Your citing MSNBC, CNN?! Those stations have been show to have a political bias and an agenda that dictates what they report, and a history of distortion and obfuscation to present their bias in a positive light. When they portray Bush or his agenda in a negative light, especially in regards to the war, you have to take it with a grain of salt. It is more of an op-ed piece portrayed as legitimate, uninterested, objective journalism. CNN specifically has been proven to be shilling for Hussien when he was in power so they could keep an office there. Hardly the most credible sources, and the info is some of those reports is somewhat exagurated.
The CIA report that concludes he didn't have stockpiles: this is nothing more then a hit peice on Bush and supporters of the Iraq war. That is what most of the article is. It selectively cites parts of the ISG report, distorts and exagurates its claims and then trashes Bush and Iraq war supporters.
There is no way the ISG could know if Saddam had or didn't have stockpiles. All that they could say is that we haven't found any huge stockpiles yet. CNN is distorting here from the word go. In fact if you read the article you find that the headline is intentionally misleading.
Here is the headline: Report:
"No WMD stockpiles in Iraq"
Here is the first line of the article:
"Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes."
Here is the first actual info in the article:
the long-awaited report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, says Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended Iraq's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.
His
program was
essentially destroyed. The WMD programs were shut down and not running at the time, that is all that says. And it says
nothing about his stockpiles of WMD's, just his production of them. We have found chemical WMD's over there that were rather degraded. US forces did find warheads designed to carry chemical warfare agents and artillery shells filled with mustard gas & sarin, so we do know for a fact that Saddam had some WMD's because we have found them. It seems that he simply may have stopped producing WMD's, but nothing about the stockpiles is mentioned.
The massive report does say, however, that Iraq worked hard to cheat on United Nations-imposed sanctions and retain the capability to resume production of weapons of mass destruction at some time in the future.
This is key, and cannot be overlooked
You cannot change the fact that the
burden of proof to prove that Iraq had no WMD's was on Saddam. It was never on Bush or the U.S. Whether or not he actually had them, or if we ever find they is irrelevant.
Saddam was not complying with inspectors and acting “suspiciously”
Would kick inspectors out, or not give full access
Defied U.N. resolution 1441 in 2002 (as well as numerous earlier resolutions)
Was behaving as though he had WMD’s he was hiding
The Iraq Survey Group (Duelfer Report) is the CIA report that the article is citing. What is interesting it that, when you read the report, it paints a much different picture then what CNN (and most of the mainstream media) paint while citing the report as the source of it's info and justification for its claims.
The ISG found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official was quoted as saying. Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441
David Kay revealed Iraqi scientists were working on weaponizing anthrax "right up until the end" and had restarted a rudimentary nuclear weapons program in 2000 & 2001.
In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer revealed the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents.
- Both Duelfer and Kay found Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs"
They found, "a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects."
"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist
The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad.
According to the Duelfer Report, Saddam used the Iraq Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHESR) through its universities and research programs to maintain, develop, and acquire expertise, to advance or preserve existent research projects and developments, and to procure goods prohibited by United Nations Security Council sanctions.
ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories of which were never declared to the UN. The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.
How did this happen? According to the Duelfer Report, half of the picture rests with entities outside Iraq. Saddam was trying to end the UN sanctions to pursue his conventional, dual-use, and WMD-related programs. In Saddam’s efforts to influence United Nations Security Council members - namely Russia, France, and China - to end sanctions, Saddam’s ordered the Iraq Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to formulate and implement a strategy aimed at these Security Council members and international public opinion with the purpose of ending UN sanctions by diplomatic and economic means. Saddam also made use of “Protocols” or government-to-government economic trade agreements to generate a large amount of revenue outside the purview of the UN. His success emboldened Saddam to pursue his reconstitution efforts of conventional, dual-use, and WMD-related programs starting in 1997. "By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support," the (Duelfer) report said.
It seems your source (CNN) is greatly distorting the truth. You might wanna double check their info next time.
