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 J.B. Stone
Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Total posts: 38523 Location: Northwest Montana Age: 60 Gender: Male
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 Posted: 02/ 04/ 04 5:32 pm Post subject: Rumsfeld Casts Spell on Senate....WMD JuJu....!!! |
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Rummy Describes Hair Raising Fender Bender in Senate Parking Lot
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2004. Rumsfeld discussed U. S. operations in Iraq and presented the department's fiscal 2005 budget. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he is not ready to conclude that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose Saddam Hussein last year. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) |
Rumsfeld: WMD May Still Be Found in Iraq
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Feb 4, 11:51 AM (ET)
By ROBERT BURNS
(AP) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol...
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he is not ready to conclude that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose Saddam Hussein last year.
Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. weapons inspectors need more time to reach final conclusions about whether chemical and biological weapons existed in Iraq before the war, as the Bush administration had asserted before sending American troops into battle.
In a prepared statement, Rumsfeld said he was confident that prewar intelligence, while possibly flawed in some respects, was not manipulated by the administration to justify its war aims.
In his first public comments on the subject since David Kay told Congress last week that he believed it was now clear that U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs was fundamentally flawed, Rumsfeld praised the efforts of U.S. intelligence agencies and stressed the difficulty of penetrating secretive societies like Iraq.
Secret Prescription Death Ray Head Ornaments Not on UN List
(AP) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol...
Rumsfeld offered several examples of what he called "alternative views" about why no weapons have been discovered in Iraq, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed.
"I suppose that's possible, but not likely," he said.
Other possibilities cited by Rumsfeld:
- Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before U.S. troops arrived in March.
- Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.
Rummy Indicates Size of Chance David Kay Will Ever Get Rehired
- Weapons existed but were destroyed by the Iraqis before the war started.
Or, Rumsfeld postulated, "small quantities" of chemical or biological agents may have existed, along with a "surge capability" that would allow Iraq to rapidly build an arsenal of banned weapons. Commenting on that possibility, Rumsfeld said, "We may eventually find it in the months ahead."
Lastly, he offered the possibility that the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction "may have been a charade" orchestrated by the Iraqi government. It is even possible, he said, that Saddam was "tricked" by his own people into believing he had banned weapons that did not exist.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and other Democrats on the committee reminded Rumsfeld that in September 2002 he said "we know" where weapons of mass destruction are stored in Iraq.
Explaining that remark, Rumsfeld told the panel that he was referring to suspected weapons sites, but he acknowledged that he had made it sound like he was talking about actual weapons.
The remark "probably turned out not to be what one would have preferred, in retrospect," he said.
The Kay team, known as the Iraqi Survey Group, did confirm one thing, Rumsfeld said: "The intelligence community got it essentially right" with regard to Iraq's ballistic missile programs. It found that Iraq was working on missiles of longer range than was permitted under U.N. sanctions.
Rumsfeld also said he saw a possibility that Iraq managed to hide some banned weapons of mass destruction. He said that it took 10 months to find Saddam Hussein and that the hole in which he was found on Dec. 13 "was big enough to hold biological weapons to kill thousands" of people.
"Such objects, once buried, can stay buried," Rumsfeld said.
The findings of the Kay group, he added, so far have "not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated he had and what we believed he had. But it also has not proven the opposite." |
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J.B. Stone
Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Total posts: 38523 Location: Northwest Montana Age: 60 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 02/ 04/ 04 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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Kay vindicates Bush
Posted: February 3, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
In light of weapons inspector David Kay's recent statements, it is mystifying to me that President Bush and Republicans aren't claiming vindication and challenging Democrats for exploiting the issue. Some observations about this:
1. Kay did say we didn't discover major stockpiles of recently developed WMD in Iraq, but almost everything else he said supports the president's position, exposing his opponents as wrong and reckless. Kay said or implied that:
# A. "The intelligence community owes the president [an apology] rather than the president owing [one to] the American people."
# B. The administration did not pressure the intelligence agencies to overstate the WMD threat.
# C. While Bush relied on possibly erroneous intelligence, so did Saddam himself and his generals, the Clinton administration, France, Germany and Britain.
# D. "What we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."
# E. Iraq was a magnet for international terrorists who were free to operate there, and plan and conduct their deadly mischief.
# F. Saddam was flagrantly violating U.N. resolutions in a number of respects and feverishly trying to do so in others. While there were supposedly no major WMD stockpiles, there were probably WMDs, some of which may have been removed to Syria in the weeks preceding our invasion. Saddam was trying to weaponize the deadly agent Ricin, and he was clearly developing missile systems in contravention of the resolutions.
