UN experts - WMD material removed from I raq

“So, the police blotter section of a local paper in Southeastern North Carolina counts as "the Libbie "press"? Now that's funny.

Good punch line on Saddam's wmd's though XL.
last edited: 5/02/07 10:24:05 AM”

“"AR-15 semiautomatic Colt assault rifle"

Love the oxymoron.”

“WMDs - Weapons of Messy Distortion”

“XL - what idiot right wing propaganda site did you find this story about the Libbie media on. I found the smoking document that refutes your take on the story.

Well, maybe it was a Libbie media outlet by XL's definition, because they got the facts right. Under North Carolina Staute, any weapon capable of fully automatic fire is a "weapon of mass death and destruction," so are all kinds of other firearms, any hand grenades, etc. So, by North Carolina statute this guy could be prosecuted for possession of a WMD.

Go to page 24 of the appropriate document:

http://www.jus.state.nc.us/NCJA/ncfirearmslaws.pdf

Any bets on whether XL acknowledges being wrong or if his reign of error will continue unacknowledged?
last edited: 5/02/07 11:13:51 AM”

“Any weapon capable of fully automatic fire? The story specifically states "semiautomatic". Non-class III rifles (eg. ar-15) don't have the "happy" switch that a real assault rifle has. So unless the rifle had a short barrel, which is no where in the story, XL is correct.

Nice self-ownage, pedXing.
last edited: 5/02/07 1:00:16 PM”

“Nice out of context reply - did you see the whole list of firearms that are considered WMDs Mutt.”

“okay, let's go through the list from the chapter on WMDs from your link:

(1) bombs of all sorts; --NOPE
(2) grenades; --NOPE
(3) rockets having a propellant charge of more than 4 ounces; --NOPE
(4) a missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter
ounce;--NOPE
(5) mine; --NOPE
(6) any type of weapon (other than a shotgun or a shotgun shell of a type
particularly suitable for sporting purposes) which will expel a projectile using
an explosive or other propellant and which has a barrel with a bore of more
than one-half inch in diameter; --NOPE, .223 DIAMETER
(7) any firearm capable of fully automatic fire;--NOPE, "SEMIAUTOMATIC" IN THE STORY
(8) any shotgun with a barrel length less than eighteen inches or an overall length
of less than twenty-six inches;--NOPE
(9) a rifle with a barrel length of less than sixteen inches or an overall length of
less than twenty-six inches;--NOPE, AT LEAST NOT MENTIONED IN THE STORY
(10) any muffler or silencer for any firearm, whether or not such firearm is
included within this definition;--NOPE
(11) any combination of parts either designed or intended for use in converting a
device into any weapon described above and from which a weapon of mass
death and destruction may readily be assembled.--NOPE”

“Any bets on whether PedXing acknowledges being wrong or if his reign of error will continue unacknowledged?”

“Ped doesn't have to acknowledge being wrong, it was Bush's fault.”

“The point is that it is ridiculous to lay it on the media to classify the Colt as a weapon of mass destruction. It is obvious from North Carolina's official document that all kinds
of fire-arms classify as weapons of mass destruction. In the "police log" section of the paper, they are reporting charges made under North Carolina statute.

I've been wrong before and I will be again.

I stand by my contention that the media got the story right in this case and did not create this weird interpretation.”

“Well, that's about as close to a mea culpa as we ever see from pedXing.

I think it's pretty clear the media got it wrong. I'd *guess* that the media wrongly - and probably intentionally - added in the WMD thing (since the criteria clearly do not encompass the Colt) for sensationalism. Heck it had enough ring of truth to fool you, plenty to fool the average idiot.”

“First off Mutt - you continue to try to give me a position I haven't taken.

First off look at XL's Libbie press sentence: "Okay mousketeers....if the libbie press considered AK-47s a WMD...then I think the whole "no WMD's in Iraq thing" has been put to rest....."

