Post by: Zeke on November 21, 2007, 11:00:07 AM
So no hard feelings, Mr. Chessani. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now where have I heard that before?
Post by: wooderson on November 21, 2007, 11:36:47 AM
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We sent people to war in Iraq.
I didn't.
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War, by definition, includes the slaughter of innocent parties who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Well, gee, maybe we should think a bit harder about starting these wars.Quote
We like to think OUR war is a just and righteous war
Again, who's this 'we'?
Post by: Manedwolf on November 21, 2007, 11:49:56 AM
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We like to think OUR war is a just and righteous war
Again, who's this 'we'?Americans. I'm starting to think you don't consider yourself one.
Post by: Thor on November 21, 2007, 11:51:04 AM
Post by: wooderson on November 21, 2007, 11:53:03 AM
Post by: Standing Wolf on November 21, 2007, 11:56:29 AM
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 21, 2007, 12:22:02 PM
How does being an American citizen make me complicit in the debacle in Iraq, manedwolf?
What part have your senators and representatives played?
Post by: zahc on November 21, 2007, 12:22:16 PM
Post by: wooderson on November 21, 2007, 12:23:45 PM
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What part have your senators and representatives played?
Well, the ones I voted for did nothing.Because they lost.
Which is to say - I protested the debacle, I voted against candidates who supported the debacle, will continue to vote against candidates who support the debacle.
Which is to say, it ain't my war.
Post by: Len Budney on November 21, 2007, 12:26:49 PM
I don't buy the "Conscientious Objector" reason in today's military. Not only are there jobs available that has nothing to do with killing people, but......... one doesn't have to enlist/ join to begin with.
You're right; in a volunteer army "conscientious objection" is basically moot. The concept was pretty important during all the wars between the Civil War and WWII. The one thing Lincoln has done that I appreciate was allowing for conscientious objection. It was also recognized during the Revolution, notably among the Quakers, but then too there wasn't conscription. Some early drafts of the second amendment actually mentioned conscientious objectors, but the language was withdrawn lest government, for example, ban Quakers owning guns on the grounds that they're "conscientious objectors."
--Len, a gun-owning conscientious objector.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 21, 2007, 12:47:14 PM
Which is to say, it ain't my war.
Sorry to hear that. You'll get over the embarrassment one of these days.
Post by: wooderson on November 21, 2007, 01:50:25 PM
Post by: Fly320s on November 21, 2007, 02:23:21 PM
But it is my war because I am an American. I support our troops over there and everywhere else.
However, I do not tolerate "conscientious objectors" in a volunteer military. Those who refuse to do the job for which they agreed to do deserve to be punished. Put them in jail for the remainder of their service contract and then give them a dishonorable discharge.
Post by: wooderson on November 21, 2007, 02:31:32 PM
(side-question: where are these people who don't 'support our troops' anyway?)
The original statement excuses the conduct of individual soldiers and events of the war, blaming 'we Americans' for putting them in that horrible position and that's just the way war works and since it's 'our war' we have no standing to criticize. That's nonsense. Americans, collectively, do not take any of the blame (arguably no one but those conducting the war - on an individual or operational level - does).
Post by: HankB on November 22, 2007, 05:37:25 AM
Post by: jefnvk on November 22, 2007, 08:05:21 PM
Post by: Archie on November 22, 2007, 09:26:45 PM
During my late high school years - right before I enlisted in the Marine Corps - I knew a number of conscientious objectors. Most of them objected to being killed, wounded or otherwise inconvenienced. They couldn't claim to object to war on moral grounds; most of them had no morals. They simply were not going to expose themselves to anything other than their cushy lifestyle.
Anyone who enlists or signs on as an officer has absolutely no claim to CO status. End of discussion. Cowardice is not the same as conscientious objection to violence. Not having the moral fibre or fortitude to serve one's country is not the same either.
My elder son served in the U. S. Navy for four years on board an aircraft carrier. My younger son is in the Army stationed in Korean right now.
"Who doesn't support the troops?" Someone asked. Well, for starters those members of Congress who are stalling funding the U. S. military RIGHT NOW in a attempt to get soldiers killed so they can claim "...the war in Iraq is going badly". They know the surge is working, they know we are winning and they know they're going to lose big time if they don't get some more Americans killed to make President Bush and by extention all Republicans look bad.
Those are who don't support the troops. And those who support those members of Congress.
Post by: roo_ster on November 23, 2007, 02:04:38 AM
What does 'supporting our troops' have to do with bearing some (moral?) responsibility for the existence of the war and how it is conducted?
(side-question: where are these people who don't 'support our troops' anyway?)
All over. Here's a start:(side-question: where are these people who don't 'support our troops' anyway?)
http://www.godfuckingdamnit.com/story.html?story_id=1332
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?action=profile;u=311
http://paperdove.org/drupal2/?q=node/99
The following folks are explicit in their hatred of the USA, so I think it can be deduced that the do not support the troops:
http://www.chomsky.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomskyb
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/HZinn_page.html
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=what_the_left_thinks_howard_zinn,_part_i&ns=DennisPrager&dt=09/12/2006&page=full&comments=true
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=what_the_left_thinks_howard_zinn,_part_ii&ns=DennisPrager&dt=09/19/2006&page=full&comments=true
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on November 23, 2007, 02:11:04 AM
Post by: wooderson on November 23, 2007, 07:07:53 AM
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Well, for starters those members of Congress who are stalling funding the U. S. military RIGHT NOW in a attempt to get soldiers killed so they can claim "...the war in Iraq is going badly".
Oh for God's sake. Yes, that's exactly how "stalling funding" works - soldiers are abandoned without transport and ammunition, left to die.
Do you really believe this nonsense?
...
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The following folks are explicit in their hatred of the USA, so I think it can be deduced that the do not support the troops:
Hahaha. No, really. That's cute.Which passages, exactly, can be found to support these claims? I ask because I have read quite a bit of Zinn, and a bit less of Chomsky - and there's not a single sentence I can find from either that indicates they revel in the death of Americans, or even that they "hate America."
So your big "Lots of people hate the troops!" are two blog posts and a member profile (where I see no indication that he hates America, the troops, etc.).
Well done.
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 23, 2007, 07:51:11 AM
We attack the arguments, not the arguer.
There will not be a second reminder.
Post by: Boomhauer on November 23, 2007, 08:49:43 AM
I had to read one of his books on early American history...
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A People's History of the United States
I had to read that trash. He'd write about whatever the chapter was about for a couple of pages, then wander off into a rant.
Here's the deal, IMHO. If you hate the US with the bitterness that you claim, then LEAVE! Go to the socalist utopia that pleases you the most and see how you like it!
Post by: wooderson on November 23, 2007, 10:52:44 AM
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Here's the deal, IMHO. If you hate the US with the bitterness that you claim, then LEAVE!
Do you see a difference between "hating the US" and being angry that it doesn't live up to what it could be?
Post by: Nitrogen on November 23, 2007, 12:24:48 PM
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Here's the deal, IMHO. If you hate the US with the bitterness that you claim, then LEAVE!
Do you see a difference between "hating the US" and being angry that it doesn't live up to what it could be?
Wooderson beat me to something I wanted to point out, so I'll expand upon it.
I really have a problem with people saying "YOU OBVIOUSLY HATE THE USA! GET OUT!" if they disagree with some policy.