# G. Saddam's scientists may have duped him about their progress in developing WMD.
2. Bill Clinton recently said that when he ordered the bombing of Iraq's suspected WMD sites, we couldn't be sure whether we (and Britain) destroyed all of them, 50 percent or 10 percent – because we didn't have inspectors on the ground to determine the extent of the damage.
While Clinton was trying to take credit for possibly destroying Iraq's WMD, he inadvertently exposed his party's hypocrisy. Did Democrats complain that he bombed these sites when we didn't even know if WMD were there? Did Democrats complain about weaknesses in our intelligence because we never learned whether we struck pay dirt with those bombing attacks? Did they call for an investigation?
3. It's a little hard for me to swallow the idea that just one of Saddam's scientists deceived him, much less a network of them who would have had to discuss their lies conspiratorially, increasing the chances that they would be exposed (and then murdered).
4. But, if Kay is correct that Saddam was duped, how can we say we had an avoidable failure of intelligence? If a dictator with unchecked power has faulty intelligence about his own regime, how can our intelligence agencies be blamed for having that same info?
5. Intelligence is at best, an inexact science. It is hard to stomach all these armchair quarterbacks demanding perfection from the very intelligence organizations they and their like-minded predecessors emasculated in previous decades. If there were intelligence failures, they were probably not technological ones, but those of human intelligence (HUMINT), which is precisely what liberals weakened.
6. I question Kay's assertion that "you cannot have pre-emptive foreign or military policy unless you have pristine, perfect intelligence." Since much intelligence depends on the human factor, which is inherently imperfect, we will often not be completely certain about our intelligence. Yet, as even Kay admits, it was imperative that we act anyway. The only way we could prevent Saddam from developing and using WMD or sharing them with terrorists was to remove him from power forcibly.
7. And with all due respect to Mr. Kay and others, we did not, as I've written many times before, have the burden of proving Saddam had WMD. He had the duty of proving he had destroyed them and his programs. This he deliberately and defiantly failed to do. Our "preemptive" attack was justified with or without the continued existence of WMD. In this sense, it wasn't even preemptive – it was to enforce already-violated resolutions.
8. President Bush has been pressured to conduct an independent investigation even though we don't know for sure that there was truly an intelligence failure that could realistically have been avoided. But as important as intelligence is in our war on terror, we can greatly benefit from a comprehensive review, provided its purpose remains constructive – to expose and solve problems – rather than to find a convenient scapegoat.
9. It doesn't make sense that Bush would have lied about WMD knowing that his lie would be exposed when we defeated Iraq. It's time for Democrats to "move on." |
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omniscient
Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Total posts: 212 Location: Vancouver Gender: Male
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| Posted: 02/ 05/ 04 9:37 am Post subject: |
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Despite Kay's apparent flip-flopping, I'm still not writing off the Syria theory regarding the whereabouts of Iraqi WMD. Until this particular rock is turned over, the jury is still out. I'm hoping that it is only a matter of time before GWB addresses the Syrian issue with some kind of ultimatum to Damascus.
| Quote: | Dr. Kay Had Maps with Coordinates of WMD Hiding Places in Syria
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report and Analysis
February 2, 2004, 3:33 PM (GMT+02:00)
No mirage...
Setting up an inquiry commission is the political leader’s favorite dodge for burying an embarrassing problem until the pursuit dies down. President George W. Bush will this week bow to election-year pressures from Democrats and his own Republicans alike and sign an executive order to investigate US intelligence failings regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction on the eve of war. Both his senior war partners, the Australian and British prime ministers, face the same public clamor ever since WMD hunter Dr. David Kay resigned, declaring there were probably no stockpiles in Iraq and “we were all wrong.”
At the same time, the CIA and other intelligence bodies accused of flawed performance do not look particularly dismayed by the prospect of facing these probes. They point to the cause of the political flap, Dr Kay, as contradicting himself more than once in the numerous interviews he has given since he quit as head of the Iraq Survey Group.
In the last 24 hours, DEBKAfile went back to its most reliable intelligence sources in the US and the Middle East, some of whom were actively involved in the subject before and during the Iraq war. They all stuck to their guns. As they have consistently informed DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly , Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons programs were present on the eve of the American-led invasion and quantities of forbidden materials were spirited out to Syria. Whatever Dr. Kay may choose to say now, at least one of these sources knows at first hand that the former ISG director received dates, types of vehicles and destinations covering the transfers of Iraqi WMD to Syria.
Indeed the US administration and its intelligence agencies, as well as Dr Kay, were all provided with Syrian maps marked with the coordinates of the secret weapons storage sites. The largest one is located at Qaratshuk at the heart of a desolate and unfrequented region edged with marshes, south of the Syrian town of Al Qamishli near the place where the Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish frontiers converge; smaller quantities are hidden in the vast plain between Al Qamishli and Az Zawr, and a third is under the ground of the Lebanese Beqaa Valley on the Syrian border.
