are you referring to?

How credible are the sources this person is referring to?

I mean to me it seems clear the UN officials are talking about entirely another issue, it does not appear to be specifically related to the issue of WMDs.

What are these 'yards' the article refers to? If we can find that out then we can perhaps source what the UN official was originally talking about.

When were these alleged missile parts shipped abroad? (From what I can tell you appear to be touting a mismatch of historical events, where previous export contracts and current export contacts have dissolved in to an indistinct and muddled time line).

It is slightly odd too don't you think that these alleged WMDs have been 'smuggled' out to countries that were among America's staunchest allies during the war, don't you think? Jordan, Turkey and the Netherlands are all traditionally sympathetic to American aims in the region.


There is a lot about this story that doesn't add up.

I tried searching the World Tribune site and couldn't find any reference to it anywhere.

This sounds as if it is a story that has been written by an amateur who is deeply confused about world events.

At a quick guess, given it contradicts virtually everything else that has ever been said on the subject, including virtually everything that has come out of the UN, I would be willing to hazard more than a fair guess that the story was a fake.

Lets see you link to the actual (dated) articles that this piece of journalistic genius refers to - and then let us attempt to discern from this what is real and what is not.

GJ

Falstaff

the aforementioned missles, engines and components to manufacture nerve and biological agents were observed in neighboring Syria, and had been sold as scrap, destined for the the heap, or would they have been utilized if they hadnt been ferreted out by informants and satellite photoswmd news

raid517

Well we all know your position on this Jeff - which is despite the lack of evidence all of this stuff is buried in the Iraqi desert somewhere. Never mind the fact that sensitive equipment of this nature hardly responds well to being buried in the arid environment of the desert sands - never mind that despite the date of the report you linked to all of it's assertions are taken from what was David Kay's interim report - in which he made clear that his initial findings were inconclusive and should not be taken as his final word on the subject and which was provided several months before his final report, where he over turned virtually all of his previous conclusions Or for more reading: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...sprj.nirq.kay/

Call me crazy if you will, but a statement where he says that there were no WMDs and no programs to develop any WMDs either seems pretty conclusive to me. What exactly do you imagine he was transporting to Syria?

I wish as JF had said (even though we don't often get on very well) that you guys had just played it straight from the start and said that all it was about was getting rid of a bad guy. But it has never been played like that. It has just been a litany of lies and disinformation - which does nothing at all to instill confidence in America's true motives, both in Iraq and in the region in general.

GJ

Falstaff

I remember the security briefs before we landed, the evidence in 91 of chemical munitions, the weapons systems capable of launching a dirty bomb, etc...I based it on experience and good intelligence, and that was over 10 years ago.

raid517

In any case it is interesting to note that no where in that report that you printed - and no where in any of David Kay's final report does it make any such link at all. What you are inferring is that this scrap made its way via America's allies back to Syria - or that somehow the WMDs escaped directly over the border. Again you appear to be confusing events - because why would some of America's most vocal allies opt to work with a perceived American enemy? Why when David Kay says there was no substantive evidence of a WMD program would you claim that a WMD program that has been officially stated not to exist had in actual fact been shipped abroad? Why would you attempt to subvert what was actually said, so that somehow saying that there 'were no WMD programs' suddenly means that somehow 'there were WMD programs'?

I have read David Kay's report. If you want to underscore these so called links you claim he made in that same report and post them here, maybe then we can have something interesting to talk about. However i should warn you that for a propoent of the Iraq WMD link, it makes really quite depressing reading.

You are not alone in relying on intelligence that is over 10 years old. That in large part is the same mistake the security services themselves have confessed to making.

They forgot the UN was tasked to destroy Saddam's WMD program in the intervening period - something they appear to have pursued with a great deal of success.

GJ

JavaFox

If we ever find WMD in Iraq, it will be because of coincidence, not because of intelligence. The administration did not equivocate on this matter. It said that there ARE WMD and WE KNOW where there are. There was much ambiguity over whether or not Saddam was being truthful (there are plenty of indications he was not), but the fact of the matter remains: the administration did not say that there MIGHT be weapons, it said that there WERE weapons. Now, more than a year later, it is plenty obvious even to this pro-war Republican that they were way off mark.