The AK-47 is automatic as I understand it and is an assault weapon under the NC statute. If I'm wrong, correct me. You do know more about weapons than I do. So XL was wrong on this point.


Secondly the article said he was charged with possessing a WMD. It didn't say he had a WMD. Police logs in local papers are usually based on police reports. The NC statute makes it clear that some classes of fire arms are WMDs under statute and it is highly likely that this was the initial charge.

Third, the weapon may well have included a silencer or some kind of conversion device. We'll see how the story unfolds. But obviously its not an issue of Libbie Press or any press deciding an AK-47 is a WMD.
last edited: 5/03/07 10:49:49 AM”

“I can't seem to find a North Carolina on a map of Iraq and wonder if the Iraqis are debating whether or not their personal killing device is a WMD?”

“The North Carolina statute regulates WMD's, not assault rifles. An assault rifle, by definition of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (which expired, it wasn't overturned), does not regulate fully automatic rifles or pistols, which fall under the National Firearms act of 1934. This is the same law which regulates owning silencers, or more accurately suppressors, which are pretty well useless on an AK-47 or AR-15, unless you're using subsonic ammo (which is extremely hard to find and not very efficient in an AK or AR due to the weight of the bullet and the lack of power inherent to subsonic ammo). AK-47's purchased in the US are typically semi-automatic, not fully automatic. You can legally own a fully automatic or select fire gun, or a suppressor, if it's properly registered and you go through the process outlined by the NFA, except in a few states, North Carolina being one of the few that restricts ownership.”

“Has anybody here read this?

http://www.amazon.com/Threatening-Storm-Case-Invading-Iraq/dp/0375509283”

“Used for $.28?”

“Guys already been solved...the media called an AK-47 a WMD. Heck that is the primary weapon of the Islamics...so been solved Bush was right ....(LOL)”

“On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.

Secretary of State Powell, in preparation for his presentation of evidence of Saddam's WMD to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, spent days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and had Tenet sit directly behind him as a sign of credibility. But Tenet, according to the sources, never told Powell about existing intelligence that there were no WMD, and Powell's speech was later revealed to be a series of falsehoods.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/
last edited: 9/07/07 5:04:44 AM”

“NEW YORK — Tests on an artillery shell that blew up in Iraq on Saturday confirm that it did contain an estimated three or four liters of the deadly nerve agent sarin (search), Defense Department officials told Fox News Tuesday.

The artillery shell was being used as an improvised roadside bomb, the U.S. military said Monday. The 155-mm shell exploded before it could be rendered inoperable, and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor exposure to the nerve agent.

Three liters is about three-quarters of a gallon; four liters is a little more than a gallon.

"A little drop on your skin will kill you" in the binary form, said Ret. Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, founder of Homeland Security Associates. "So for those in immediate proximity, three liters is a lot," but he added that from a military standpoint, a barrage of shells with that much sarin in them would more likely be used as a weapon than one single shell.

The soldiers displayed "classic" symptoms of sarin exposure, most notably dilated pupils and nausea, officials said. The symptoms ran their course fairly quickly, however, and as of Tuesday the two had returned to duty.

The munition found was a binary chemical shell, meaning it featured two chambers, each containing separate chemical compounds. Upon impact with the ground after the shell is fired, the barrier between the chambers is broken, the chemicals mix and sarin is created and dispersed.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120268,00.html
VILE BABY...rewiting history is a good libby trick.”

“Two anonymous sources saying there were no WMD. Imagine that.”

“Anonymous?: Tyler Drumheller”

“The Drumheller aspect is old news. The new "news" is that 2 anonymous sources agree with him.”

“Salon.com opinion blumenthal?????

Come on, Vile, you are getting as bad as tiltypoo with your dubious 'sources'.”

“LOL..Tenent appointed in 1997..That was under....um....OH...so he was serving under the President when the Gorelick Memo was passed which was identified in the 9/11 hearings as causing the rift which allowed the WTC disaster.

WOW...and the guy who appointed him said in 1998

There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.