This argument makes no sense to me. Our founding fathers disagreed with how their colony was run. The loyalists would have told them, "YOU DON'T LIKE IT, GET OUT!"
Instead, they were patriots. They fought for what they believed in, and shaped the country into what it is today.
People that argue and fight for what they believe in are patriots. Feel free to disagree with them; feel free to tell them they are wrong, and explain why.
Questioning their Americanism and "Patriotism" is disgusting and unconscionable, and those that do it should be ashamed of themselves.
Now back on topic.
I have to agree that conscientious objection in an all-volunteer army is silly. If you object to killing people for your country, you shouldn't join the armed forces. If you object to serving your country (in just or unjust wars) you shouldn't join up.
There are plenty of other ways to serve your country other than joining the armed forces.
Post by: Sergeant Bob on November 23, 2007, 12:36:23 PM
Post by: wooderson on November 23, 2007, 12:37:37 PM
Not 'conscientous objectors,' but I sympathize with people who joined up before Iraq, hoping to serve in Afghanistan or somewhere in the explicit defense of the US. They didn't sign up to invade and occupy an unrelated country. That sympathy wears more thin as the years pass, however - if you're signing up or re-upping in recent years, you know what's up.
Post by: Nitrogen on November 23, 2007, 12:49:41 PM
Not 'conscientous objectors,' but I sympathize with people who joined up before Iraq, hoping to serve in Afghanistan or somewhere in the explicit defense of the US. They didn't sign up to invade and occupy an unrelated country. That sympathy wears more thin as the years pass, however - if you're signing up or re-upping in recent years, you know what's up.
While I can understand this, I still hold that if you join the armed forces, you go where your government sends you, and do what they ask of you, wether you agree with it or not.
If you don't like those terms, don't join up.
Post by: Len Budney on November 23, 2007, 03:27:12 PM
While I can understand this, I still hold that if you join the armed forces, you go where your government sends you, and do what they ask of you, wether you agree with it or not.
Those are not the terms of enlistment. You are sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic--not to do "whatever is asked of you." Soldiers are required to refuse unlawful orders. Granted, the military will punish the hell out of you if you do ever refuse an order. But you are technically supposed to.
The Nuremberg doctrine, which was created by the United States herself, says that you are guilty of a war crime if you engage in aggressive war, orders notwithstanding. If the US applied her own standards to herself, Lt. Watada would be one of the few soldiers left outside Leavenworth.
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 23, 2007, 04:57:00 PM
Not 'conscientous objectors,' but I sympathize with people who joined up before Iraq, hoping to serve in Afghanistan or somewhere in the explicit defense of the US. They didn't sign up to invade and occupy an unrelated country. That sympathy wears more thin as the years pass, however - if you're signing up or re-upping in recent years, you know what's up.
I sympathize with them, too, so long as you don't imagine that it is the place of individual soldiers to decide which war or which campaign they will go along with. Unlawful orders being the exception, of course.
You are sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic--not to do "whatever is asked of you."
I think you are essentially correct.Quote
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
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The Nuremberg doctrine, which was created by the United States herself, says that you are guilty of a war crime if you engage in aggressive war, orders notwithstanding. If the US applied her own standards to herself, Lt. Watada would be one of the few soldiers left outside Leavenworth.
Could you flesh that out a little? "Aggressive war" could be interpreted any number of ways, so I trust the wording is more specific. No?
Post by: Nitrogen on November 23, 2007, 05:49:22 PM
While I can understand this, I still hold that if you join the armed forces, you go where your government sends you, and do what they ask of you, wether you agree with it or not.
Those are not the terms of enlistment. You are sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic--not to do "whatever is asked of you." Soldiers are required to refuse unlawful orders. Granted, the military will punish the hell out of you if you do ever refuse an order. But you are technically supposed to.
The Nuremberg doctrine, which was created by the United States herself, says that you are guilty of a war crime if you engage in aggressive war, orders notwithstanding. If the US applied her own standards to herself, Lt. Watada would be one of the few soldiers left outside Leavenworth.
--Len.
I think these are 2 different issues.
I don't disagree with you here.
I'm saying if you don't agree with a specific war (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc) and being enlisted, that's not a good reason.
If you believe that the United States is acting Illegally, that's another matter. I wasn't under the impression that CI's were in this category.
Post by: Zeke on November 23, 2007, 06:37:26 PM
The fiction of being able to serve in a non-combatant capacity is morally bankrupt. Those who believe war is wrong find any direct support of combat operations unconscionable.
Post by: Thor on November 23, 2007, 07:50:52 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-04-09-army-re-enlistments_x.htm
Post by: Scout26 on November 24, 2007, 07:18:39 AM
The oath states to "Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, Foreign and Domestic. To obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over me....."
Both houses of congress passed HJ Res 114 The Iraq War Resolution (296 members from the House of Representatives voted Aye along with 77 Senators). In fact there was a even a court case, Doe vs. Bush. The case was first dismissed on February 24th, 2003 by US District Court Judge Joseph Tauro. It was appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. On March 13th, a three-judge panel affirmed the decision to dismiss the complaint. Judge Lynch wrote:
An extreme case might arise, for example, if Congress gave absolute discretion to the President to start a war at his or her will... Plaintiffs' objection to the October Resolution does not, of course, involve any such claim. Nor does it involve a situation where the President acts without any apparent congressional authorization, or against congressional opposition... To the contrary, Congress has been deeply involved in significant debate, activity, and authorization connected to our relations with Iraq for over a decade, under three different presidents of both major political parties, and during periods when each party has controlled Congress.
Lynch concluded that the Judiciary could not intervene, because there was not a fully developed conflict between the President and Congress at that time. On March 17th, the plaintiffs filed for a rehearing. Their petition was denied the next day.
Sorry, if Congress authorizes it, the president signs it and even the courts agree, it's legal. You can stomp your feet, hold your breath until you turn blue and throw a hissy-fit tantrum, but no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it illegal. If you refuse to obey those orders you are refusing to obey a lawful order and will be prosecuted under the UCMJ.
Illegal orders are those orders in violation of the UCMJ or other US Laws (including treaties we've signed).
Yes, you pretty much have to go where-ever they send you and do whatever they ask you to do. Yes, you can put in your contract what training, duty station and special schools you want, but all enlistment contracts have the "needs of the Armed Services come first" clause in them. Illegal orders are ones like "Go shoot those Prisoners", "Steal that stuff from those Local Nationals", or "We're going to stage a coup, your job is to_________." Go and invade Iraq because Congress, The President and courts say to is a Legal order.
Now as far as CO's go. I've seen it happen first hand. Had an MP in my platoon back in '88-89. Good soldier, wanted to do his time, earn some college credits/ get his Assoc Degree in Criminal Justice, go back to his hometown and become a Cop/Deputy/Trooper and live happily ever after. He "got religion" and "figured out" that he couldn't be a soldier anymore (or a cop for that matter). Went through the CO process (took about 4-5 months) and he got out. Last I had heard he was a missionary in South or Central America.
Once you enlist (or accept a commission) you don't get to pick and choose what wars you want to fight.
Post by: Len Budney on November 24, 2007, 11:48:17 AM
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The Nuremberg doctrine, which was created by the United States herself, says that you are guilty of a war crime if you engage in aggressive war, orders notwithstanding. If the US applied her own standards to herself, Lt. Watada would be one of the few soldiers left outside Leavenworth.
Could you flesh that out a little? "Aggressive war" could be interpreted any number of ways, so I trust the wording is more specific. No?
