Saddam destroyed WMDs

[cal04]

London - Saddam Hussein destroyed all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf War, the scientist who headed his nuclear programme, Jafar Dhia Jafar, said in a BBC interview to be aired on Wednesday."We had orders to hand over the equipment to the Republican guards (after the war) ... and they had orders to destroy the equipment that we handed over to them," Jafar was to tell BBC television's "Newsnight" programme. Excerpts of the interview appeared in advance of the broadcast on BBC Online.

Edited by Elmarie Jack
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1571594,00.html

The head of Iraq's nuclear programme under Saddam Hussein has said Iraq destroyed its nuclear weapons programme in 1991 and never restarted it. Jafar Dhia Jafar told the BBC sanctions and inspections worked in stopping the reconstitution of the programme. One of the most powerful arguments in the case for war on Iraq was the US and UK's claim Saddam Hussein was trying to restart his nuclear programme.

Mr Jafar ran Iraq's nuclear programme for nearly 25 years
Mr Jafar also says the British government's assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger is categorically false.
He says he was approached by US intelligence to defect, but remained in Iraq until he fled just two days before Baghdad fell to coalition forces last year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3556714.stm

[Richardo]

1. So you admit HE HAD THEM!!

is what I predict we'll hear from the right. :eyes:

They're like dogs, they have no concept of the passage of time. 15 years, 15 minutes, it's all the same to them. (I'll credit an old George Carlin routine for that line of thought.)

[soothsayer]

2. They'll also just blame Saddam for not SAYING that he had destroyed

them, thereby justifying the nightmare we've created for the world.

[Wickerman]

3. Right, he didn't say he did

though I'm sure it was somewhere in that document dump that he gave them prior to our attack - you know, the one that was ignored and is now virtually forgotten.

[Union Thug]

4. The same one that was heavily edited by US censors?

[Wickerman]

13. the redaction of the US companies?

yeah, thats the one. Guess it didn't have a thing in it, except him saying he had no weapons. D'oh!

[Kierkegaard]

5. Well

Actually, he told them over and over again that he had no WMD. He was an asshole about it, and he dragged his feet over letting the inspections continue, but he steadfastly asserted that he didn't have any WMD.

[leesa]

22. He really didn't even drag his feet. He was quite compliant.

He stated he did not have them.

[merh]

8. No concept of time or place ...

You know that Afghanistan is right next to Iraq! <sarcasm>

[sallyseven]

10. Of course he did

We sold them to him. cheney, halliburton, rummy, bush sr., reagan.

[BonjourUSA]

18. ALL western countries sold them to him !!

Iraq was our shield against Iran

[lottie244]

17. Saddam kept telling us that all along. And the 12,000 page report

also indicated that same thing. Bush would not accept that, claimed Saddam was lying and that there was no proof of the destruction. Turns out that Saddam is more truthful than Bush. Had we accepted what the Iraqis were trying to tell us, along with the inspectors, and some high level Iraqi scientists, 900+ US soldiers would still be alive today. And so would thousands of Iraqis.

[Ernesto]

6. The lie house doesn't care

cause they "know better" than experts that were actually there. They wouldn't listen to Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, Joe Wilson or anybody else that wasn't lying for them......... Good bye chimp, have fun clearing brush for the rest of your life. Atleast you'll finally have the job that best suits your abilities.

[HuckleB]

7. Just as those bastards at the UN said.

I mean, you can't believe them, so how could we have known?

[htuttle]

9. Saddam's nephew said the same thing well before the war

I think it was his nephew, anyway. The neocons quoted him when he agreed that Saddam used to have a nuclear program, but omitted the next paragraph when he said that they'd destroyed it years ago.

[UpInArms]

14. it was SH's son-in-law

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/iraq_defector/

CNN exclusive interview with Hussein Kamel Hussein
Airtime - CNN at 8:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. PDT) Thursday (0030 GMT Friday)

September 21, 1995
Web posted at: 10:50 p.m. EDT (1450 GMT)

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Until his defection to Jordan last month, Hussein Kamel Hussein was supposedly one of Iraq's elite. A son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, he sat at the Iraqi leader's right hand, had close contact with the president's son, Uday, and played a pivotal role in military operations. Accordingly, Hussein Kamel stunned the world when he fled Baghdad with his brother, Saddam Kamel, and their two wives, daughters of Saddam Hussein. Now he is speaking out in a CNN exclusive with Brent Sadler.

In his first television interview since the defection, Hussein Kamel unveiled some of the mystery shrouding Iraqi military practices. The Former minister of defense, he detailed earlier plans for nuclear weapons in Iraq, but said that Baghdad no longer has any weapons of mass destruction. Hussein Kamel also told tales of torture.

Here are excerpts from Sadler's interview. This historic discussion will be shown on CNN at 8:30 p.m. EDT (5:30 p.m. PDT) Thursday (0030 GMT Friday).

<snip>

SADLER: Can you state here and now, does Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction left?

HUSSEIN KAMEL: No, Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction. I am being completely honest about this.

...more...

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.html

Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed

Bombshell revelation from a defector cited by White House and press

February 27, 2003

On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that "raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist," the magazine's issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims.

Until now, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in 1996, was best known for his role in exposing Iraq's deceptions about how far its pre-Gulf War biological weapons programs had advanced. But Newsweek's John Barry-- who has covered Iraqi weapons inspections for more than a decade-- obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. inspections team known as UNSCOM.

Inspectors were told "that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them," Barry wrote. All that remained ere "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches" and production molds. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Barry reported, and "a military aide who defected with Kamel... backed Kamel's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks."

...more...

[htuttle]

15. That's him

Thanks!

[UpInArms]

16. no problem

:D

[jayfish]

11. Sweet, I wonder If Faux And CNN Will Give Him...

as much air time as they gave Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza. Hmmmmmm... I whatever happened to that INC snake.

Jay

[Barrett808]

12. Story's being freeped at Yahoo

Saddam gave up all Iraqi WMD after 1991 Gulf War says former nuclear chief
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040811/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_weapons_britain&cid=1514&ncid=1480

Rate it a 5! (at the bottom of the page)

[mark414]

19. and only ONE

american news site has the story on their main page, and it's not even really a news site...yahoo

nothing on cnn, msnbc, fox, none of them.

i can't take much more of this damn liberal media!

[jayfish]

20. Kick -NT-

Jay

[leesa]

21. This is not new news.

[Mechatanketra]

23. The joke of all this ...

... is that the statement that Saddam "defied the UN, defied the world" is still a VRWC talking point to justify the invasion in the absence of WMDs turning up -- completely ignoring the significance that if Saddam didn't have WMDs, then he was complying with UN edicts. As opposed to, say, the USA and UK, who maintained no-fly zones in defiance of the UN, and in fact conducted the Iraq invasion itself in defiance of the world.

Really, after Abu Ghraib, there's practically no justification for the invasion that can't be used with more solid grounding to justify an invasion of the USA. (Even the infamous "rape rooms". Aren't you proud?)