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Former MI5 chief criticises Blair's defence of the Iraq war

In terms of nerve gas/biological warfare chemicals in Saddam Hussein's possession these came from:

* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.

* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.

* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC

* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).

The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":

* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA

* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC

* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC

* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT

* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT

* Evapco, Taneytown, MD

* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH

Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol.

The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents.
 
It ends up there were WMD's but the MSM and liberals decided that mustard and sarin gas didn't count.

Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official SaysBy Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

>" WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today.

"These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal.

"Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs.

The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.

While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s.

This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic.

"Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic, and if you were exposed to it long enough, lethal."

Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone."

"I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons."

The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform.

Maples added searches are ongoing for chemical weapons beyond those being conducted solely for force protection.

There has been a call for a complete declassification of the National Ground Intelligence Center's report on WMD in Iraq. Maples said he believes the director of national intelligence is still considering this option, and has asked Maples to look into producing an unclassified paper addressing the subject matter in the center's report.

Much of the classified matter was slated for discussion in a closed forum after the open hearings this morning. "< -> Defense.gov News Article: Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official Says

Defense Intelligence Agency
National Ground Intelligence Center

But that's just the crap we sold him and 500 munitions isn't alot given the bulk orders he made during the 80's gassing of civilians. Wouldn't have been easier just to show the American public the WMD receipts/IOUs than come up with such shoddy intel?
 
But that's just the crap we sold him and 500 munitions isn't alot given the bulk orders he made during the 80's gassing of civilians. Wouldn't have been easier just to show the American public the WMD receipts/IOUs than come up with such shoddy intel?


Funny how some think, 500 155 MM artillery rounds filled with sarin nerve gas and mustard gas isn't alot when Bush was POTUS.

Iraq manufactured most of their own mustard and sarin gas. But those evil Brazilians did sell Iraq 500 tons of mustard gas.

For what credibility Wikipedia has -> Iraqi chemical weapons program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fats are, Iraq did have WMD's and the MSM gave Iraq a complete pass as if Iraq was Obama.
 
Saddam was sold tonnes and tonnes of these chemical agents he had used most of his stockpiles by 1991. UN sanctions led to a further decrease. There was also no problem in selling him materials for genocide until 1991. He was also not seen as an imminent 30 minute WMD threat until 2003 when his regimes ability too attack using WMDs had declined considerably.

Throughout the life of ISG (Iraq Survey Group), there were two occasions where chemical weapons were found.[citation needed] The first was a single sarin mortar shell which had been reworked into a roadside IED by insurgents. The second was a handful of 122-millimeter rocket warheads filled with inert mustard gas that was recovered near Babylon. Both were thought to be remainders from the Iran–Iraq War, when Iraq was in some sense a US ally, and were useless as offensive weapons.

On 23 January 2004, the head of the ISG, David Kay, resigned his position, stating that he believed WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," commented Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties." In a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kay criticized the pre-war WMD intelligence and the agencies that produced it, saying "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing."[1] Sometime earlier, CIA director George Tenet had asked David Kay to delay his departure: "If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing. That the wheels are coming off."[2]

Kay told the SASC during his oral report the following, though: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion-—although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

Kay's team established that the Iraqi regime had the production capacity and know-how to produce chemical and biological weaponry if international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by a number of United Nations member states. Kay also believed some components of the former Iraqi regime's WMD program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion,[3] though the Duelfer Report Addenda (see below) later reported there was no evidence of this.

On 6 February 2004, George W. Bush convened the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war and the failure to find WMD. This was shortly followed by the conclusion of a similar inquiry in the United Kingdom, the Butler Review, which was boycotted by the two main opposition parties due to disagreements on its scope and independence.[4] In 2003, the US-sponsored search for WMD had been budgeted for $400 million, with an additional $600 million added in 2004.

Kay's successor, named by CIA director George Tenet, was the former UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who stated at the time that the chances of finding any WMD stockpiles in Iraq were "close to nil."

In January 2005, the group announced the conclusion of its search. The ISG stated that while it had, "not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003," they acknowledged "the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability."
 
It ends up there were WMD's but the MSM and liberals decided that mustard and sarin gas didn't count.

Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official SaysBy Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

>" WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today.

"These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal.

"Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs.

The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.

While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s.

This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic.

"Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic, and if you were exposed to it long enough, lethal."

Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone."

"I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons."

The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform.

Maples added searches are ongoing for chemical weapons beyond those being conducted solely for force protection.

There has been a call for a complete declassification of the National Ground Intelligence Center's report on WMD in Iraq. Maples said he believes the director of national intelligence is still considering this option, and has asked Maples to look into producing an unclassified paper addressing the subject matter in the center's report.