These transfers were first revealed by DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly in February 2003 a month before the war. We also discovered that a Syrian engineering corps unit was detailed to dig their hiding places in northern Syria and the Lebanese Beqaa.
A senior intelligence source confirmed this again to DEBKAfile, stressing: “Dr. Kay knows exactly what was contained in the tanker trucks crossing from Iraq into Syria in January 2003. His job gave him access to satellite photos of the convoys; the instruments used by spy planes would have identified dangerous substances and tracked them to their underground nests. There exists a precise record of the movement of chemical and biological substances from Iraq to Syria.”
Armed with this knowledge, Kay was able to say firmly to The Telegraph’s Con Coughlin on January 25: “We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons. But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.
Yet in later interviews, the last being on February 1 with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s Late Edition - and for reasons known only to himself - Kay turned vague, claiming there was no way of knowing what those convoys contained because of the lack of Syrian cooperation.
What caused his change of tune?
Since he began talking to the media, interested politicians have been rephrasing his assertions on the probable absence of stockpiles, by dropping the “probable” and transmuting “no stockpiles”, to “no WMD.” These adjustments have produced a telling argument against Bush’s justification for war and a slogan that has deeply eroded public confidence in US credibility in America and other countries. Tony Blair and John Howard will no doubt set up outside inquiry commissions like Bush. In Israel too, opposition factions have seized the opportunity of arguing that if Israel’s pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s arsenal was flawed, so too was its evaluation of Yasser Arafat’s role as the engine of Palestinian suicidal terror. The fact that intelligence was not flawed - UN inspectors dismantled missiles and Iraq fired missiles at Kuwait - is easily shouted down in the current climate.
By the same token, no connection is drawn between the Iraqi WMD issue and the grounding this week of transatlantic flights from Europe to America by credible intelligence of an al Qaeda plot. The Washington Post spelled the threat out as entailing the possible spread of anthrax or smallpox germs in the cabin or planting of poison chemicals in the cargo.
It was also suggested that suicidal pilots might crash an airliner on an American city and drop payloads of toxic chemicals and bacteria.
Two questions present themselves here. One: if minute quantities of weaponized biological and chemical substances dropped by Osama bin Laden’s killers from the air are menacing enough to trigger a major alert, why would Saddam need stockpiles to pose an imminent threat to world security and his immediate neighbors? Would not a couple of test tubes serve his purpose? Two: Where did al Qaeda get hold of the WMD presumed to be in its possession and who trained its operatives in their use?
Once again, DEBKAfile’s senior intelligence sources recall earlier revelations. The ex-Jordanian terror master Mussab al Zarqawi is key director of al Qaeda’s chemical, biological and radioactive warfare program. In late 2000, we reported him operating WMD laboratories under the supervision of Iraqi intelligence in the northern Iraqi town of Bayara. Since then, the same Zarqawi has masterminded some of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Iraq, such as the blasts at the Jordanian embassy and the murder of Italian troops in Nassariya.
Zarqawi is and was the embodiment of the link between Saddam and al Qaeda going back four years, long before the American invasion of Iraq - which indicatges the source of Osama bin Laden’s unconventional weapons purchases.
In another interview, the former ISG director expanded on his statement that Iraq was falling apart “from depravity and corruption.” The Saddam regime, he said, had lost control. Saddam ran projects privately and unsupervised, while his scientists were free to fake programs.
A senior DEBKAfile source commented on this assertion:
”That’s one way of describing the situation – and not only on war’s eve but during all of Saddam Hussein’s years of ruling Iraq. We are looking at institutionalized corruption of a type unfamiliar in the West; it was built up in a very special way in Iraq.” The country was not falling apart, but it was being looted systematically. Just imagine, he said, Saddam and the two sons the Americans killed in July 2003 had their own secret printing press for running off Iraqi dinars and other currencies including dollars for their own personal use. The central bank went on issuing currency in the normal way, unaware that it was being undermined from within by the ruler’s private press. “Saddam’s corruption was structured, a hierarchical pyramid with the ruler, his sons and inner circle at the top and the petty thieves at the bottom making off with worthless paper.”
Some of our sources challenged two more of Dr. Kay’s assertions to Wolf Blitzer: a) After 1998 when the UN left, there was no human intelligence on the ground, and b) “There were no regular sources of information, not enough dots to connect.” If this is true, how does he explain another statement in the same interview that the US entered the war on the basis of “a broad consensus among intelligence services – not just the CIA, but also Britain, France and Russia?”
On what did this consensus rest if there were no informants on the ground?
