p2insdca
Sep 23 2003, 07:31 PM
www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7350504^2,00.htmlIn part the story says:
A television report by Pilger aired on British screens overnight said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.
But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.
Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam.
Now I am not claiming to know if the story is true or not....I was wondering if anyone else has heard about this?
fantomas
Sep 24 2003, 02:43 PM
I haven't seen anything else on it, but I'm curious to find out whether it's true or not. Rice is just a common grade patholog, no matter how you square it, but Powell has showed flashes of integrity, so my question would be, if he knew Saddam really didn't have all the weapons he and others claimed, why on earth did he go along with the shenanigans as opposed to resigning? I think I may have given him too much ethical credit.
Aired on British screens? BBC? And was the video clip of Powell actually shown? I'm a little skeptical, because I'd have thought it would cause more of a stir in the international press...I'm not surprised the American networks wouldn't touch it, even if it is true.
fantomas
Sep 29 2003, 09:33 PM
Actually, Joe Conason wrote about this recently on his SALON site. As he notes, most US news outlets won't touch it, at all. There's so many ways to nail the W folks on their lies, yet I think the realization that doing so would truly reveal them to be far more duplicitous in every way than the
He also notes that the Washington Post was burying all critical articles on W and his policies on back pages until recently, mainly out of fear.... It's pathetic that this is how our major "liberal" press organs are operating, but then again, wasn't it Judith Miller of the "liberal" NY Times who kept trumpeting WMD finds that have ALL turned out to be fakes?
[ September 29, 2003, 09:43 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]
CPT_Doom
Oct 1 2003, 01:44 PM
And now it turns out that we are leaving "tons" of Iraqi conventional arms unguarded and open to local people, potential terrorists and anyone who needs few grenades, etc. Is it possible US forces are spending so much time searching for the mythical WMDs that we have failed to consider the lethal mixture of the lack of government in Iraq and easy access to very powerful "regular" weapons?
A chilling statement from the NYTimes article on the subject (reprinted in the SF Chronicle)
QUOTE
The enormous scale of the problem is illustrated in an infrared videotape of a sprawling, unguarded Iraqi air base taken by an Army helicopter crew in June that shows several huge hangars stripped bare of their roofing and siding,
revealing bombs, missiles and other weaponry stacked dozens of feet high.
On the videotape, a copy of which was provided to the New York Times by a U. S. official in Baghdad, a crewman said: \"It looks like there's hundreds of warheads or bombs.\"
Two months later, FBI investigators returned to the site on a tip that it might have been the source of a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb that they suspect was used in the attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19.
So it could be that our forces are being killed, maimed and terrorized by the very weapons we have failed to guard - wonderful.
SF Chronicle reprint of NYT story
fantomas
Oct 1 2003, 03:18 PM
Yes, this particular situation is dreadful, but I think the military is so overcommitted in Iraq they can't be expected to address this situation. While we rail at the "old Europeans" and "chocolate makers" and impugn their diplomatic corps, yet simultaneously beg them for money and manpower, our troops are facing daily attacks as they try to rebuild the mess over there, and simply cannot cover all these hotspots.
Yet, CPT and others, let's not forget that even talking about such things is unpatriotic, it's endangering our troops, and well, it's just anti-W, which is the same thing as being anti-American. So put on those rose-colored glasses, be Pollyanna-ish and just repeat to yourselves, "They're handing out flowers and ribbons to our boys and girls, and so very happy we liberated them, so very, very happy."
fantomas
Oct 2 2003, 03:31 PM
Actually, Pilger's suggestions were confirmed today by the report by David Kay:
Yahoo!: Kay says no WMD stocks found in Iraq QUOTE
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S-led team hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news - web sites) has not found any stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons, but will keep searching thecountry, CIA (news - web sites) adviser David Kay said on Thursday.
\"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone,\" Kay said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
The team has also not found any evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military was prepared to use chemical warfare against U.S.-led forces.
The United States went to war against Iraq in March and ousted Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) from power in April, largely citing what it said was a the threat posed by Baghdad's development of unconventional weapons.
But no such weapons have yet been found, and critics have questioned whether the Bush administration exaggerated the threat to get support for the war. Others have urged patience, saying that Iraq is a large country and such weapons are relatively easy to hide.
****
But multiple sources have told the team that \"Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW (chemical warfare) program after 1991,\" Kay said. And information found so far suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop and produce and fill new chemical warfare weapons was \"reduced -- if not entirely destroyed.\"
Kay concluded that \"whatever we find will probably differ from pre-war intelligence. Empirical reality on the ground is, and has always been, different from intelligence judgments that must be made under serious constraints of time, distance and information.\"
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