Told you so, U.N. Iraq arms inspectors' report says

[Barrett808]

Source: Reuters

Told you so, U.N. Iraq arms inspectors' report says
By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - On the day before it is due to be shut down, the U.N. unit that found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but failed to stop the U.S.-led invasion said on Thursday time had justified its methods and work.

In a voluminous report detailing the history of Iraq's banned weapons programs and U.N. efforts to dismantle them, it said the episode had shown that on-the-ground inspections were better than intelligence assessments by individual countries.

...

"Despite some skepticism from many areas within the international community, in hindsight, it has now become clear that the U.N. inspection system in Iraq was indeed successful to a large degree, in fulfilling its disarmament and monitoring obligations," said the unit's 1,160-page summing-up report.

...

The new report signed by UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos said it now seemed that much of what Iraq had said about its weapons in later years had been accurate. But it said the government of late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had found itself trying to prove a negative, a situation it had brought on itself by previous years of lying.

...

"Had UNMOVIC not been under such a stringent time constraint, the inspections could have been more detailed and thorough and many issues which emerged could have been pursued to a conclusion allowing greater confidence in the inspection process," it said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070628/wl_nm/iraq_un_weapons_dc

[Greyskye]

1. kick up the yahoo ratings

:kick:

[NewJeffCT]

11. email it too, if you get the chance

it's not among the most emailed.

[WCGreen]

2. What will poor Ann Colter say about this.....

Piece of Shit provactour...

She should be tried for instigating the murder of countless thousands of Iraqi citizens...

[annabanana]

3. She will not acknowledge it. She will continue to lie as if this was

never published. And the idiots who watch her will continue to believe her lies.

[stimbox]

4. Great!

Can we inpeach yet, or are we still keeping our powder dry?

[Olney Blue]

5. I won't hold my breath for a mea culpa from the administration.

[slipslidingaway]

6. Thanks and someone needs to tell Bush the inspectors were

in Iraq.


7) Briefing of the Security Council, 7 March 2003: Oral introduction of the 12th quarterly report of UNMOVIC

"Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002...

intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks and, in particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons.....No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found."


For Bush, Iraq Lies Are Fundamental

http://consortiumnews.com/2005/052105.html

“Saddam Hussein was the one, in the end, who chose continued defiance,” McClellan said. “Only then was the decision made, as a last resort, to go into Iraq.”

This claim about Hussein “defiance” has become a staple for Bush and his defenders over the past two years, facing little contradiction from the mainstream U.S. news media. Indeed, this notion that Hussein brought the war on himself by rejecting UN inspections has become almost conventional wisdom in Washington despite the fact that Hussein did let UN inspectors in and gave them free rein of the country.

Bush started the revisionist historical “group think” on July 14, 2003, less than four months after the U.S.-led invasion, when he said about Hussein, “we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.”

In following months, Bush would repeat this claim in slightly varied forms. On Jan. 27, 2004, Bush said, “We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution -- 1441 -- unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in.”

[chknltl]

7. Saddam could never have used WMD aggressively anyway.

Defensively, as a last stop measure to slow the American aggression, sure, saddam husein would have used WMD. Would he have used them offensively, for instance, to bomb the Kurds within his own country with Mustard Gas, to spread anthrax through Israel, or to somehow get a Nuke to go off over Peoria, NO, he would not have done this. To suggest otherwise is to subscribe to the fact that Saddam Hussein was a martyr. Does ANYONE here feel that he was a martyr? Let's see, would a martyr have stopped fighting and fled Kuwait in the face of the coalition? Would a martyr have been found hiding in a hole in the ground begging to be treated as a head of state? Saddam was a dictator who wanted to end his days as a dictator...had he somehow managed to unleash another WMD ANYWHERE, his days as a dictator would have been measured in hours. He knew this! He knew he was helpless against the rage of the world. He knew that he was under close careful scrutiny of that same world. He knew if he got aggressive again the world would hang his butt quite rapidly. Using a WMD offensively was absolutely contrary to his number 2 priority: Being a Dictator, it was also contrary to his number 1 priority: Breathing.