At Nuremberg, "aggressive" meant "not defensive"; it wasn't a synonym for "vigorous." In other words, the one who starts the war is guilty of war crimes. Note: rattling sabers and saying "yo mama" doesn't count as "starting the war."
--Len.
Post by: Len Budney on November 24, 2007, 11:52:29 AM
Sorry, if Congress authorizes it, the president signs it and even the courts agree, it's legal.
Technically, "legal" and "lawful" are not synonyms here. If Congress and the President were to decide to invade and annex Mexico, then I guess the war would be "legal," but the order to invade would still not be lawful. Here the Nuremberg doctrine applies. If we weren't hypocrites when we invented it at Nuremberg (which we probably were), then anyone obeying the order to invade Mexico would be a war criminal liable to the death penalty.
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Once you enlist (or accept a commission) you don't get to pick and choose what wars you want to fight.
We hanged German soldiers for failing to pick and choose what wars to fight.
--Len.
Post by: Scout26 on November 24, 2007, 02:51:29 PM
The Iraq War does not fall under the "Aggressive War". Aggressive war is Armed Robbery writ large. They have it, we want it, let's go take it.
1. We did not invade Iraq alone.
2. Remember the 17 UN resolutions that Iraq violated and the UN did authorize use of force to deal with Iraq. (including the ones from the first Gulf War, which basically said, if you don't comply we'll come back and finish what we started in '90-91.)
3. Comparing what we're doing in Iraq to what Germany did with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, The Low Countries, France, USSR, etc. is apples to oranges. We went to Iraq to remove a evil dictator, stop his WMD programs, liberate the people, etc..... not for lebensraum or to steal their resources.
Len, learn the facts and make an informed decision.
We did not hang any German soldiers (or their officers) for choosing the wrong war. Those who went and fought were they were sent went home after the war. We hanged those that participated crimes against humanity (e.g. death camp guards and the leaders/decision makers of Nazi Party.)
Post by: Len Budney on November 25, 2007, 03:28:21 AM
The Iraq War does not fall under the "Aggressive War".
"Aggressive war" is anything other than self-defense against someone else's aggressive warmaking.
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1. We did not invade Iraq alone.
That doesn't make it self-defense. Iraq did not threaten the US.
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2. Remember the 17 UN resolutions that Iraq violated and the UN did authorize use of force to deal with Iraq. (including the ones from the first Gulf War, which basically said, if you don't comply we'll come back and finish what we started in '90-91.)
That doesn't make it self-defense. It's also a bit of a rabbit-hole, since the UN did not support the invasion.
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3. Comparing what we're doing in Iraq to what Germany did with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, The Low Countries, France, USSR, etc. is apples to oranges. We went to Iraq to remove a evil dictator...
Which is NOT self-defense. Every war is always justified by all participants as a good, moral and just thing. Hitler's justification for war (WAR, mind you, NOT the Holocaust) was actually quite plausible: Europe and the US beggared Germany with the ruinous treaty of Versailles. They had a just complaint.
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We did not hang any German soldiers (or their officers) for choosing the wrong war...
It's true that we didn't hang all the German soldiers. We mostly picked out the worst ones. But the first two counts in the the actual charges were: conspiracy to wage aggressive war; and waging aggressive war. The defendants were not all death-camp commandants either. For example, rank-and-file soldiers were accused of participation in the "Malmedy Massacre", and most of them were hanged after a trial notably lacking in due process, including allegations of "aggressive interrogation techniques."
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 25, 2007, 06:05:18 AM
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The Nuremberg doctrine, which was created by the United States herself, says that you are guilty of a war crime if you engage in aggressive war, orders notwithstanding. If the US applied her own standards to herself, Lt. Watada would be one of the few soldiers left outside Leavenworth.
Could you flesh that out a little? "Aggressive war" could be interpreted any number of ways, so I trust the wording is more specific. No?
At Nuremberg, "aggressive" meant "not defensive"; it wasn't a synonym for "vigorous." In other words, the one who starts the war is guilty of war crimes. Note: rattling sabers and saying "yo mama" doesn't count as "starting the war."
--Len.
The one who starts the war, eh? Doesn't really clear up anything. If you didn't want to flesh it out, just say so.
Post by: Len Budney on November 25, 2007, 10:06:18 AM
The one who starts the war, eh? Doesn't really clear up anything. If you didn't want to flesh it out, just say so.
When I defined "aggressive" to mean "not defensive," I think that was clear enough. Anything other than defense against an aggressor, is aggression. Both sides in every war claim to be acting in self-defense, of course--but you can just about always identify the liar: he's the one who can only point to hypothetical threats.
In WWII, for example, Germany was the aggressor against Poland. That part is clear and simple. England and France sucked in by mutual defense treaties with Poland. They were not acting in self defense, but arguably their decision to join the war is defensible in terms of Polish self-defense, in whose behalf they acted. US involvement can potentially be defended on the same grounds, or else as self-defense following Pearl Harbor, but it can also be attacked on the grounds that Roosevelt worked hard to manufacture an excuse to join the war. Similarly, Lincoln can be blamed for starting the war between the states, although he provoked the South into firing the first shot at Sumpter.
The latter example illustrates how it can be non-trivial to identify the aggressor in a given confrontation, because both sides attempt to maneuver the other into firing the first live round. But that doesn't alter the principle that the aggressor is the one who is not acting in self-defense, whether or not he falsely claims to so act.
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 25, 2007, 11:44:49 AM
Post by: Len Budney on November 25, 2007, 12:46:04 PM
But you said saber-rattling didn't count as starting a war.
And when did I ever say otherwise? Are you suggesting that Lincoln was "saber-rattling" when he decided to provision Sumter, instead of turning it over to the South as he had promised to do? I wouldn't. If Saddam had decided to send reinforcements to an Iraqi fort just offshore of America's most important naval base, then it would be relatively easy to justify a confrontation over that base. In the same way, Sumter was a key position from which to blockade southern sea trade, which was Lincoln's stated intention when the South defied, e.g., the Tariff Act of 1857. Said Lincoln:
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"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 25, 2007, 01:51:07 PM
Anyhoo, if we are in violation of the Nurenburg doctrine, who has called us on it, and what have the consequences been?
Post by: yesitsloaded on November 25, 2007, 04:28:00 PM
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Aggressive war is Armed Robbery writ large. They have it, we want it, let's go take it.
Oil. I don't see us invading Darfur to free those starving oppressed people. Hell, they even want us. If I could be guaranteed to stay on the border with Mexico or in some other fashion actually defend the country instead of shooting up some third world dictatorship that has a natural resource I would join up in a minute. Quote
Anyhoo, if we are in violation of the Nurenburg doctrine, who has called us on it, and what have the consequences been?
Post by: Len Budney on November 26, 2007, 04:15:59 AM
Are you suggesting that none of Hussein's actions could be described as saber-rattling, or worse?
He never posed a threat to the United States.
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Anyhoo, if we are in violation of the Nurenburg doctrine, who has called us on it, and what have the consequences been?
Zilch. The Nuremberg doctrine was supposedly an articulation of our own nation's morals; the only outcome today is to make it obvious to anyone who's paying attention that we're a buncha hypocrites.
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 26, 2007, 01:23:23 PM
Are you suggesting that none of Hussein's actions could be described as saber-rattling, or worse?
He never posed a threat to the United States.
If you say that enough times, it might become true!
