Seems the intel was wrong world-wide.
What happened when France and Germany asked for proof?
They were told, "we know" and thats all you have to know and believe.
Seems you didn't know and their believes were wrong.
I remember all the words and memos against Mr. Blix but seems he got the
job done and even peacefully.
And for Brice, if you read the end, it shows exactly what WMD were found.
Hardly stockpiles but rather some leftover.

So, why can't Bush and the others just say, we believed in wrong intel?
We were wrong and have several senators apologize to France and Germany?


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=3&u=/usatoday/20041006/ts_usatoday/saddamdestr
oyedweaponsin1991reportsays

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041006/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq&cid=540&ncid=716

Saddam destroyed weapons in 1991, report says  Wed Oct 6, 7:42 AM ET
By John Diamond, USA TODAY

An extensive U.S. investigation has found that Iraq (news - web sites)
destroyed virtually all its chemical and biological munitions in 1991, a
dozen years before President Bush ordered U.S. troops to invade based
largely on the alleged threat posed by those weapons.

The report will be presented Wednesday to a Senate committee by chief U.S.
arms inspector Charles Duelfer. It says Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
believed in the deterrent power conferred by weapons of mass destruction
but ordered them destroyed in an effort to end sanctions imposed on his
country after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The key findings of the report
were described Tuesday by a high-level administration official who has been
briefed on its contents.

The report is based on extensive interviews with senior officials in
Saddam's regime and interrogation of the ousted dictator. The official said
the report shows that Iraq planned to revive its banned weapons programs
once United Nations sanctions were lifted. But by dating the destruction of
Iraqi weapons to 1991, the Duelfer report raises new questions about how
U.S. intelligence agencies and the Bush administration were so far off the
mark in their assessment of the Iraqi threat.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because the
White House wants to brief Congress before discussing the report's details
with the media. Duelfer is to testify today before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on his 1,500-page report.

The basic conclusion of the report - that Iraq had no stockpiles of
chemical or biological weapons and a moribund nuclear weapons development
effort - strengthens the preliminary findings of Duelfer's predecessor,
David Kay, and undercuts the main Bush administration argument for war. A
weapons inspection team that at one point included 1,500 members conducting
field searches, document examinations and interrogations did uncover
evidence that Iraq wanted to develop improved missiles. But none of the
Scud missiles the Bush administration alleged Saddam was hoarding has been
found.

The search began during the U.S. and coalition invasion in March and April
2003. U.S. troops have uncovered a handful of decaying mustard gas shells
but no evidence of weapons stockpiles or production capability, such as the
mobile biological weapons trailers cited by Secretary of State Colin
Powell  in a prewar presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The failure
to find proof of the Bush administration's prewar allegations has become a
thorny campaign issue for the Bush White House, particularly as insurgent
violence has intensified in Iraq.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to discuss the report in
detail before the congressional testimony. But McClellan told reporters
Tuesday that although no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons were
found, the report paints a damning picture of Saddam's clandestine efforts
to prepare to revive his weapons programs as soon as possible.

The report concludes that "Saddam Hussein had the intent and the
capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the
sanctions" by appearing to comply with the weapons ban while engaging
in "illegal financing procurement schemes," McClellan said.

The high-level administration official said the Duelfer report shows that
Saddam approved an effort to use front companies to conceal Iraqi plans to
purchase illegal weapons components, including rocket engines from Poland.
Under questioning, Saddam did not directly admit to defying U.N. sanctions
but made clear that he believes Iraq's chemical arsenal helped him avoid
disaster in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and helped persuade the first
President Bush not to order coalition troops to march to Baghdad after Iraq
was forced out of Kuwait in 1991, the official said.

U.N. inspectors, and later U.S. intelligence, noted Iraq's public
destruction of banned weapons after the Gulf War but maintained that Iraq
hid an illegal stockpile and retained the ability to build more. Iraq
repeatedly denied it had retained any of its weapons of mass destruction
but may have encouraged uncertainty to avoid appearing weak to hostile
neighbors such as Iran.