Saddam may have been a horrible piece of crap but he was no idiot. Those who fell for the neo-con fear mongering, they were the idiots. Those of us who believed that bush was really going to go after Osama Bin Laden, another piece of crap AND potentially a martyr, well perhaps we were the idiots.

edited in order to change "kurds" to Kurds"

[chknltl]

8. Further credit where credit is due:

Senator Jim McDermott, a Dem from Wa. State, went to Iraq during the run-up to the war on a fact finding mission. The Neo-Cons were outraged, they named him "Baghdad Jim" for doing this, some called for his resignation because he was consorting with the enemy! He gave a speech when he came back which was aired on C-SPAN. He gave a great speech about the Iraqi citizens dire need for medical supplies, about how Depleted Uranium Oxide was likely poisoning many Iraqi civilians and potentially was the cause for the staggering numbers of babies being born with malformations abnormalities and birth defects. At the conclusion of his speech, he pointed his finger at us, (through the camera) and said: "Make NO mistake here, this is NOT about weapons of mass destruction, this is about oil and regime change"

Well look who was right.
Credit where credit is due.

[Barrett808]

9. "Baghdad Jim" is my representative

And I certainly do feel well represented in the House.

[chknltl]

10. He is mine too and a personal hero as well!

I have written him encouragement often. He fights for the vets and he has a great understanding of Depleted Uranium Oxide. Time and time again he can be found sponsoring and co-sponsoring legislation about the medical issues our Vets face from exposure to DUO. Unlike other Dems from our area, (Patty Murray for instance), "Gentleman" Jim has my FULL support.

[Javaman]

12. This small edited out piece of the report just found...

Due to it's blunt nature it was removed from the final report, "we fucking told you so you dumb mother fuckers!!"

[frogcycle]

13. the irony

"The new report signed by UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos said it now seemed that much of what Iraq had said about its weapons in later years had been accurate. But it said the government of late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had found itself trying to prove a negative, a situation it had brought on itself by previous years of lying."

Kind of the opposite of the boy who cried wolf.

I recall vividly the days when they were supposed to provide documentation of where all the stuff had gone, piled a bunch of documents on some big table, and got slammed by the press and the bushcabal for their lame-o presentation.

At the time it was depicted as a sorry attempt at a cover-up of a supposedly thriving weapons program. Now we know it was just an illustration of an incompetent regime, with lousy record-keeping. Like the unprepared student trying to bluff his way through oral exams when he faked his thesis.

With all the blame there is to levy on bushcabal for barging ahead and doing what they did, there is a sad footnote to it all, that if the Iraqis had really known what was coming and just said "we don't have WMD's, but we are fuckups and can't prove the negative; we hereby give you wide open, unescorted access to wherever you want to look" perhaps they could have avoided the carnage. We'll never know, and I am not trying to shift the blame to them, but hindsight says they may have missed an opportunity. So sad.

Edit: we know the inspectors were there, and we know they were reporting no weapons. Unfortunately the Iraqis provided just enough apparent evidence of duplicity to give bushcabal a modicum of support for its assertions.

[struggle4progress]

14. US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq UN Report (2003)

Throughout the winter of 2002, the Bush administration publicly accused Iraqi weapons declarations of being incomplete. The almost unbelievable reality of this situation is that it was the United States itself that had removed over 8,000 pages of the 11,800 page original report.

This came as no surprise to Europeans however, as Iraq had made extra copies of the complete weapons declaration report and unofficially distributed them to journalists throughout Europe. The Berlin newspaper Die Tageszetung broke the story on December 19, 2002 in an article by Andreas Zumach.

At the same time, according to the investigation by Michael Niman, the Iraq government sent out official copies of the report on November 3, 2002. One, classified as "secret," was sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, another copy went to the UN Security Council. The U.S. convinced Colombia, chair of the Security Council and current target of U.S. military occupation and financial aid, to look the other way while the report was removed, edited, and returned. Other members of the Security Council such as Britain, France, China and Russia, were implicated in the missing pages as well (China and Russia were still arming Iraq) and had little desire to expose the United States' transgression. So all members accepted the new, abbreviated version. ~snip~

According to Niman, "The missing pages implicated twenty-four U.S.-based corporations and the successive Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. administration in connection with the illegal supplying of Saddam Hussein government with myriad weapons of mass destruction and the training to use them." Groups documented in the original report that were supporting Iraq's weapons programs prior to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait included:
- Eastman Kodak, Dupont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Sperry, Hewlett-Packard, and Bechtel,
- U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture and Department of Defense,
- Nuclear weapons labs such as Lawrence-Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia. ~snip~

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/3.html

[frogcycle]

15. holy crap

it just piles deeper and deeper

and this has been common knowledge in Europe and the UN since 2002.

and while it comes as no surprise, i do not recall there having been any mention of it here.

aside from the media ignoring whatever may have been on newsfeeds and such, where were - hell, where was anybody?

Why would not somebody - anybody - have been making as much of a stink about this as, say, the 9/11 "conspiracy" thing? Looks like it is a lot easier to prove than claiming the buildings were demo'ed.

holy crap