Much of the classified matter was slated for discussion in a closed forum after the open hearings this morning. "< -> Defense.gov News Article: Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official Says

Defense Intelligence Agency
National Ground Intelligence Center

So a military run newspaper justifies the war.. what a shocker! Not exactly brilliant moral making material if they came out and said.. "oh yea your buddy who got his head blown off beside you.. basically died due to a lie".
 
In January 2005, the group announced the conclusion of its search. The ISG stated that while it had, "not found evidence that Saddam possessed WMD stocks in 2003," they acknowledged "the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant capability."

The key words in that sentence... basically ups no WMDs, but there might be but we cant find them and if there are any, then they are most likely so degraded that they could not hurt a fly.
 
Iraqi Junior Army officers were trained in United States and Russia in chemical warfare during the 1960s. The Iraqi army then formed the Chemical Corps.

Al Muthanna State Establishment (MSE) oversaw operations for producing biological agents from 1986 onwards

Al Muthanna’s ability to produce chemical weapons ended with the Gulf war, and soon afterwards the UN resolution proscribed Iraq’s ability to produce chemical weapons. The majority of the Al Muthanna complex was bombed during Desert Storm, completely incapacitating Iraq’s chemical weapon production capabilities.

From 1992 to 1994, UNSCOM’s Chemical Destruction Group (CDG) oversaw destruction operations. A portion of the facility was transformed into a CW agent destruction facility. An incinerator was constructed in the summer of 1992 for the destruction of mustard agent at the munitions filling location. Chemical munitions stored throughout Iraq were to be gathered and destroyed at Al Muthanna.

■Between 1992 and 1994 the facility was the primary collection and destruction site for all declared CW agents, precursor chemicals, and chemical production equipment.

■Between 1992 and 1994 and again in 1996, the CDG oversaw destruction of 30,000 pieces of ordnance, 480,000 liters of chemical agents, and more than 2 million liters of chemical precursors. Eventually, most of the facilities at the complex the Iraqi’s destroyed and sold for scrap.

■Equipment that survived Desert Storm was tagged by UN or destroyed, but the UN was never able to verify that all equipment purchased for MSE was tagged or destroyed.

■Two Cruciform Bunkers were sealed containing munitions too dangerous for destruction.

■Bunkers, damaged by coalition bombing, collapsed, concealing unaccounted CW equipment and munitions in the debris. Over the next ten years some of the facilities were razed by the Iraqis. Precise accountability of equipment and munitions is unverifiable, because the National Monitoring Directorate and UNSCOM did not always oversee excavation.

The entire Al Muthanna mega-facility was the bastion of Iraqi’s chemical weapons development program. During its peak in the late 1980s to early 1990s, it amassed mega-bunkers full of chemical munitions, and provided Iraq with a force multiplier sufficient to counteract Iran’s superior military numbers. Two wars, sanctions and UNSCOM oversight reduced Iraqi’s premier production facility to a stockpile of old damaged and contaminated chemical munitions(sealed in bunkers), a wasteland full of destroyed chemical munitions, razed structures, and unusable war-ravaged facilities. In 1998 Al Tariq State Establishment took over all remaining remnants at Al Muthanna.

The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Desert Storm and subsequent UN resolutions and inspections brought many of Iraq’s delivery system programs to a halt. While much of Iraq’s long-range missile inventory and production infrastructure was eliminated, Iraq until late 1991 kept some items hidden to assist future reconstitution of the force. This decision and Iraq’s intransigence during years of inspection left many UN questions unresolved.
• Coalition airstrikes effectively targeted much of Iraq’s delivery systems infrastructure, and UN inspections
dramatically impeded further developments of long-range ballistic missiles.
• It appears to have taken time, but Iraq eventually realized that sanctions were not going to end quickly.
This forced Iraq to sacrifi ce its long-range delivery force in an attempt to bring about a quick end to the sanctions.
• After the fl ight of Husayn Kamil in 1995, Iraq admitted that it had hidden Scud-variant missiles and components
to aid future reconstitution but asserted that these items had been unilaterally destroyed by late 1991.
The UN could not verify these claims and thereafter became more wary of Iraq’s admissions and instituted a
Regime of more intrusive inspections.
• The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) has uncovered no evidence Iraq retained Scud-variant missiles, and debriefings
of Iraqi officials in addition to some documentation suggest that Iraq did not retain such missiles
after 1991.

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.
 
It ends up there were WMD's but the MSM and liberals decided that mustard and sarin gas didn't count.

Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official SaysBy Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

>" WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today.