Post by: Len Budney on November 26, 2007, 01:27:20 PM
Are you suggesting that none of Hussein's actions could be described as saber-rattling, or worse?
He never posed a threat to the United States.
If you say that enough times, it might become true!
Lacking a navy, missiles or any air force to speak of, I'd be delighted to read your explanation how Saddam was going to invade the US. Since he had no WMDs in the first place, I can't wait for your explanation how he was going to use these nonexistent weapons against Americans or in American territory. And since he had nothing to do with 9/11, I'd like to see how you construe that into evidence that Saddam posed a threat.
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 26, 2007, 02:30:58 PM
Post by: Paddy on November 26, 2007, 02:46:10 PM
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Lacking a navy, missiles or any air force to speak of, I'd be delighted to read your explanation how Saddam was going to invade the US. Since he had no WMDs in the first place, I can't wait for your explanation how he was going to use these nonexistent weapons against Americans or in American territory. And since he had nothing to do with 9/11, I'd like to see how you construe that into evidence that Saddam posed a threat.
You should know by now not to ask a sensible, reasonable question here and expect a sensible reasonable response. What you'll get instead is the kind of nonsense that appears in reply #46.
Post by: Len Budney on November 26, 2007, 02:48:04 PM
Saddam wasn't involved in such-and-such attack, therefore, he couldn't have contributed to attacks in the future.
I never said he couldn't. How can anyone say that? How can anyone say that you couldn't "contribute to attacks in the future"? And that's the point: outside Philip Dick novels, we don't prosecute possible future crimes. Being an armed man, you've been trained to distinguish between potential and actual threats, and you've been taught that shooting actual threats is justifiable homicide, while shooting potential threats is murder.
As an aside, your post illustrates why I like you. You're articulate, funny and honest. Wrong, maybe, but always a fun read.
--Len.
Post by: wooderson on November 26, 2007, 02:56:53 PM
Should we invade nations based solely on their potential for doing harm? Because, you know, England and France happen to be nuclear powers...
Post by: Gewehr98 on November 26, 2007, 03:30:06 PM
How he'd deliver the products of said weapons-grade enrichment are up to conjecture, but even Pakistan had plans to roll theirs out the tailgate of a C-130 on a decidedly one-way mission.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 26, 2007, 03:45:58 PM
I just happen to believe that Iraq was an actual threat.
Post by: Len Budney on November 26, 2007, 03:48:31 PM
Having viewed the remnants of Saddam's calutrons first-hand on one of my government-paid vacations, I'd have to strongly disagree with the no-threat argument.
You mean the calutrons that were destroyed in the first Gulf War?
--Len.
Post by: MechAg94 on November 26, 2007, 06:34:51 PM
They publish all sorts of stuff.
Post by: wooderson on November 26, 2007, 07:11:40 PM
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I just happen to believe that Iraq was an actual threat
How far does that ability to believe extend?If my neighbor has a gun, has repeatedly stated that he hates my guts and I "believe" - despite having zero evidence that he's taken steps to injure me - that he poses a threat to my life... can I shoot him?
Post by: Paddy on November 26, 2007, 07:47:59 PM
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I just happen to believe that Iraq was an actual threat.
Beliefs are magical. Little children believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Live the dream, fistful.
Post by: Len Budney on November 27, 2007, 02:08:29 AM
world net daily is generally not a credible link IMO. They publish all sorts of stuff.
They publish all sorts of stuff.Agreed. But Prather's opinion piece was a convenient summary, so I grabbed it instead of looking harder for more sources. The date of the piece is the most important bit: it was written in 2001, well before the US invaded Iraq.
--Len.
Post by: Scout26 on November 27, 2007, 08:24:05 AM
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Since he had no WMDs in the first place,
So "Chemical Ali" was exectued for no reason other then the 5,000+/- Kurds were "Faking it". He didn't really use VX, Sarin, Mustard or Taubin on them.
Plus here's David Kay sworn tesimony to Congress. (He's probably lying too, just like Bush......)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/
Quote
(CNN) -- The following is a transcript of David Kay's report on the activities of the Iraq Survey Group to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I welcome this opportunity to discuss with the Committee the progress that the Iraq Survey Group has made in its initial three months of its investigation into Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that the Interim Progress Report, which has been made available to you, is a snapshot, in the context of an on --going investigation, of where we are after our first three months of work. The report does not represent a final reckoning of Iraq's WMD programs, nor are we at the point where we are prepared to close the file on any of these programs.
While solid progress -- I would say even remarkable progress considering the conditions that the ISG has had to work under -- has been made in this initial period of operations, much remains to be done.
We are still very much in the collection and analysis mode, still seeking the information and evidence that will allow us to confidently draw comprehensive conclusions to the actual objectives, scope, and dimensions of Iraq's WMD activities at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The very scale of this program when coupled with the conditions in Iraq that have prevailed since the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom dictate the speed at which we can move to a comprehensive understanding of Iraq's WMD activities.
We need to recall that in the 1991-2003 period the intelligence community and the UN/IAEA inspectors had to draw conclusions as to the status of Iraq's WMD program in the face of incomplete, and often false, data supplied by Iraq or data collected either by UN/IAEA inspectors operating within the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions imposed or by national intelligence collection systems with their own inherent limitations.
The result was that our understanding of the status of Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties and had to be heavily caveated.
With the regime of Saddam Husayn at an end, ISG has the opportunity for the first time of drawing together all the evidence that can still be found in Iraq -- much evidence is irretrievably lost -- to reach definitive conclusions concerning the true state of Iraq's WMD program.
It is far too early to reach any definitive conclusions and, in some areas, we may never reach that goal. The unique nature of this opportunity, however, requires that we take great care to ensure that the conclusions we draw reflect the truth to the maximum extent possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq.
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.
We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.
Why are we having such difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion that they do not exist or that they once existed but have been removed? Our search efforts are being hindered by six principal factors:
1. From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;
2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;
3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;
4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;
5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;
6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.
What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:
? A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
? A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
? Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
? New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
? Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
? A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
? Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
? Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
? Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.
For example,
? On 10 July 2003 an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes. Upon arrival the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.
? All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates from office doors.
? Although much of the deliberate destruction and sanitization of documents and records probably occurred during the height of OIF combat operations, indications of significant continuing destruction efforts have been found after the end of major combat operations, including entry in May 2003 of the locked gated vaults of the Ba'ath party intelligence building in Baghdad and highly selective destruction of computer hard drives and data storage equipment along with the burning of a small number of specific binders that appear to have contained financial and intelligence records, and in July 2003 a site exploitation team at the Abu Ghurayb Prison found one pile of the smoldering ashes from documents that was still warm to the touch.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I welcome this opportunity to discuss with the Committee the progress that the Iraq Survey Group has made in its initial three months of its investigation into Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that the Interim Progress Report, which has been made available to you, is a snapshot, in the context of an on --going investigation, of where we are after our first three months of work. The report does not represent a final reckoning of Iraq's WMD programs, nor are we at the point where we are prepared to close the file on any of these programs.
While solid progress -- I would say even remarkable progress considering the conditions that the ISG has had to work under -- has been made in this initial period of operations, much remains to be done.
We are still very much in the collection and analysis mode, still seeking the information and evidence that will allow us to confidently draw comprehensive conclusions to the actual objectives, scope, and dimensions of Iraq's WMD activities at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The very scale of this program when coupled with the conditions in Iraq that have prevailed since the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom dictate the speed at which we can move to a comprehensive understanding of Iraq's WMD activities.