However, like I have stated in other posts, I do believe that there are some in the administration --they are the minority and by no means do I have any illusions that this was the reason we waged war against Iraq-- that supported the war merely on the basis of the belief that a) democracies are better for the people of the earth, and b) democracies do not fight one another. I have always considered myself one of these idealists. Even if the administration had believed that we faced an imminent threat from Saddam's Iraq (I believe that the evidence here was ambiguous -- enough for concern, but definitely not as crystalline as we were told), the humanitarian concern should have been one of the major sales points of this war. It's too late now, and the humanitarian angle seems little more than disingenuous.

Finding WMD is peripheral concern now -- if we find them, like I said, it will be out of coincidence, not out of intelligence. To me, finding the weapons now wouldn't vindicate the administration much.

Helping Iraq become a stable, functioning, flourishing democracy is far more important.

HawK

You "sir" are an idiotic moron, what the hell do you know about democracy???
And what do you think you know about the Netherlands, you are again talking out way out of your league, you would not even recognise democracy if you stumbled over it.

One more time you moron, The Netherlands is not an enemy of Demorcracy.. but you are!!
I'ts time they lock you up where you belong, there where you can write your idiotic hillbilly fantasies for no one to read..

raid517

Haha... Some of these guys just don't recognize sarcasm when they see it do they?...

That's pretty frickin hilarious I have to say.

The Netherlands had been accused here by some people as being an enemy of the United states. Some people here appeared to think that the Netherlands was some kind of fanatical extremist Muslim country.

I merely pointed out the absurdity of such an assertion.

I mean do you seriously think the Netherlands is likely to attack America with WMDs any time soon?

Read what I wrote again - only this time it would help considerably if you would develop a sense of humour.

GJ

raid517

I think there was a very small certain faction of the American right that believed in promoting some of the ideals that you allude to - but from my own view they were also too wrapped up in the ideals of conservative politics for it to be a pill that I (and many like me) would find very easy to swallow. Instead of a genuine effort to afford the world liberty and freedom, it was more an effort to recast the world in the American mold - and to impose the American military on the world as the primary arm of American led change. In this I mean it appeared to be more about military and economic dominance than about an underlying concern for genuine liberty and democracy. The plan it seems was to reassert American military dominance first - while leaving these other higher aspirations to come much further down the list of priorities. That is why there often appears to be more focus on in this government towards pursuing America's enemies, than in deposing dictatorships and bringing about genuine democratic change in the world.

For many reasons that you may or may not agree with, I doubt that is likely to change any time soon.

GJ

The_Neon_Cowboy

Bahahaaa

It's true though out there you don't need roads, and what's in the back of a semi no one knows...


I'd still like to know how that shipment of Russian mortar shells believed destined for Iraq that was sized with false papers in Italy I’d like to know more about that incident more then anything. Like who’s country was supplying Iraq with weapons likely to be to used against us troops…

Not to mention the currption at the UN regarding the oil for food proram. seems thier hands aren't clean after all. there is s even a possable sex scandle....

raid517

Mortar shells... Mmm since when have mortar shells been restricted munitions? I mean when have they been restricted for any country, let alone for Saddam?

Anyway what's this oil for food blow out that you guys keep referring to - and what sex scandal? What has some guy getting a bit of rumpy pumpy at the UN got to do with WMDs?

GJ

JavaFox

[quote]Originally posted by raid517
[b]Mortar shells... Mmm since when have mortar shells been restricted munitions? I mean when have they been restricted for any country, let alone for Saddam?

I don't know of or care about any sex scandal in this context. But since you asked what the the Oil For Food Program was, I think I can shed some light on the matter. In the wake of the Gulf War, the international community saddled Saddam Hussein's Iraq with stiff economic sanctions -- both as punishment for the aggression of the Gulf War but also as an incentive to rid his country of weapons of mass destruction. These sanctions, while certainly well-intented, led to a humanitarian disaster in Iraq. Instead of choking the Hussein regime, it led to starvation and a lack of medical and other such supplies. As a response, the Oil for Food Program, operated under the aegis of the United Nations, was born. It allowed Iraq to trade its oil weath for --and only for-- food products and medical supplies.

