michaeledward said:
However, let's consider your argument. You are saying that we invaded because of a 'Belief'.
We did not invade because we had any facts. The United States would not allow the United Nations weapon inspectors complete their work.
Here's what I base my opinion on. Even the weapons inspectors at the time believed that there was a lot more hidden than they had found. They had "no doubt" that the weapons existed and had even destroyed a lot. But they had been kicked out of the country for the past 3 years (1998-2001), so there was no belief that Iraq was going to cooperate this time around. I don't believe Saddam was going to do anything without a military confrontation to force his hand.
So let's see... Saddam invades a country and is repelled by an international force. The UN puts sanctions on him to make sure he doesn't do that again. He thumbs his nose at the sanctions and does everything he can to hamper them. After 12 years of slapping his wrist with numerous UN sanctions to force his compliance, destorying tons of weapons that should have been destroyed a long time ago (and not declaring weapons that we found) we say enough is enough and force his hand. Now we're the bad guys... I don't get it.
By the way, just because we haven't found any WMDs doesn't mean they don't exist. Even the weapons inspectors found evidence of WMD programs in the custody of civilians (not scientists). Therefore they can be hidden anywhere.
So, unless the weapons inspectors are lying and are in cohoot with the US administration and UNSCOM, I have no reason to 1) believe that weapons don't exist and 2) believe that the weapons inspectors had a chance to ever find them.
CNN 11/5/1997
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United Nations' chief weapons inspector says that Iraq has tampered with U.N. surveillance cameras and moved sensitive material out of view at sites where illegal missile components could be manufactured.
On the same day that a U.N. diplomatic mission met with Iraqi officials in an attempt to defuse a tense situation over U.N. inspections, chief inspector Richard Butler said in a letter Wednesday to the Security Council that "significant pieces of dual-capable equipment, subject to monitoring by the (inspectors') remote camera monitoring system, have been moved out of view of the cameras."
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"Furthermore, it appears that cameras may have been intentionally tampered with, lenses covered and lighting turned off in the facilities under monitoring," Butler said.
CNN 1/23/1998
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Iraq has no intention of giving U.N. arms inspectors full access to potential weapons sites, chief weapons inspector Richard Butler told the 15-member Security Council on Friday.
The revelation, drawn from Butler's talks in Baghdad earlier this week, means the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) teams have little chance of fulfilling their duty to certify that Iraq has no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.
CNN 4/24/1998
As described in the latest report, the criteria is threefold: "full declaration by Iraq, verification by the Commission, and destruction, removal or rendering harmless under international supervision."
Butler argued that while Iraq may claim to have fully declared all of its weapons, its "consistent refusal" to provide UNSCOM with needed information and materials to back up the claims fails to satisfy the second step -- verification. That makes the destruction of all of Iraq's prohibited weapons programs impossible, the report said.
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In contrast, Butler's UNSCOM report said the group had made "virtually no progress" over the last six months in determining whether Iraq is holding long-range missiles and chemical and biological weapons.
CNN 10/26/1998
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- International arms experts validated U.S. tests indicating Iraq put the deadly nerve gas VX into warheads before the 1991 Gulf War, contrary to Baghdad's denials, according to a U.N. report.
The report, which was sent to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, also hinted that Iraq may have tried to decontaminate the samples between the first tests in the United States and those conducted later in French and Swiss government laboratories.
The report was submitted by 17 scientists from 12 countries who analyzed findings from the United States, France and Switzerland on samples, or swabs, of Iraqi warhead fragments.
"The experts as a whole said the whole picture is that Iraq put chemical weapons in these warheads," said Richard Butler, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). "What's critical ... is that for years (the Iraqis) said they never did any such thing, so that blows this wide open."
Iraq has admitted putting sarin, a gas that causes spasms, nausea and possible death, into warheads but has denied it was able to load VX before the 1991 Gulf War.
CNN 9/9/2002
According to the terms of the 1991 U.N. cease-fire resolution that ended the Gulf War, Iraq was supposed to destroy all stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, along with the machinery and precursors to make them, and dismantle its entire nuclear-development program. By the time the U.N. inspectors left Iraq for the last time in Dec. 1998, sizable chunks of Saddam's weapons program were gone: 39,000 chemical munitions, 690 tons of chemical agents, 3,000 tons of precursors, 426 pieces of production equipment. The U.N. had also dismantled or accounted for 817 Scud missiles, which might have lofted toxic warheads at Iraq's neighbors.
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Before the Gulf War, U.S. intelligence estimated that Iraq was five to 10 years away from building a nuclear bomb. When the International Atomic Energy Agency team went in after the war, it discovered Saddam was just six months from a crude device. Iraqi scientists had devised a workable weapon design, cobbled together tools and parts and had come very close to refining all of the 44 lbs. of highly enriched uranium necessary to fuel one bomb. But over the next seven years of intrusive watchdogging, Saddam's nuclear program was virtually wiped out, according to a broad range of U.N. and U.S. analysts.