In fact, that report has been misreported and misrepresented in the media, at great length. This article talks about that, if you are interested:
http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Duelfer Rept.htm
Another interesting find from A NYsun article:
http://www2.nysun.com/article/27183?access=890075
A former special investigator for the Pentagon during the Iraq war said he found four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq that he is sure contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons. But when he asked American weapons inspectors to check out the sites, he was rebuffed. Between March and July 2003, Mr. Gaubatz was taken by (his) sources to four locations - three in and around Nasiriyah and one near the port of Umm Qasr, where he was shown underground concrete bunkers with the tunnels leading to them deliberately flooded. In each case, he was told the facilities contained stocks of biological and chemical weapons, along with missiles whose range exceeded that mandated under U.N. sanctions. But because the facilities were sealed off with concrete walls, in some cases up to 5 feet thick, he did not get inside. He filed reports with photographs, exact grid coordinates, and testimony from multiple sources. And then he waited for the Iraq Survey Group to come to the sites. "I have no doubts the sites were never exploited by ISG. We agents begged and begged for weeks and months to get ISG to respond to the sites with the proper equipment," Mr. Gaubatz said in a telephone interview. "An adequate search would have required heavy equipment to uncover the concrete, and additional equipment to drain the water." Mr. Gaubatz would not disclose the names of his Iraqi sources, but he said they were "highly credible" by his supervisors
Additionally, concerning the 36 million captured pages of documentation (about 1/3 of which have been translated), when it was put on the net for public translation, it was removed after they found, "detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb."
As The New York Times confirmed in their issue November 3, 2006, Saddam had complete plans for a nuclear weapon and was in the process of procuring parts when the US removed him. Quote: "nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away."
A Quote from CNN reporter Jane Arraf:
"And if you had a bureau there, like we did, and it was a known bureau and a known company like CNN was, it was a beacon for everybody. It was a beacon for Iraqis who believed they had stories. Iraqis would show up, there would be Iraqis lined up outside the door. There... would be the Iraqis who told you they had nuclear documents in their basement and would you like to come and look. You know, there was almost that pang when you turned somebody away, [you were] thinking, “Damn, maybe this guy really does have nuclear weapons in his basement, but I don’t have time.” So you never really knew."
CNN was hardly interesting in finding any info of WMD's it seems. Can you say "coverup"?
CNN is hardly a credible source on this issue, as the distortion in this article shows.
Other sources suggest that Saddam's stockpile were moved to Syria, just before the war. In fact there was evidence that plain-clothed Russian Special Forces moved those stockpiles into Syria just before the invasion.
See these articles:
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/18/233023.shtml?s=lh
http://prweb.com/releases/2007/12/prweb575010.htm
http://americandaily.com/article/12043
Saddam's General says they had WMD; "Just recently, Saddam Hussein's former southern regional commander, Gen. Al-Tikriti, gave the first videotaped testimony confirming that Iraq had WMDs up to the American invasion in 2003 and that Russia helped remove them prior to the war. His testimony confirms numerous other sources that have pointed to Russia's secret alliance with Iraq and the co-ordinated moving of WMDs before the American liberation." However, there is no way to obtain hard physical evidence to back up their assertions due to the fact that Syria will not allow such intrusive inspection and searching in their country. Intelligence sources do, however, say that General Al-Tikriti is a credible witness as is the pilot who also testified that he flew such missions.
This leads to the next issue; the quote of Cheney in the MSNBC article. Cheney said, "clearly, the intelligence that said he [Saddam] did [have WMD's] was wrong." It is interesting that this has become the Bush administration line and no one can know why they changed to this position, despite the fact that other intelligence agencys around the world say otherwise and our own people in Iraq have found info and evidence that the intelligence was not wrong.
I will have to speculate a bit on this. Both Russia and France had their hand in the pot, in Iraq before the war. Even now, Putin is talkin as if his is gonna he is interested in another Cold War. The Bush Administration didn't and doesn't want to totally alienate Russia, who also sits on the security council of the UN. If we were to expose all the info and the move to officially acknowledge intelligence that shows that Russia helped cover up the WMD's as well provide military equipement to Iraq, that would cause a huge rift between us and Russia, and possibly a large portion of europe (worse then the minor PR "gap" we now have), so the Bush administration is now downplaying that aspect, and part of that is denying any WMD's, because that would eventually come back on Russia (and their involvement in the coverup) in a big way. We also don't know of any "backroom deals that may have been made between Russia and the U.S. in regards to this info.
Here are a few article that talk about Russian arms in Iraq and Iraq's attempts to aquire them:
http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/gyro/postgyro.htm
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/01/10/evidence_cited_of_russian_arms_in_iraq/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030403-rfel-164417.htm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070917/79123596.html
Here is even a CNN article that talks about it:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/02/12/iraqi.arms/index.html
Ultimately, as I pointed out earlier, if we ever publicly "find" WMD's in Iraq or not is irrelevant to our justification to going in there, as the WMD thing is only relevant through U.N. sanctions and treaties made after the 1990-91 Gulf War.
The burden of proof regarding WMD's was always on Saddam, and he actively worked to get around that burden (not meet it). He sought to buy off members of the Security Council and circumvent U.N. restrictions in order to keep his WMD's and the ability to produce more WMD's at a later date.