"These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal.

"Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs.

The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.

While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s.

This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic.

"Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic, and if you were exposed to it long enough, lethal."

Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone."

"I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons."

The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform.

Maples added searches are ongoing for chemical weapons beyond those being conducted solely for force protection.

There has been a call for a complete declassification of the National Ground Intelligence Center's report on WMD in Iraq. Maples said he believes the director of national intelligence is still considering this option, and has asked Maples to look into producing an unclassified paper addressing the subject matter in the center's report.

Much of the classified matter was slated for discussion in a closed forum after the open hearings this morning. "< -> Defense.gov News Article: Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official Says

Defense Intelligence Agency
National Ground Intelligence Center


"The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added."

Badly corroded? Could not be used?, hardly the spell bound WMD 30 minute Armageddon strike purported just before the invasion is it?

Let us also not forget the backhanded duplicity of giving the Dictator the WMD's in the first place.
 
45-minutes-from-doom.jpg


Courtesy of NeoCon Rupert Murdoch who also runs Fox News

Tony-Blair-and-Rupert-Mur-006.jpg
 
Has that secret evidence eluded us up until now? Don't count on it. Unanimous votes in the UN security council about the weapons. Come on even our enemies thought he had them. Bill Clinton even thought so. Drop the subject because you can't win on it.

Left over weapons, as noted in the OP, not growing and gathering. Make proper distinctions.
 
It ends up there were WMD's but the MSM and liberals decided that mustard and sarin gas didn't count.

Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official SaysBy Samantha L. Quigley
American Forces Press Service

>" WASHINGTON, June 29, 2006 – The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today.

"These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal.

"Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs.

The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.

While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s.

This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic.

"Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic, and if you were exposed to it long enough, lethal."

Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone."

"I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons."

The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform.

Maples added searches are ongoing for chemical weapons beyond those being conducted solely for force protection.

There has been a call for a complete declassification of the National Ground Intelligence Center's report on WMD in Iraq. Maples said he believes the director of national intelligence is still considering this option, and has asked Maples to look into producing an unclassified paper addressing the subject matter in the center's report.

Much of the classified matter was slated for discussion in a closed forum after the open hearings this morning. "< -> Defense.gov News Article: Munitions Found in Iraq Meet WMD Criteria, Official Says

Defense Intelligence Agency
National Ground Intelligence Center

I'm sure that we both agree that under certain conditions, an M-60 machine gun is a weapon of mass destruction.

What Bush & Co offered really were simply weapons of mass distraction. And they worked great! :lol:
 
So a military run newspaper justifies the war.. what a shocker! Not exactly brilliant moral making material if they came out and said.. "oh yea your buddy who got his head blown off beside you.. basically died due to a lie".

It's not a newspaper, it's the news service for the Defense Department where newspapers get their news from.

If you have a problem don't attack the messenger, attack the message if you don't like the message.

BTW: My head is still attached. The libs say they are concerned about 5,000 dead, but those are just words considering the left has a poor track record over the past forty five years of not giving a damn about those who serve. What about the Cn'C who signed off on a CIA backed military coup to remove a corrupt leader of a sovereign nation that backfired and resulted in 58,000 American deaths ? He got a complete pass by the left while they blamed his two predecessor's and those who did serve.
 
"The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added."

Badly corroded? Could not be used?, hardly the spell bound WMD 30 minute Armageddon strike purported just before the invasion is it?

Let us also not forget the backhanded duplicity of giving the Dictator the WMD's in the first place.

Used as "originally intended" which means they couldn't be delivered on target by an artillery gun/howitzer.

It was the shell casings that were corroded not what was inside the shell casings. Sarin gas and mustard gas are not metals so they can't corrode.

After 9/11/01 it wasn't the artillery shells that many were scared of but what was inside the artillery shells. They were scared that Al Qaeda would some how get their hands on what was inside the shells. I seriously doubt Al Qaeda was going to put a battery of 155 MM howitzers on the Hudson River in New Jersey and fire artillery rounds filled with sarin and mustard gas on New York City.

Mustard and sarin gas was found in Iraq and the political left said it didn't count. What would count ? What would meet the definition of the political left of a WMD ? How many grams, ounces, pounds, tons would meet their definition as being a WMD ? They refuse to tell us. They have a political agenda and we have seen since the 1970's the political left keep changing definition of words at a whim to further their political agenda.
 
I'm sure that we both agree that under certain conditions, an M-60 machine gun is a weapon of mass destruction.

What Bush & Co offered really were simply weapons of mass distraction. And they worked great! :lol:

Who exactly came up with the term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) ?