Even so, in those seven years, the inspection teams were never sure of their accounting. While they were in Iraq, Saddam admitted to just a fraction of his missile and chemical stores and falsely denied the existence of a biological program. After Saddam finally quit cooperating in 1998 and the U.S. and Britain bombarded Iraq for four days, the inspectors were gone for good, immensely disturbed by what they had not found. Yet they knew, based on discrepancies in Iraqi documents they had seized, that Iraq still hid 6,000 chemical bombs. They discounted Iraq's contention that it had destroyed all of the 3.9 tons of deadly VX nerve poison that it admitted to having produced or the 500 tons of precursor chemicals to make more. They suspected Iraq retained 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas.
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Saddam's biological-weapons program was the deepest black hole. Despite more than 30 searches for various unconventional arms, inspectors did not even know of its existence until mid-1995, when Saddam's defecting son-in-law Hussein Kamal revealed that secret labs buried in Iraq's security, not military, apparatus were cooking up deadly germs. Iraq subsequently admitted it made batches of anthrax bacteria, carcinogenic aflatoxin, agricultural toxins and the paralyzing poison botulinum. Iraqi officials reported they had loaded 191 bombs, including 25 missile warheads, with the poisons for use in the Gulf War. They said they destroyed them after the conflict, but they presented no proof, and Western officials don't believe them.
CNN 3/14/2003
The United Nations has been waiting for months for Iraq to provide information that could prove what happened to chemical and biological weapons it possessed in the 1990s.
As much as 1,000 tons of VX are unaccounted for. Iraq also cannot account for as much as 2,245 gallons [8,500 liters] of anthrax.
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Iraqi Air Force documents found by inspectors in 1998 show that Iraq dropped more than 13,000 chemical bombs during the Iraq-Iran War that lasted from 1983-1988. Iraq previously claimed that 19,500 bombs were used, which could mean that 3,500 bombs -- with more than 1,000 tons of VX -- are unaccounted for.
In a report to the Security Council on January 27, Blix called VX nerve agent one of the most toxic ever developed.
10/30/1997
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- A U.N. official said Thursday that Iraq may have decided to expel American members of U.N. arms inspection teams because they were close to finding weapons Iraq was supposed to have destroyed.
"I think we're getting hot," said chief weapons inspector Richard Butler in an interview with CNN. "I think we were getting closer and closer."
Asked whether Iraq was still hiding illegal weapons, Butler replied: "Yes it is. That's the simple answer, but that's the clearest answer I can give you."
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"The chemical and biological (weapons), there is no ambiguity," Butler said. "They are able to produce those weapons."
A day after President Bush issued a stern warning, Iraqi government officials said Tuesday they will not let weapons inspectors back into the country until U.N. sanctions have been lifted.
Bush said Monday that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "needs to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction."
When reporters asked what would happen if the Iraqi leader did not, Bush said, "He'll find out."
U.N. compliance inspection teams pulled out of Iraq in 1998, frustrated over the lack of cooperation from the Iraqis. U.S. bombings of suspected weapons sites began a short time later.
CNN 7/18/1996
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Less than a month after promising U.N. inspectors unlimited access to possible weapons sites, Iraq twice blocked teams from making their rounds, diplomats said Wednesday.
The United Nations inspectors are responsible for making sure Iraq is destroying its weapons of mass destruction, and that it isn't building new ones.
U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said there were two incidents. In the first, a U.N. Special Commission team was threatened and its inspection of a site delayed; in the second, another team was physically prevented from taking the road to a site in question.
ABCNews.com
Inspector Intimidation
Former Iraq Inspectors Recall Tough Task That Could Get Tougher
By Robert Krulwich
Oct. 12 [2002] — As the world debates whether to attack Iraq or resume U.N. weapons inspections under new conditions, former inspectors tell ABCNEWS the inspections weren't easy the last time around — and might be even tougher now.
By the time the program ended in 1998, U.N. inspectors had destroyed tens of thousands of weapons in Iraq. But former inspectors say they might have found more if not for Iraqi attempts to hide weapons, mislead inspectors, lie, intimidate and physically obstruct inspection teams — and sometimes make their own scientists who seemed to be cooperating with the inspectors disappear.
"What they were looking for was for us to pull the bomb from the basement," said Tim McCarthy, a former inspector. "This was never going to happen. This was never a practical reality in Iraq. We were never going to find a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere. This is just completely impossible. That's fantasyland.
"What we could do is find some indications that there was a nuclear weapon or a biological weapon, find some indications that they were not telling the truth about the biological weapon. But finding the weapon itself, we were never going to do. It's completely impossible. It's their country."
