| To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (645136) | 10/14/2004 10:01:38 PM | | From: PROLIFE | | | | Duelfer Damns U.N.
With a presidential election less than a month away and the press and the Democrats eager to discredit the Bush administration, most of what we've been hearing about the final report of Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, issued yesterday, has centered on the question of whether Saddam Hussein's regime possessed stockpiles of mass-destruction weapons. The U.S. and most other world intelligence services believed it did, and this was among the justifications for Iraq's liberation last year. The absence of such stockpiles is supposed to prove that the U.S.-led coalition was wrong to liberate Iraq--that Saddam Hussein did not deserve to be toppled and George W. Bush does not deserve to be re-elected.
It won't surprise anyone to learn that we disagree. This column has long supported the liberation of Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction were in our view at most a secondary part of the case (see here and here). To our mind, the main lesson to be drawn from the ISG report is that the United Nations is ill suited to manage international crises.
Consider where things stood preliberation. As we noted in January 2003, Saddam Hussein had been technically at war with the U.S. and "the world" for more than a decade. There was never a peace agreement to end the Gulf War, only a cease-fire conditional upon Saddam Hussein's compliance with 17 U.N. resolutions. These resolutions required not only that Saddam not possess weapons of mass destruction, but also that he prove to the world that he had destroyed all such weapons programs. Resolution 1441 enumerated his other obligations:
BY JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, October 7, 2004 4:36 p.m. EDT |
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| To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (645136) | 10/14/2004 10:02:55 PM | | From: PROLIFE | | | | a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Oct. 6, Charles Duelfer, an adviser to the CIA, did not rule out Saddam's transfer of Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Syria.
Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, pauses during an Senate Armed Services committee on Oct. 6, in Washington. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Duelfer agreed that a large amount of material had been transferred by Iraq to Syria before the March 2003 war. "A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria," Duelfer said. "There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say."
The Iraq Survey Group, headed by Duelfer, said Russia, Syria, Jordan and other arms suppliers were paid from Iraqi oil revenues.
A CIA report, authored by the Iraq Survey Group, identified Russia and Syria atop a list of 12 arms suppliers to Iraq until the U.S.-led war against Baghdad started in March 2003.
The report listed Russia and Syria above North Korea — regarded as the leading missile proliferator to the Middle East — as leading suppliers to Baghdad.
Jordan was the third largest supplier of weapons to Iraq.
Duelfer (left), speaks with General Joseph J. McMenamin, military commander of the Iraq Survey Group, before start of the Senate Armed Services committee meeting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After Jordan came Belarus, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, France, Romania and Turkey. The report said these countries were involved in both "weapons of mass destruction and arms-related procurement." The report said Saddam diverted money from the UN oil-for-food program to pay for both conventional and nonconventional weapons and components.
The report said state-owned companies in Russia and Syria defied UN sanctions and supplied weapons and platforms to Baghdad. The report said Syria also served as the leading route for illegal arms supplies from Europe and other countries.
Several of Iraq's neighbors were said to have joined in the secret military effort to aid Baghdad. The report — based on interviews with senior Iraqi officials and 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence — cited Jordan and Turkey as leading suppliers to the Saddam regime.
geostrategy-direct.com |
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| To: steve harris who wrote (645150) | 10/14/2004 10:03:46 PM | | From: Proud_Infidel | | | | Al Qaeda leader identified in 'dirty bomb' plot
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A top al Qaeda cell leader spotted in Mexico and Canada has been identified as an active player in a scheme to obtain radioactive materials for a so-called "dirty bomb" that could be smuggled into the United States, federal authorities said.
Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, who worshipped at the same South Florida mosque as Jose Padilla — now being held as an enemy combatant in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" — has attempted unsuccessfully to enter the United States using phony passports, authorities said.
The al Qaeda leader reportedly was observed last year during a trip to Canada, where authorities suspect he posed as a student at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. An FBI informant told authorities the terrorist leader was seeking material to build a dirty bomb — a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material.
McMaster University has a five-megawatt research reactor, whose uranium-based fuel rods come from the United States. Canadian officials have denied any security breach of the McMaster facility.
Authorities said El Shukrijumah lived in the same South Florida area as Padilla and that the two worshipped at the Darul Aloom mosque. It is not clear whether they knew each other, but authorities said their names surfaced during the interrogation of captured senior al Qaeda organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of Osama bin Laden's closest advisers.
Mohammed has been called a mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
Meanwhile, a seven-count indictment unsealed yesterday in Boston accused a British man of conspiring with Richard C. Reid to use shoe bombs to blow up airplanes. Saajid Badat, 25, was charged with attempted murder and trying to destroy an aircraft. The indictment said bomb components similar to Reid's were found at his home.