And furthermore, how were the American and British invading armies able to advance at such speed from Kuwait to Baghdad with no obstructions and without blowing up a single bridge, road or other utility, including oil fields, ports and military air fields? Every obstruction had clearly been removed from their path by intelligence agents on the ground , who reached understandings with local Iraqi commanders before the war began.
In the face of this evidence, the question must be asked: Why does Bush take David Kay’s assaults and demands with such stoicism instead of going after Damascus - as defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has proposed from time to time?
One theory is that he does not trust any of the evidence. Saddam was famous among UN inspectors for his deception techniques; he may have practiced a double deception. Hard and fast facts are likewise hard to come by in Damascus. Above all, Bush may simply be determined to adhere to his plan of action come what may, whatever crises happen to cross his path, in the confidence that his path will lead to a November victory at the polls.
Three inquiry commissions will most likely be set up to examine the American, British and Australian intelligence assessments of Saddam’s weapons of destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war. In the meantime, the actual weapons will continue to molder undisturbed in the ground of Syria and Lebanon. |
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J.B. Stone
Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Total posts: 38523 Location: Northwest Montana Age: 60 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 02/ 05/ 04 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
In the face of this evidence, the question must be asked: Why does Bush take David Kay’s assaults and demands with such stoicism instead of going after Damascus - as defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has proposed from time to time?
One theory is that he does not trust any of the evidence. Saddam was famous among UN inspectors for his deception techniques; he may have practiced a double deception. Hard and fast facts are likewise hard to come by in Damascus. Above all, Bush may simply be determined to adhere to his plan of action come what may, whatever crises happen to cross his path, in the confidence that his path will lead to a November victory at the polls.
Three inquiry commissions will most likely be set up to examine the American, British and Australian intelligence assessments of Saddam’s weapons of destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war. In the meantime, the actual weapons will continue to molder undisturbed in the ground of Syria and Lebanon. |
All one needs to do is to look at what he DID ship to Damascus ASAP when he finally figured Bush & Blair weren't just "bluffing" as he had become accustomed to.
There were his family members, dignitaries literal semis filled with cash, at least one "tanker" filled with gold bricks, all moved out via the Syrian Border, some unsuccessfully....but,
We DO know by satellite images that he had substantial caravans of trucks headed to Syria day & night until we got enough forces into the area to interdict them.
You have to figure he'd abscond with the MOST valuable items FIRST.
So, after spending MILLIONS on WMD's, one can only conclude he'd attempt to "cash them in" or at least save a few for later fun and games.
Saddam & Sons were NOT accustomed to giving up their toys...and they would do literally ANYTHING to acquire or protect them.
So, don't count them "missing" yet.
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J.B. Stone
Joined: 11 Apr 2003 Total posts: 38523 Location: Northwest Montana Age: 60 Gender: Male
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| Posted: 02/ 05/ 04 11:01 am Post subject: |
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CIA Director to Address Intel Issues
By KATHERINE PFLEGER
WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet is scheduled to speak Thursday at Georgetown University, his alma mater, to discuss the prewar intelligence on Iraq, the intelligence community's counter-proliferation work and the inherent difficulties of the intelligence business.
He planned to address what one senior intelligence official called "misperceptions and downright inaccuracies" concerning what the intelligence community reported _ and didn't report _ in its prewar assessments on Iraq.
"He is going to point out that it is premature to jump to conclusions," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Tenet has been publicly quiet on the debate in the 13 days since one of his advisers, David Kay, resigned as the CIA's top weapons inspector in Iraq. Kay's statements that Saddam Hussein's purported weapons didn't exist at the time of the U.S. invasion have sparked an intense debate over the prewar intelligence which the Bush administration used to justify the war.
Tenet began exploring themes for the speech last week. He is expected to describe some of the intelligence community's successes, something Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
"The reality is we have had some wonderful successes, and some of them not public," Rumsfeld said. "The failures are very visible, and that's always the case."
Even as President Bush and his aides have backed away from their predictions that weapons would be found, Rumsfeld said he thinks Iraq may have had weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded and inspectors need more time to search for them.
Rumsfeld also denied assertions by Democrats that Bush administration officials manipulated intelligence to push for war.
At least five inquiries into the U.S. intelligence on Iraq are under way, and Bush was expected to announce another commission this week to review the intelligence community.
Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., scheduled a meeting Thursday to study a 200-plus-page report compiled by committee staff on the prewar intelligence. Last week, Roberts blamed problems with intelligence on the intelligence agencies, not the way policy-makers used what they were given.
West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the committee, planned to reiterate calls to expand the probe to examine whether senior administration officials pressed analysts to make the case for war.
"The fact is that the report ultimately will not give an accurate picture if all questions are not answered," said Rockefeller spokeswoman Wendy Morigi. |
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