I want the American people to understand first the past how did this crisis come about?

And I want them to understand what we must do to protect the national interest, and indeed the interest of all freedom-loving people in the world.

Remember, as a condition of the cease-fire after the Gulf War, the United Nations demanded not the United States the United Nations demanded, and Saddam Hussein agreed to declare within 15 days this is way back in 1991 within 15 days his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them, to make a total declaration. That's what he promised to do.

The United Nations set up a special commission of highly trained international experts called UNSCOM, to make sure that Iraq made good on that commitment. We had every good reason to insist that Iraq disarm. Saddam had built up a terrible arsenal, and he had used it not once, but many times, in a decade-long war with Iran, he used chemical weapons, against combatants, against civilians, against a foreign adversary, and even against his own people.

And during the Gulf War, Saddam launched Scuds against Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain.

Now, instead of playing by the very rules he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam has spent the better part of the past decade trying to cheat on this solemn commitment. Consider just some of the facts:

Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports.

For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.

In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.

Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth. Now listen to this, what did it admit?

It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs.

And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.

As if we needed further confirmation, you all know what happened to his son-in-law when he made the untimely decision to go back to Iraq.

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it.

Despite Iraq's deceptions, UNSCOM has nevertheless done a remarkable job. Its inspectors the eyes and ears of the civilized world have uncovered and destroyed more weapons of mass destruction capacity than was destroyed during the Gulf War.

This includes nearly 40,000 chemical weapons, more than 100,000 gallons of chemical weapons agents, 48 operational missiles, 30 warheads specifically fitted for chemical and biological weapons, and a massive biological weapons facility at Al Hakam equipped to produce anthrax and other deadly agents.

Over the past few months, as they have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions.

By imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large by comparison, when you hear all this business about presidential sites reflect our sovereignty, why do you want to come into a residence, the White House complex is 18 acres. So you'll have some feel for this.

One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. That's about how many acres did you tell me it was? 40,000 acres. We're not talking about a few rooms here with delicate personal matters involved.

It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them.


and

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made?

Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who's really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/17/transcripts/clinton.iraq/
and yet Slick DID NOTHING confirming what he had said would happen.

Face it, the Socialist/Libbies are just mad becuase they had a gutless wonder in the White House. This President HAD to do something and HE DID.”

““The Drumheller aspect is old news. The new "news" is that 2 anonymous sources agree with him.”
- Sarge


So its been reported and confirmed.

Imagine that.”

“LOL @ XL. The nerve gas was old crap and hugely ineffective. If you bother to read the whole article, you will see that Fox buried the important info beneath the hype: Bush's own Iraq Survey Group said the stuff was not properly stored and way past its shelf life and not a WMD. This is what critics of the buildup to the war were saying: the stuff that was still around was crap, not viable WMDs.

Here's the place in your article that says this:
"Testing done by the Iraqi Survey Group — a U.S.-organized group of weapons inspectors who have been searching for weapons of mass destruction (search) since the ouster of Saddam Hussein — concluded that the mustard gas was "stored improperly" and was thus "ineffective."

"It's not out of the ordinary or unusual that you would find something [like these weapons] in a haphazard fashion" in Iraq, Edward Turzanski, a political and national security analyst, told Fox News on Tuesday.

But "you have to be very careful not to be entirely dismissive of it," he added. "It remains to be seen whether they have more shells like this."”

“yeah ...ped I know about those "improperly stored and ineffective weapons"...but the fact is THEY were NOT destroyed....WERE they/...I mean the LOGICAL conconclusion is that THEY WERE NOT DESTROYED. Its kinda like a felon is not allowed to have firearms in his house.

Now if your neighbor is a FELON and keeps bragging about his 'g-ats" and you call the cops. They go to the house with a warrant and end up having to take the house. In the process they find a gun, but it is old and the defense attorney says,"Yeah but these bullets were so poorly taken care if they MIGHT not work." Thats okay?

NOPE your neighbor is going to take another trip at the alternate form of public housing.”