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June 11, 2004

UN: Saddam Shipped WMD's Out of Iraq Before, During, and After War

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.

...

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."

...

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

He said that?

Funny, I don't remember reading about that. I honestly don't.

You'd almost think there was, I don't know, what shall we call it?, some sort of a "liberal media bias" embargoing news that cuts in favor of the War in Iraq.

I know that sounds crazy, but what else can explain it?

The whole article is worth reading, but copyright rules prevent me from "excerpting" it all.

Update: AP's take. El Baradei's mention of nuke-components is, strangely enough, omitted.

posted by Ace at 04:31 PM

Comments

holy schneike!

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford on June 11, 2004 04:44 PM

To be fair, I do recall hearing a little bit about the smuggling into Europe. But the story was squelched.

Posted by: Smack on June 11, 2004 04:55 PM

What does this have to do with Abu Ghraib?

Posted by: Moonbat_One on June 11, 2004 04:55 PM

Yeah Abu Grabass, let's not forget how terrible, and evil it was that some skank shoved a glo-stick up some poor, defenseless terrorists poop-chute. Honestly, producing biological weapons that could kill millions and millions of innocent civilians is nothing compared to getting a glo-stick up your can, and wearing panties on your head. Have we no shame?!

Posted by: Marty on June 11, 2004 05:01 PM

Ace,

You've been on a posting tear the past few days. Im going to get fired if I dont get some work done, dammit!

Posted by: Golden Boy on June 11, 2004 05:33 PM

obviously this story has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib...but the creative editing of the global warming angle, not to mention the ever growing number of homeless people without healthcare, is reprehensible.

Posted by: sonofnixon on June 11, 2004 06:09 PM

I guess Tawny Kitten really likes Jaguars.

Posted by: rdbrewer on June 11, 2004 06:38 PM

You know what this post reminds me of? Sean Penn's acceptance speech for an Oscar or something for whatever movie that was, which began with, "The one thing all actors know, other than that there were no WMDs..."

I got a kick out of it at the time because I imagined a room full of aspiring actors sitting down to take the mandatory test to join the Screen Actor's Guild. On that test they are given top secret dossiers from various international intelligence agencies and instructed to analyze them and assess security threats from various rogue states. Because obviously, if every actor knows the precise extent of Saddam Hussein's military capabilities, they must have access to information the general public doesn't have, right? Because the best that the general public could say, on that same day, would have been, "We have not yet discovered WMDs," and then only by re-defining the meaning of the phrase for which WMD is an acronym. The general public could not have known that there were no WMDs, because they were not actors, and therefore did not have access to the same sources that CIA and actors everywhere have and routinely review.

The other thing I thought while watching Sean Penn at the Oscars was "what a douchebag."

Posted by: Aaron on June 11, 2004 06:51 PM

I guess Tawny Kitten really likes Jaguars.

And they like her. (Well, they used to like her before she started acting and looking like she wanted the lead role in the sequel to "Monster.")

The one thing all actors know, other than that there were no WMDs..."

What an idiot.

The one thing all actors know is the number of lines they have in their current script.

I'm going to start my next "heavy" speech with, "The one thing all bloggers know--other than how blogging attracts hot nympho groupies just like starring in a rock band does--is..."

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on June 11, 2004 07:02 PM

Hmmm. A lot of stories like this floating around, but they don't really prove the existence of the kinds of WMDs that the media will notice. While *we* know that banned weapons are banned weapons, stuff like SA-2's (obsolete SAMs) and engine parts aren't going to light anyone's panties on fire.

Of course, I take the unique view (well, Jim Woolsey might share it) that the real intelligence failure isn't that we didn't discover the WMDs were gone and still went to war, it was that we lost track of the ones that were certainly there before the war. If we can lose sight of an entire program, we can't be certain of what's going on in Iran or North Korea or the next nation to go the WMD route. Intelligence failures work both ways-- if the left wants to think we were wrong in thinking Iraq had WMD, then they can't possibly be sure that same intelligence complex is right in thinking that countries like Iran *don't* have WMD. CIA syas North Korea has 3 bombs? 5 bombs? Well, it could just as well be 30 bombs, with one sitting in an intermodal container in Seattle harbor as "insurance," for all we know. THAT'S what scares me at night.

The Iraqi WMD had to go somewhere, but so many people think that since they aren't there now, thus they never existed in the first place.
I don't know how to convince those people, if even they can be convinced.

Dave
Arlington, Virginia

Posted by: Dave on June 11, 2004 08:14 PM

Seems like there should be some way to work in weiners or butt sex, here.

If you could, maybe the "news" would notice. Because these are the sorts of weapons the UN said Hussein didn't even have.

The sarin shell last month was the breaching of the dam on this info.

Posted by: blaster on June 11, 2004 10:40 PM

Wait....there's a liberal media bias? Since when??

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Posted by: order pharmacy on January 26, 2005 06:19 PM

Hell Yeah finnally someone notices the truth that has been going on no more of the lies and cover-ups its all crap. This posting is great and im glad that it finally got out there to more people then just me hell yeah rock on and keep at it!

Posted by: Some Random Dude on July 18, 2005 04:17 PM

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A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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