Again, good intentions, poor implementation. Saddam got around the program and still managed to get in weapons and other contraband products (this is perhaps what Neon was referring to when he was talking about mortar although I'm not that familiar with the particulars of what was banned and what happened).

The scandal was that the UN was administrating a supposedly humanitarian program --and it doubtless did some good-- but other countries --allegedly countries like Russia, Syria, and Pakistan, I believe-- still managed to do illicit business with Iraq under the guise of that program.

The_Neon_Cowboy

No... You don’t understand they were believed destined for Iraq their papers were forged to prevent tracing where they came from and were they were going. They were sized because of the false papers. It was a few tons of Russian made ordnance all mortars.

Who ever shipped them fully knew they were intended and going to be used again us troops. I’d say that very serious and I’d call that an act of war in my book.

Supplying the enemy with weapons to be used to kill US troops… Thats quite serious. But again since the papers wer forged There is no knowing 100% were they were from or wee they were headed. Actually after that news broke I’ve never heard a single thing about it

raid517

Well I was aware of what it was - I just wasn't sure why what they did was being framed as a scandal.

Maybe you might like to say that it was disingenuous for them to behave the way they did - or perhaps unsurprising given the traditional nature of the relationship these countries had with Iraq, but I'm sure you wouldn't have to dig too hard to find similar examples of disingenuous behavior on the part of the US, such as slapping one dictatorship on the wrist (when it suits you to do so) while pumping cash into another.

Unfortunately the UN is not a law making body. It can only implore that nations cooperate and if they break the rules then often they can only censure them in only the most general way. For the UN to work requires that nations cooperate - and when some countries cannot be convinced of the case that is being made, this may only serve to make that cooperation much more difficult.

Some people accuse the UN of lacking teeth. But ultimately they fail to see its true purpose which is purely to encourage and foster cooperation. I don't think it's practical or always possible to make everyone cooperate - but it remains a noble ideal if you are able to provide a forum where cooperation can be actively encouraged. I think the UN exists for no more and no less than this - as simply a forum - not unlike this one, where opposing perspectives can sometimes find some middle ground on which to agree.

Hopefully it happens more often at the UN than it happens here (hopefully our diplomats are a little more mature) but I think the world would be a poorer and much more dangerous place, if suddenly everyone decided to simply stop talking.

GJ

raid517

Well maybe America should declare war on herself, since the vast majority of conventional ordinance supplied before 1991 was supplied by the US.

How much of that do you think has been used in this war and in the last to kill American soldiers?

The rest I think is splitting hairs.

GJ

The_Neon_Cowboy

But can you see if money is flowing from millions and possibly billions could be involved it could explain why the opposed the Iraq war so. Means their hard are dirty. If the UN was on the take form Iraq it would be hard to believe a single world they say. Pretty well may be the end of the UN.

raid517

It wasn't the UN that was 'on the take from Iraq' - a statement like this only shows that you have little conception of what the UN really is.

It was a few member countries who (allegedly) continued with a relationship that they had pursued for the last 40 years or more.

That does not make the entire UN corrupt. The UN is not some kind of governing body. It is simply a loose affiliation of member states who use it as a forum upon which to debate world affairs - and to agree on various principals where such agreement is possible.

Blaming the UN for the (alleged) actions of a few member states is like me blaming you for beating up Rodney King, just because you happened to live in LA. (Not that I know if you do or not - but it is a valid example).

You protest vigorously that you don't want to be governed by the UN and that you don't want the UN to decide on matters of vital national interest... Well have you ever considered that perhaps neither do all it's other members - that perhaps they view themselves as having vital national interests too?

As I said the UN is just a forum, like any other forum - and ultimately it has no control over the actions of its individual member states. (Or at least not without their agreement). Since this is what you say you want, where is your real difficulty with it? You say it has no teeth, but you don't want to give it teeth, because this might take away from the US own strategic interests - you say you don't want it interfering on national affairs - but when other countries decide this also, you complain that it is corrupt.

There isn't much consistency in that particular perspective.

A loose forum where countries can talk and try to agree on things is exactly what the UN should be - and you know what? That's exactly what it is too. I don't want a UN that has powers to legislate - but I do want somewhere where the leaders of the world can talk - and try to agree on issues that are of significance to us all.

It might not always work. But hey, its still better that we talk than we don't.

GJ