Before 9/11 in the military community it was always NBC (nuclear, biological, nuclear.)

I guess any thing that can kill more than one person could be called a WMD. But we have to ask a white beard scratching liberal how many lives would have to be killed befolre that weapopn meets their deffinition as being a WMD, they are the ones who decide now days.

A biological weapon like anthrax, mustard gas or sarin cause no destruction except to living things. A nuclear detonation would cause a lot of destruction. After that weapon the 16 " guns on a Iowa class battleship would be the most destructive weapon their is. Just one salvo from the 16" gun battery on an Iowa would level a 1/4 square mile of any city.

Eric Holder's Department of Justice announced they were going to prosecute an American who supposedly fired a RPG in Syria. The DOJ has classified the RPG as a WMD saying since it could be used to shoot down a civilian aircraft with 200 souls on board, it meets the definition as a WMD. I suppose a Boeing 737 is also a WMD because they were used as a weapon to kill 3,000 people on 9/11.

Who coined the phrase WMD ? Was it just a propaganda phrase to influence and scare people to further an agenda ?
 
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If Bush and Blair lied about WMD, then they must have had some ulterior motive to invade IRaq. What was it?
 
45-minutes-from-doom.jpg


Courtesy of NeoCon Rupert Murdoch who also runs Fox News

Tony-Blair-and-Rupert-Mur-006.jpg

Joechill, you should do a little research. Does the New York Times and the NYT reporter Judith Miller stimulate your outer brain cells ?

In fact if you dig back further during the Clinton administration you would probably find both the New York Times and Washington Post telling us that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and there needs to be a regime change. It was President Clinton who called for regime change in Iraq and signed in to law the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. It was President Bush in 2003 who carried out that law five years later that Clinton signed in to law.


>" For the past few days I’ve been spotlighting the high media crimes and misdemeanors committed in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, almost exactly ten years ago, featuring “treasured” journos such as David Brooks and Bob Woodward or even newspapers as a whole (The Washington Post). But it’s The New York Times and Judith Miller, among others, who will truly live in infamy—partly because of the paper’s outsized (perceived) influence.

It’s instructive to review what happened when the paper belatedly owned up to (some) of its misdeeds, in May 2004, more than a year after its misconduct. Jack Shafer famously called it a “mini-culpa.” Bill Keller had replaced Howell Raines as executive editor but Judy Miller was still on board. Jill Abramson now has the top job and Keller writes a column. Michael Gordon is still a star reporter at the paper. Miller, naturally, toils at Fox News. Go here to see what Keller wrote two years ago when he tried to explain why he had been a “reluctant hawk” on Iraq.

The following is excerpted from my book, which was published last week in an updated, expanded e-book edition, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the Media—Failed on Iraq.

After months of criticism of The New York Times’s coverage of WMDS and the run-up to the war in Iraq—mainly directed at star reporter Judith Miller (left)—the paper’s editors, in an extraordinary note to readers this morning, finally tackled the subject, acknowledging it was “past time” they do so. While it does not, in some ways, go nearly far enough, and is buried on Page A10, this low-key but scathing self-rebuke is nothing less than a primer on how not to do journalism, particularly if you are an enormously influential newspaper with a costly invasion of another nation at stake. "< continue -> When the 'NYT' Offered a Weak 'Mini-Culpa' for Hyping Iraq WMD | The Nation
 
Who exactly came up with the term "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) ?

Before 9/11 in the military community it was always NBC (nuclear, biological, nuclear.)

I guess any thing that can kill more than one person could be called a WMD. But we have to ask a white beard scratching liberal how many lives would have to be killed befolre that weapopn meets their deffinition as being a WMD, they are the ones who decide now days.

A biological weapon like anthrax, mustard gas or sarin cause no destruction except to living things. A nuclear detonation would cause a lot of destruction. After that weapon the 16 " guns on a Iowa class battleship would be the most destructive weapon their is. Just one salvo from the 16" gun battery on an Iowa would level a 1/4 square mile of any city.

Eric Holder's Department of Justice announced they were going to prosecute an American who supposedly fired a RPG in Syria. The DOJ has classified the RPG as a WMD saying since it could be used to shoot down a civilian aircraft with 200 souls on board, it meets the definition as a WMD. I suppose a Boeing 737 is also a WMD because they were used as a weapon to kill 3,000 people on 9/11.

Who coined the phrase WMD ? Was it just a propaganda phrase to influence and scare people to further an agenda ?

Nuclear, Biological and Chemical is your NBC acronym. When I was in it was CBR, Chemical, Biological and Radiological.