We need to recall that in the 1991-2003 period the intelligence community and the UN/IAEA inspectors had to draw conclusions as to the status of Iraq's WMD program in the face of incomplete, and often false, data supplied by Iraq or data collected either by UN/IAEA inspectors operating within the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions imposed or by national intelligence collection systems with their own inherent limitations.
The result was that our understanding of the status of Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties and had to be heavily caveated.
With the regime of Saddam Husayn at an end, ISG has the opportunity for the first time of drawing together all the evidence that can still be found in Iraq -- much evidence is irretrievably lost -- to reach definitive conclusions concerning the true state of Iraq's WMD program.
It is far too early to reach any definitive conclusions and, in some areas, we may never reach that goal. The unique nature of this opportunity, however, requires that we take great care to ensure that the conclusions we draw reflect the truth to the maximum extent possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq.
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.
We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.
Why are we having such difficulty in finding weapons or in reaching a confident conclusion that they do not exist or that they once existed but have been removed? Our search efforts are being hindered by six principal factors:
1. From birth, all of Iraq's WMD activities were highly compartmentalized within a regime that ruled and kept its secrets through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each program;
2. Deliberate dispersal and destruction of material and documentation related to weapons programs began pre-conflict and ran trans-to-post conflict;
3. Post-OIF looting destroyed or dispersed important and easily collectable material and forensic evidence concerning Iraq's WMD program. As the report covers in detail, significant elements of this looting were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner, with the clear aim of concealing pre-OIF activities of Saddam's regime;
4. Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre/trans conflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them;
5. Any actual WMD weapons or material is likely to be small in relation to the total conventional armaments footprint and difficult to near impossible to identify with normal search procedures. It is important to keep in mind that even the bulkiest materials we are searching for, in the quantities we would expect to find, can be concealed in spaces not much larger than a two car garage;
6. The environment in Iraq remains far from permissive for our activities, with many Iraqis that we talk to reporting threats and overt acts of intimidation and our own personnel being the subject of threats and attacks. In September alone we have had three attacks on ISG facilities or teams: The ISG base in Irbil was bombed and four staff injured, two very seriously; a two person team had their vehicle blocked by gunmen and only escaped by firing back through their own windshield; and on Wednesday, 24 September, the ISG Headquarters in Baghdad again was subject to mortar attack.
What have we found and what have we not found in the first 3 months of our work?
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:
? A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
? A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
? Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
? New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
? Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
? A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
? Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
? Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
? Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.
For example,
? On 10 July 2003 an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes. Upon arrival the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed. Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to their contents.
? All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates from office doors.
? Although much of the deliberate destruction and sanitization of documents and records probably occurred during the height of OIF combat operations, indications of significant continuing destruction efforts have been found after the end of major combat operations, including entry in May 2003 of the locked gated vaults of the Ba'ath party intelligence building in Baghdad and highly selective destruction of computer hard drives and data storage equipment along with the burning of a small number of specific binders that appear to have contained financial and intelligence records, and in July 2003 a site exploitation team at the Abu Ghurayb Prison found one pile of the smoldering ashes from documents that was still warm to the touch.
Post by: Scout26 on November 27, 2007, 08:25:50 AM
Quote
I would now like to review our efforts in each of the major lines of enquiry that ISG has pursued during this initial phase of its work.
With regard to biological warfare activities, which has been one of our two initial areas of focus, ISG teams are uncovering significant information -- including research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and
focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents.
Debriefings of IIS officials and site visits have begun to unravel a clandestine network of laboratories and facilities within the security service apparatus. This network was never declared to the UN and was previously unknown.
We are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons, but this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D -- all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production.
The IIS also played a prominent role in sponsoring students for overseas graduate studies in the biological sciences, according to Iraqi scientists and IIS sources, providing an important avenue for furthering BW-applicable research.
This was the only area of graduate work that the IIS appeared to sponsor.
Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.
Examples include: B. Thurengiensis (Bt) with B. anthracis (anthrax), and medicinal plants with ricin.
In a similar vein, two key former BW scientists, confirmed that Iraq under the guise of legitimate activity developed refinements of processes and products relevant to BW agents. The scientists discussed the development of improved, simplified fermentation and spray drying capabilities for the simulant Bt that would have been directly applicable to anthrax, and one scientist confirmed that the production line for Bt could be switched to produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.
A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits, and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from UN inspectors when they returned in 2002.
One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN.
Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced.
This discovery -- hidden in the home of a BW scientist -- illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons.
The scientist who concealed the vials containing this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.
Additional information is beginning to corroborate reporting since 1996 about human testing activities using chemical and biological substances, but progress in this area is slow given the concern of knowledgeable Iraqi personnel about their being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.
We have made significant progress in identifying and locating individuals who were reportedly involved in a mobile program, and we are confident that we will be able to get an answer to the questions as to whether there was a mobile program and whether the trailers that have been discovered so far were part of such a program.
Let me turn now to chemical weapons (CW). In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq's conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons.
For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined.
As Iraqi practice was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is enormous.
While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003.
When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agent and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI he responded it would take six months for mustard.
Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Uday Husayn for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for Sarin.
We are starting to survey parts of Iraq's chemical industry to determine if suitable equipment and bulk chemicals were available for chemical weapons production. We have been struck that two senior Iraqi officials volunteered that if they had been ordered to resume CW production Iraq would have been willing to use stainless steel systems that would be disposed of after a few production runs, in place of corrosive-resistant equipment which they did not have.
We continue to follow leads on Iraq's acquisition of equipment and bulk precursors suitable for a CW program. Several possibilities have emerged and are now being exploited. One example involves a foreign company with offices in Baghdad, that imported in the past into Iraq dual-use equipment and maintained active contracts through 2002. Its Baghdad office was found looted in August 2003, but we are pursuing other locations and associates of the company.
Information obtained since OIF has identified several key areas in which Iraq may have engaged in proscribed or undeclared activity since 1991, including research on a possible VX stabilizer, research and development for CW-capable munitions, and procurement/concealment of dual-use materials and equipment.
Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991.
Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections. We are carefully examining dual-use, commercial chemical facilities to determine whether these were used or planned as alternative production sites.
We have also acquired information related to Iraq's CW doctrine and Iraq's war plans for OIF, but we have not yet found evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against Coalition forces. Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks.
We have multiple reports that Iraq retained CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard - a long-lasting chemical agent -- but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions.
With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.
They have told ISG that Saddam Husayn remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.
At least one senior Iraqi official believed that by 2000 Saddam had run out of patience with waiting for sanctions to end and wanted to restart the nuclear program.
The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) beginning around 1999 expanded its laboratories and research activities and increased its overall funding levels.
This expansion may have been in initial preparation for renewed nuclear weapons research, although documentary evidence of this has not been found, and this is the subject of continuing investigation by ISG.
Starting around 2, the senior Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) and high-level Ba'ath Party official Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id began several small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to nuclear weapons development.
These initiatives did not in-and-of themselves constitute a resumption of the nuclear weapons program, but could have been useful in developing a weapons-relevant science base for the long-term. We do not yet have information indicating whether a higher government authority directed Sa'id to initiate this research and, regretfully, Dr. Said was killed on April 8th during the fall of Baghdad when the car he was riding in attempted to run a Coalition roadblock.