El Shukrijumah, for whom the State Department has offered a $5 million reward, is being sought for questioning by the FBI in connection with terrorist threats against the United States. He was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by prosecutors in Northern Virginia, where U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said he is sought as a potential terrorism threat.
Known to law enforcement officials as the "diminutive terrorist" because of his 5-foot-4-inch stature, El Shukrijumah also is believed by authorities to have met with alien smugglers in Mexico and Honduras, seeking help in bringing al Qaeda members illegally into the United States.
Authorities said those meetings involved members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, which U.S. immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States.
They said El Shukrijumah was spotted in July in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, meeting with leaders of the gang, which has been tied to alien, drug and weapons smuggling, along with numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults — including at least seven killings in Virginia.
Padilla, a Muslim convert also known as Abdullah al Muhajir, was arrested by FBI agents on a material witness warrant in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after a flight from Pakistan. He was carrying $10,000 in U.S. currency from his al Qaeda handlers.
El Shukrijumah also was friends in Florida with Imran Mandhai, one of two college students convicted of conspiring unsuccessfully to bomb electrical stations, a National Guard armory, Jewish businesses and Mount Rushmore.
Authorities said El Shukrijumah also is believed to have taken part in or directed surveillance efforts by al Qaeda members of the financial districts in New York — which led this summer to an increase in the terror alert level from Code Yellow to Code Orange in New York City, Washington D.C., and Newark, N.J.
They said there were specific threats against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the District, the Prudential Building in Newark, and Citigroup and the Stock Exchange in New York City.
An FBI bulletin in March said El Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia, although the Saudi government has denied that he is a Saudi citizen.
washingtontimes.com |
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| To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (645136) | 10/14/2004 10:04:07 PM | | From: PROLIFE | | | | KEY FINDINGS (CHEMICAL) - Excerpt
ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts, but we have no indications this was planned. (See Annex A.)
• ISG has no evidence that IIS Directorate of Criminology (M16) scientists were producing CW or BW agents in these laboratories. However, sources indicate that M16 was planning to produce several CW agents including sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin.
• Exploitations of IIS laboratories, safe houses, and disposal sites revealed no evidence of CW-related research or production, however many of these sites were either sanitized by the Regime or looted prior to OIF. Interviews with key IIS offi cials within and outside of M16 yielded very little information about the IIS’ activities in this area.
• The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN.
• The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.
Snip
KEY FINDINGS (BIOLOGICAL) - Excerpt
The IIS had a series of laboratories that conducted biological work including research into BW agents for assassination purposes until the mid-1990s. ISG has not been able to establish the scope and nature of the work at these laboratories or determine whether any of the work was related to military development of BW agent.
• The security services operated a series of laboratories in the Baghdad area. Iraq should have declared these facilities and their equipment to the UN, but they did not. Neither the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM)nor the UN Monitoring, Verifi cation, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) were aware of their existence or inspected them.
• Some of the laboratories possessed equipment capable of supporting research into BW agents for military purposes, but ISG does not know whether this occurred although there is no evidence of it. The laboratories were probably the successors of the Al Salman facility, located three kilometers south of Salman Pak, which was destroyed in 1991, and they carried on many of the same activities, including forensic work.
• Under the aegis of the intelligence service, a secretive team developed assassination instruments using poisons or toxins for the Iraqi state. A small group of scientists, doctors and technicians conducted secret experiments on human beings, resulting in their deaths. The aim was probably the development of poisons, including ricin and afl atoxin to eliminate or debilitate the Regime’s opponents. It appears that testing on humans continued until the mid 1990s. There is no evidence to link these tests with the development of BW agents for military use.
cia.gov |
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| To: PROLIFE who wrote (645157) | 10/14/2004 10:05:20 PM | | From: PROLIFE | | | | DUELFER REPORT ON IRAQ RENDERS KERRY "A COMPLACENT FOOL" OR "AN UTTER FRAUD"
Don't take the word of your lazy rolling-news update anchor or the AP rewrite guy on the Duelfer findings on Iraq. Instead, read the report for yourself. It is an amazing document. It renders John Kerry, on foreign policy and national security, either a complacent fool or an utter fraud. It's not about WMD, it's about the top-to-toe corruption of the entire international system by Saddam Hussein. The "global test" is a racket, and anybody who puts faith in it is jeopardizing America's national security. If the lazy US media won't pick up this story now, shame on them.
THE U.N. NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED
MarkSteynOnline | 10/7/04 | Mark Steyn
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| To: jlallen who wrote (645161) | 10/14/2004 10:09:57 PM | | From: SilentZ | | | | >I understand....multiple examples abound....on both sides of the political spectrum.....
There are plenty of total jerks who are lefties on these boards... but do any of those lefties talk about killing all the righties?
CYBERKEN is in a league of his own. I wonder if he's really a lefty posing as a righty... he couldn't really exist, could he?
-Z |
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