Report: Saddam Not in Pursuit of Weapons
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Undercutting the Bush's administration's rationale for
invading Iraq, the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes
that Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons
of mass destruction when international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, an
administration official said Wednesday.

In drafts, weapons hunter Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam's Iraq had
no stockpiles of the banned weapons but said he found signs of idle
programs that Saddam could have revived once international attention waned.

"It appears that he did not vigorously pursue those programs after the
inspectors left," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in
advance of the report's release.

Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, was providing his findings
Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His team has compiled a
1,500-page report. Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, who quit last
December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan continued to maintain that Duelfer's
report will support the White House's view on Iraq's prewar threat. He said
the report will conclude "that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the
capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the
sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations
through illegal financing procurement schemes."

Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles
in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that
could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also
describes Saddam's Iraq as having had limited research efforts into
chemical and biological weapons.

Duelfer's report will come on a week that the White House has been put on
the defensive in a number of Iraq issues.

Remarks this week by L. Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator in occupied
Iraq, suggested he argued for more troops in the immediate aftermath of the
invasion, when looting was rampant. A spokesman for Bush's re-election
campaign said Bremer indeed differed with military commanders.

President Bush's election rival, Democrat John Kerry , pounced on Bremer's
statements that the United States "paid a big price" for having
insufficient troop levels. On weapons, however, the Massachusetts senator
has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had
known none would be found.

McClellan said: "The report will continue to show that he was a gathering
threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time
before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."

Compare that to the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on
Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of
mass destruction," Cheney said then. "There is no doubt he is amassing them
to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."

On Wednesday, the White House also continued to assert that there were
clear ties between Saddam before the invasion and the al-Qaida linked
terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But a CIA (news - web sites) report
recently given to the White House found no conclusive evidence that Saddam
had given al-Zarqawi support and shelter before the war, according to ABC
News and Knight-Ridder.

The CIA report did not make final conclusions about a Saddam-Zarqawi tie,
but does raise questions about the Bush administration's assertions that
Zarqawi found a safe harbor in Baghdad before the invasion — and raises
questions about whether Saddam even knew Zarqawi was there.

During Tuesday night's debate, Vice President Dick Cheney said "there is
still debate over this question." But he added: "At one point, some of
Zarqawi's people were arrested. Saddam personally intervened to have them
released."

In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush laid out what he described then as Iraq's
threat:

_"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking
nuclear weapons."

_"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet
of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse
chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."

_"Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of
miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other
nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and
service members live and work. "

What U.S. forces found:

_A single artillery shell filled with two chemicals that, when mixed while
the shell was in flight, would have created sarin. U.S. forces learned of
it only when insurgents, apparently believing it was filled with
conventional explosives, tried to detonate it as a roadside bomb in May in
Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers suffered from symptoms of low-level exposure to
the nerve agent. The shell was from Saddam's pre-1991 stockpile.

_Another old artillery shell, also rigged as a bomb and found in May,
showed signs it once contained mustard agent.

_Two small rocket warheads, turned over to Polish troops by an informer,
that showed signs they once were filled with sarin.

_Centrifuge parts buried in a former nuclear scientist's garden in Baghdad.
These were part of Saddam's pre-1991 nuclear program, which was dismantled
after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The scientist also had centrifuge design
documents.

_A vial of live botulinum toxin, which can be used as a biological weapon,
in another scientist's refrigerator. The scientist said it had been there
since 1993.

_Evidence of advanced design work on a liquid-propellant missile with
ranges of up to 620 miles. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had been
prohibited from having missiles with ranges longer than 93 miles.














On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 15:44:48 -0500, John Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm not following anybody blindly.  I concur with the administration's
>actions.  In fact, if anything I think they've been a little soft.
>
>We got attacked by an unknown enemy and we've responded.  The whole world
>knew that Iraq was working on WMD and most thought it had them, Kerry and
>Kennedy and Clinton and Israel and Russia and who knows who else included.
>So we're taking a proactive approach to the problem.    That strikes me as
>good management.
>
>John Lee
>

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