Despite evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material. However, Iraq did take steps to preserve some technological capability from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
?According to documents and testimony of Iraqi scientists, some of the key technical groups from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program remained
largely intact, performing work on nuclear-relevant dual-use technologies within the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). Some
scientists from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program have told ISG that they believed that these working groups were preserved in order to allow a reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program, but none of the scientists could produce official orders or plans to support their belief.
? In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development.
? Several scientists -- at the direction of senior Iraqi government officials -- preserved documents and equipment from their pre-1991 nuclear weapon-related research and did not reveal this to the UN/IAEA.
One Iraqi scientist recently stated in an interview with ISG that it was a "common understanding" among the scientists that material was being preserved for reconstitution of nuclear weapons-related work.
The ISG nuclear team has found indications that there was interest, beginning in 2002, in reconstituting a centrifuge enrichment program.
Most of this activity centered on activities of Dr. Sa'id that caused some of his former colleagues in the pre-1991 nuclear program to suspect that Dr. Sa'id, at least, was considering a restart of the centrifuge program. We do not yet fully understand Iraqi intentions, and the evidence does not tie any activity directly to centrifuge research or development.
Exploitation of additional documents may shed light on the projects and program plans of Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id. There may be more projects to be discovered in research placed at universities and private companies.
Iraqi interest in reconstitution of a uranium enrichment program needs to be better understood through the analysis of procurement records and additional interviews.
With regard to biological warfare activities, which has been one of our two initial areas of focus, ISG teams are uncovering significant information -- including research and development of BW-applicable organisms, the involvement of Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) in possible BW activities, and deliberate concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further compartmentalized its program and
focused on maintaining smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production of BW agents.
Debriefings of IIS officials and site visits have begun to unravel a clandestine network of laboratories and facilities within the security service apparatus. This network was never declared to the UN and was previously unknown.
We are still working on determining the extent to which this network was tied to large-scale military efforts or BW terror weapons, but this clandestine capability was suitable for preserving BW expertise, BW capable facilities and continuing R&D -- all key elements for maintaining a capability for resuming BW production.
The IIS also played a prominent role in sponsoring students for overseas graduate studies in the biological sciences, according to Iraqi scientists and IIS sources, providing an important avenue for furthering BW-applicable research.
This was the only area of graduate work that the IIS appeared to sponsor.
Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.
Examples include: B. Thurengiensis (Bt) with B. anthracis (anthrax), and medicinal plants with ricin.
In a similar vein, two key former BW scientists, confirmed that Iraq under the guise of legitimate activity developed refinements of processes and products relevant to BW agents. The scientists discussed the development of improved, simplified fermentation and spray drying capabilities for the simulant Bt that would have been directly applicable to anthrax, and one scientist confirmed that the production line for Bt could be switched to produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.
A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits, and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from UN inspectors when they returned in 2002.
One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN.
Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced.
This discovery -- hidden in the home of a BW scientist -- illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons.
The scientist who concealed the vials containing this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.
Additional information is beginning to corroborate reporting since 1996 about human testing activities using chemical and biological substances, but progress in this area is slow given the concern of knowledgeable Iraqi personnel about their being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.
We have made significant progress in identifying and locating individuals who were reportedly involved in a mobile program, and we are confident that we will be able to get an answer to the questions as to whether there was a mobile program and whether the trailers that have been discovered so far were part of such a program.
Let me turn now to chemical weapons (CW). In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq's conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons.
For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined.
As Iraqi practice was not to mark much of their chemical ordinance and to store it at the same ASPs that held conventional rounds, the size of the required search effort is enormous.
While searching for retained weapons, ISG teams have developed multiple sources that indicate that Iraq explored the possibility of CW production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003.
When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agent and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI he responded it would take six months for mustard.
Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Uday Husayn for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for Sarin.
We are starting to survey parts of Iraq's chemical industry to determine if suitable equipment and bulk chemicals were available for chemical weapons production. We have been struck that two senior Iraqi officials volunteered that if they had been ordered to resume CW production Iraq would have been willing to use stainless steel systems that would be disposed of after a few production runs, in place of corrosive-resistant equipment which they did not have.
We continue to follow leads on Iraq's acquisition of equipment and bulk precursors suitable for a CW program. Several possibilities have emerged and are now being exploited. One example involves a foreign company with offices in Baghdad, that imported in the past into Iraq dual-use equipment and maintained active contracts through 2002. Its Baghdad office was found looted in August 2003, but we are pursuing other locations and associates of the company.
Information obtained since OIF has identified several key areas in which Iraq may have engaged in proscribed or undeclared activity since 1991, including research on a possible VX stabilizer, research and development for CW-capable munitions, and procurement/concealment of dual-use materials and equipment.
Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991.
Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections. We are carefully examining dual-use, commercial chemical facilities to determine whether these were used or planned as alternative production sites.
We have also acquired information related to Iraq's CW doctrine and Iraq's war plans for OIF, but we have not yet found evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against Coalition forces. Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks.
We have multiple reports that Iraq retained CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard - a long-lasting chemical agent -- but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions.
With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.
They have told ISG that Saddam Husayn remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.
At least one senior Iraqi official believed that by 2000 Saddam had run out of patience with waiting for sanctions to end and wanted to restart the nuclear program.
The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) beginning around 1999 expanded its laboratories and research activities and increased its overall funding levels.
This expansion may have been in initial preparation for renewed nuclear weapons research, although documentary evidence of this has not been found, and this is the subject of continuing investigation by ISG.
Starting around 2, the senior Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) and high-level Ba'ath Party official Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id began several small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to nuclear weapons development.
These initiatives did not in-and-of themselves constitute a resumption of the nuclear weapons program, but could have been useful in developing a weapons-relevant science base for the long-term. We do not yet have information indicating whether a higher government authority directed Sa'id to initiate this research and, regretfully, Dr. Said was killed on April 8th during the fall of Baghdad when the car he was riding in attempted to run a Coalition roadblock.
Despite evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material. However, Iraq did take steps to preserve some technological capability from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
?According to documents and testimony of Iraqi scientists, some of the key technical groups from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program remained
largely intact, performing work on nuclear-relevant dual-use technologies within the Military Industrial Commission (MIC). Some
scientists from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program have told ISG that they believed that these working groups were preserved in order to allow a reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program, but none of the scientists could produce official orders or plans to support their belief.
? In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development.
? Several scientists -- at the direction of senior Iraqi government officials -- preserved documents and equipment from their pre-1991 nuclear weapon-related research and did not reveal this to the UN/IAEA.
One Iraqi scientist recently stated in an interview with ISG that it was a "common understanding" among the scientists that material was being preserved for reconstitution of nuclear weapons-related work.
The ISG nuclear team has found indications that there was interest, beginning in 2002, in reconstituting a centrifuge enrichment program.
Most of this activity centered on activities of Dr. Sa'id that caused some of his former colleagues in the pre-1991 nuclear program to suspect that Dr. Sa'id, at least, was considering a restart of the centrifuge program. We do not yet fully understand Iraqi intentions, and the evidence does not tie any activity directly to centrifuge research or development.
Exploitation of additional documents may shed light on the projects and program plans of Dr. Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id. There may be more projects to be discovered in research placed at universities and private companies.
Iraqi interest in reconstitution of a uranium enrichment program needs to be better understood through the analysis of procurement records and additional interviews.