Yes, I think that WMD is just a term like "terrorist", a term of propaganda used to scare people silly. The longer people are kept afraid, the more irrational they become.

Even back in 1930 H.L. Mencken realized that politicians love to keep people scared. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Our history demonstrates this clearly. The Brits do it too.
 
If Bush and Blair lied about WMD, then they must have had some ulterior motive to invade IRaq. What was it?

"A Clean Break" and other geopolitical and realpolitik reasons.
 
Joechill, you should do a little research. Does the New York Times and the NYT reporter Judith Miller stimulate your outer brain cells ?

In fact if you dig back further during the Clinton administration you would probably find both the New York Times and Washington Post telling us that Saddam Hussein had WMD's and there needs to be a regime change. It was President Clinton who called for regime change in Iraq and signed in to law the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. It was President Bush in 2003 who carried out that law five years later that Clinton signed in to law.


>" For the past few days I’ve been spotlighting the high media crimes and misdemeanors committed in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, almost exactly ten years ago, featuring “treasured” journos such as David Brooks and Bob Woodward or even newspapers as a whole (The Washington Post). But it’s The New York Times and Judith Miller, among others, who will truly live in infamy—partly because of the paper’s outsized (perceived) influence.

It’s instructive to review what happened when the paper belatedly owned up to (some) of its misdeeds, in May 2004, more than a year after its misconduct. Jack Shafer famously called it a “mini-culpa.” Bill Keller had replaced Howell Raines as executive editor but Judy Miller was still on board. Jill Abramson now has the top job and Keller writes a column. Michael Gordon is still a star reporter at the paper. Miller, naturally, toils at Fox News. Go here to see what Keller wrote two years ago when he tried to explain why he had been a “reluctant hawk” on Iraq.

The following is excerpted from my book, which was published last week in an updated, expanded e-book edition, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the Media—Failed on Iraq.

After months of criticism of The New York Times’s coverage of WMDS and the run-up to the war in Iraq—mainly directed at star reporter Judith Miller (left)—the paper’s editors, in an extraordinary note to readers this morning, finally tackled the subject, acknowledging it was “past time” they do so. While it does not, in some ways, go nearly far enough, and is buried on Page A10, this low-key but scathing self-rebuke is nothing less than a primer on how not to do journalism, particularly if you are an enormously influential newspaper with a costly invasion of another nation at stake. "< continue -> When the 'NYT' Offered a Weak 'Mini-Culpa' for Hyping Iraq WMD | The Nation

Judith Miller is a neoconservative so no not really, this is also not an argument about republicans and democrats who are more or less the same beast anyway.


Inevitably Judy "Miss Run Amok" Miller became a runaway train, picking up speed on the way to a major wreck, which has now arrived. We are now left to contemplate the ruinous damage inflicted on the reputation and credibility of a great paper.

Judith Miller: The Tragic Axis of the Neocons and the New York Times


Off Topic, interesting article about the two party system:
S/R 33: Republicans and Democrats: What’s the Difference? (Pete Dolack)
 
Unanimous votes in the UN security council about the weapons.

In 2003, the governments of the US, Britain, and Spain proposed another resolution on Iraq, which they called the "eighteenth resolution" and others called the "second resolution." This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn when it became clear that several permanent members of the Council would cast no votes on any new resolution, thereby vetoing it. Had that occurred, it would have become even more difficult for those wishing to invade Iraq to argue that the Council had authorized the subsequent invasion. Regardless of the threatened or likely vetoes, it seems that the coalition at no time was assured any more than four affirmative votes in the Council—the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria—well short of the requirement for nine affirmative votes.

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
 
In 2003, the governments of the US, Britain, and Spain proposed another resolution on Iraq, which they called the "eighteenth resolution" and others called the "second resolution." This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn when it became clear that several permanent members of the Council would cast no votes on any new resolution, thereby vetoing it. Had that occurred, it would have become even more difficult for those wishing to invade Iraq to argue that the Council had authorized the subsequent invasion. Regardless of the threatened or likely vetoes, it seems that the coalition at no time was assured any more than four affirmative votes in the Council—the US, Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria—well short of the requirement for nine affirmative votes.

On September 16, 2004 Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, speaking on the invasion, said, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

It's amazing that you would attack a harmless writer at the NY Times and yet support the obvious corruption at the UN.

Kofi Annan and the U.N.'s Culture of Corruption

UN oil-for-food chief took Saddam bribes | World news | The Guardian

Iraq Accepted Bribes for UN Food Deal

It seems you fashion your own version of historical event.
 
Do you have a link to another pop song to support these claims?

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit...

It was meant to be humorous..

You must have had a soh bypass...
 
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