Post by: Scout26 on November 27, 2007, 08:26:13 AM
Quote
With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
Detainees and co-operative sources indicate that beginning in 2000 Saddam ordered the development of ballistic missiles with ranges of at least 400km and up to 1000km and that measures to conceal these projects from UNMOVIC were initiated in late-2002, ahead of the arrival of inspectors. Work was also underway for a clustered engine liquid propellant missile, and it appears the work had progressed to a point to support initial prototype production of some parts and assemblies.
According to a cooperating senior detainee, Saddam concluded that the proposals from both the liquid-propellant and solid-propellant missile design centers would take too long. For instance, the liquid-propellant missile project team forecast first delivery in six years. Saddam countered in 2000 that he wanted the missile designed and built inside of six months. On the other hand several sources contend that Saddam's range requirements for the missiles grew from 400-500km in 2000 to 600-1000km in 2002.
ISG has gathered testimony from missile designers at Al Kindi State Company that Iraq has reinitiated work on converting SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missiles into ballistic missiles with a range goal of about 250km.
Engineering work was reportedly underway in early 2003, despite the presence of UNMOVIC. This program was not declared to the UN. ISG is presently seeking additional confirmation and details on this project. A second cooperative source has stated that the program actually began in 2001, but that it received added impetus in the run-up to OIF, and that missiles from this project were transferred to a facility north of Baghdad. This source also provided documentary evidence of instructions to convert SA-2s into surface-to-surface missiles.
ISG has obtained testimony from both detainees and cooperative sources that indicate that proscribed-range solid-propellant missile design studies were initiated, or already underway, at the time when work on the clustered liquid-propellant missile designs began. The motor diameter was to be 800 to 1000mm, i.e. much greater than the 500-mm Ababil-100. The range goals cited for this system vary from over 400km up to 1000km, depending on the source and the payload mass.
A cooperative source, involved in the 2001-2002 deliberations on the long-range solid propellant project, provided ISG with a set of concept designs for a launcher designed to accommodate a 1m diameter by 9m length missile.
The limited detail in the drawings suggest there was some way to go before launcher fabrication. The source believes that these drawings would not have been requested until the missile progress was relatively advanced, normally beyond the design state. The drawing are in CAD format, with files dated 09/01/02.
While we have obtained enough information to make us confident that this design effort was underway, we are not yet confident which accounts of the timeline and project progress are accurate and are now seeking to better understand this program and its actual progress at the time of OIF.
One cooperative source has said that he suspected that the new large-diameter solid-propellant missile was intended to have a CW-filled warhead, but no detainee has admitted any actual knowledge of plans for unconventional warheads for any current or planned ballistic missile.
The suspicion expressed by the one source about a CW warhead was based on his assessment of the unavailability of nuclear warheads and potential survivability problems of biological warfare agent in ballistic missile warheads. This is an area of great interest and we are seeking additional information on warhead designs.
While I have spoken so far of planned missile systems, one high-level detainee has recently claimed that Iraq retained a small quantity of Scud-variant missiles until at least 2001, although he subsequently recanted these claims, work continues to determine the truth.
Two other sources contend that Iraq continued to produce until 2001 liquid fuel and oxidizer specific to Scud-type systems. The cooperating source claims that the al Tariq Factory was used to manufacture Scud oxidizer (IRFNA) from 1996 to 2001, and that nitrogen tetroxide, a chief ingredient of IRFNA was collected from a bleed port on the production equipment, was reserved, and then mixed with highly concentrated nitric acid plus an inhibitor to produce Scud oxidizer.
Iraq never declared its pre-Gulf War capability to manufacture Scud IRFNA out of fear, multiple sources have stated, that the al Tariq Factory would be destroyed, leaving Baghdad without the ability to produce highly concentrated nitric acid, explosives and munitions.
To date we have not discovered documentary or material evidence to corroborate these claims, but continued efforts are underway to clarify and confirm this information with additional Iraqi sources and to locate corroborating physical evidence.
If we can confirm that the fuel was produced as late as 2001, and given that Scud fuel can only be used in Scud-variant missiles, we will have strong evidence that the missiles must have been retained until that date. This would, of course, be yet another example of a failure to declare prohibited activities to the UN.
Iraq was continuing to develop a variety of UAV platforms and maintained two UAV programs that were working in parallel, one at Ibn Fernas and one at al-Rashid Air Force Base.
Ibn Fernas worked on the development of smaller, more traditional types of UAVs in addition to the conversion of manned aircraft into UAVs.
This program was not declared to the UN until the 2002 CAFCD in which Iraq declared the RPV-20, RPV-30 and Pigeon RPV systems to the UN.
All these systems had declared ranges of less than 150km. Several Iraqi officials stated that the RPV-20 flew over 500km on autopilot in 2002, contradicting Iraq's declaration on the system's range.
The al-Rashid group was developing a competing line of UAVs. This program was never fully declared to the UN and is the subject of on-going work by ISG.
Additional work is also focusing on the payloads and intended use for these UAVs. Surveillance and use as decoys are uses mentioned by some of those interviewed. Given Iraq's interest before the Gulf War in attempting to convert a MIG-21 into an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry spray tanks capable of dispensing chemical or biological agents, attention is being paid to whether any of the newer generation of UAVs were intended to have a similar purpose.
This remains an open question.
ISG has discovered evidence of two primary cruise missile programs. The first appears to have been successfully implemented, whereas the second had not yet reached maturity at the time of OIF.
The first involved upgrades to the HY-2 coastal-defense cruise missile. ISG has developed multiple sources of testimony, which is corroborated in part by a captured document, that Iraq undertook a program aimed at increasing the HY-2's range and permitting its use as a land-attack missile.
These efforts extended the HY-2's range from its original 100km to 150-180km. Ten modified missiles were delivered to the military prior to OIF and two of these were fired from Umm Qasr during OIF -- one was shot down and one hit Kuwait.
The second program, called the Jenin, was a much more ambitious effort to convert the HY-2 into a 1000km range land-attack cruise missile.
The Jenin concept was presented to Saddam on 23 November 2001 and received what cooperative sources called an "unusually quick response" in little more than a week.
The essence of the concept was to take an HY-2, strip it of its liquid rocket engine, and put in its place a turbine engine from a Russian helicopter -- the TV-2-117 or TV3-117 from a Mi-8 or Mi-17helicopter. To prevent discovery by the UN, Iraq halted engine development and testing and disassembled the test stand in late 2002 before the design criteria had been met.
In addition to the activities detailed here on Iraq's attempts to develop delivery systems beyond the permitted UN 150km, ISG has also developed information on Iraqi attempts to purchase proscribed missiles and missile technology.
Documents found by ISG describe a high level dialogue between Iraq and North Korea that began in December 1999 and included an October 2000 meeting in Baghdad.
These documents indicate Iraqi interest in the transfer of technology for surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1300km (probably No Dong) and land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300km. The document quotes the North Koreans as understanding the limitations imposed by the UN, but being prepared "to cooperate with Iraq on the items it specified".
At the time of OIF, these discussions had not led to any missiles being transferred to Iraq.
A high level cooperating source has reported that in late 2002 at Saddam's behest a delegation of Iraqi officials was sent to meet with foreign export companies, including one that dealt with missiles. Iraq was interested in buying an advanced ballistic missile with 270km and 500km ranges.
The ISG has also identified a large volume of material and testimony by
cooperating Iraq officials on Iraq's effort to illicitly procure parts
and foreign assistance for its missile program.
These include:
? Significant level of assistance from a foreign company and its network of affiliates in supplying and supporting the development of production capabilities for solid rocket propellant and dual-use chemicals.
? Entities from another foreign country were involved in supplying guidance and control systems for use in the Al-Fat'h (Ababil-100). The contract was incomplete by the time of OIF due to technical problems with the few systems delivered and a financial dispute.
? A group of foreign experts operating in a private capacity were helping to develop Iraq's liquid propellant ballistic missile RDT&E and production infrastructure. They worked in Baghdad for about three months in late 1998 and subsequently continued work on the project from abroad. An actual contract valued at $10 million for machinery and equipment was signed in June 2001, initially for 18 months, but later extended. This cooperation continued right up until the war.
? A different group of foreign experts traveled to Iraq in 1999 to conduct a technical review that resulted in what became the Al Samoud 2 design, and a contract was signed in 2001 for the provision of rigs, fixtures and control equipment for the redesigned missile.
? Detainees and cooperative sources have described the role of a foreign expert in negotiations on the development of Iraq's liquid and solid propellant production infrastructure. This could have had applications in existing and planned longer range systems, although it is reported that nothing had actually been implemented before OIF.
Uncertainty remains about the full extent of foreign assistance to Iraq's planned expansion of its missile systems and work is continuing to gain a full resolution of this issue.
However, there is little doubt from the evidence already gathered that there was substantial illegal procurement for all aspects of the missile programs.
I have covered a lot of ground today, much of it highly technical.
Although we are resisting drawing conclusions in this first interim report, a number of things have become clearer already as a result of our investigation, among them:
1. Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.
2. In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km. These missile activities were supported by a serious clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn.
3. In the chemical and biological weapons area we have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine on-going research and development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service. While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities and provided a technically trained cadre.
Let me conclude by returning to something I began with today. We face a unique but challenging opportunity in our efforts to unravel the exact status of Iraq's WMD program.
The good news is that we do not have to rely for the first time in over a decade on the incomplete, and often false, data that Iraq supplied the UN/IAEA; data collected by UN inspectors operating with the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions imposed; information supplied by defectors, some of whom certainly fabricated much that they supplied and perhaps were under the direct control of the IIS; data collected by national technical collections systems with their own limitations.
The bad news is that we have to do this under conditions that ensure that our work will take time and impose serious physical dangers on those who are asked to carry it out.
Why should we take the time and run the risk to ensure that our conclusions reflect the truth to the maximum extent that is possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq? For those of us that are carrying out this search, there are two reasons that drive us to want to complete this effort.
First, 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.
It is, however, only by understanding precisely what those difference are that the quality of future intelligence and investment decisions concerning future intelligence systems can be improved. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is such a continuing threat to global society that learning those lessons has a high imperative.
Second, we have found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation.
Even in the area of actual weapons there is no doubt that Iraq had at one time chemical and biological weapons. Even if there were only a remote possibility that these pre-1991 weapons still exist, we have an obligation to American troops who are now there and the Iraqi population to ensure that none of these remain to be used against them in the ongoing insurgency activity.
Mr. Chairman and Members I appreciate this opportunity to share with you the initial results of the first 3 months of the activities of the Iraqi Survey Group.
I am certain that I speak for Major General Keith Dayton, who commands the Iraqi Survey Group, when I say how proud we are of the men and women from across the Government and from our Coalition partners, Australia and the United Kingdom, who have gone to Iraq and are carrying out this important mission.
Thank you.
Detainees and co-operative sources indicate that beginning in 2000 Saddam ordered the development of ballistic missiles with ranges of at least 400km and up to 1000km and that measures to conceal these projects from UNMOVIC were initiated in late-2002, ahead of the arrival of inspectors. Work was also underway for a clustered engine liquid propellant missile, and it appears the work had progressed to a point to support initial prototype production of some parts and assemblies.
According to a cooperating senior detainee, Saddam concluded that the proposals from both the liquid-propellant and solid-propellant missile design centers would take too long. For instance, the liquid-propellant missile project team forecast first delivery in six years. Saddam countered in 2000 that he wanted the missile designed and built inside of six months. On the other hand several sources contend that Saddam's range requirements for the missiles grew from 400-500km in 2000 to 600-1000km in 2002.
ISG has gathered testimony from missile designers at Al Kindi State Company that Iraq has reinitiated work on converting SA-2 Surface-to-Air Missiles into ballistic missiles with a range goal of about 250km.
Engineering work was reportedly underway in early 2003, despite the presence of UNMOVIC. This program was not declared to the UN. ISG is presently seeking additional confirmation and details on this project. A second cooperative source has stated that the program actually began in 2001, but that it received added impetus in the run-up to OIF, and that missiles from this project were transferred to a facility north of Baghdad. This source also provided documentary evidence of instructions to convert SA-2s into surface-to-surface missiles.
ISG has obtained testimony from both detainees and cooperative sources that indicate that proscribed-range solid-propellant missile design studies were initiated, or already underway, at the time when work on the clustered liquid-propellant missile designs began. The motor diameter was to be 800 to 1000mm, i.e. much greater than the 500-mm Ababil-100. The range goals cited for this system vary from over 400km up to 1000km, depending on the source and the payload mass.
A cooperative source, involved in the 2001-2002 deliberations on the long-range solid propellant project, provided ISG with a set of concept designs for a launcher designed to accommodate a 1m diameter by 9m length missile.
The limited detail in the drawings suggest there was some way to go before launcher fabrication. The source believes that these drawings would not have been requested until the missile progress was relatively advanced, normally beyond the design state. The drawing are in CAD format, with files dated 09/01/02.
While we have obtained enough information to make us confident that this design effort was underway, we are not yet confident which accounts of the timeline and project progress are accurate and are now seeking to better understand this program and its actual progress at the time of OIF.
One cooperative source has said that he suspected that the new large-diameter solid-propellant missile was intended to have a CW-filled warhead, but no detainee has admitted any actual knowledge of plans for unconventional warheads for any current or planned ballistic missile.
The suspicion expressed by the one source about a CW warhead was based on his assessment of the unavailability of nuclear warheads and potential survivability problems of biological warfare agent in ballistic missile warheads. This is an area of great interest and we are seeking additional information on warhead designs.
While I have spoken so far of planned missile systems, one high-level detainee has recently claimed that Iraq retained a small quantity of Scud-variant missiles until at least 2001, although he subsequently recanted these claims, work continues to determine the truth.
Two other sources contend that Iraq continued to produce until 2001 liquid fuel and oxidizer specific to Scud-type systems. The cooperating source claims that the al Tariq Factory was used to manufacture Scud oxidizer (IRFNA) from 1996 to 2001, and that nitrogen tetroxide, a chief ingredient of IRFNA was collected from a bleed port on the production equipment, was reserved, and then mixed with highly concentrated nitric acid plus an inhibitor to produce Scud oxidizer.
Iraq never declared its pre-Gulf War capability to manufacture Scud IRFNA out of fear, multiple sources have stated, that the al Tariq Factory would be destroyed, leaving Baghdad without the ability to produce highly concentrated nitric acid, explosives and munitions.
To date we have not discovered documentary or material evidence to corroborate these claims, but continued efforts are underway to clarify and confirm this information with additional Iraqi sources and to locate corroborating physical evidence.
If we can confirm that the fuel was produced as late as 2001, and given that Scud fuel can only be used in Scud-variant missiles, we will have strong evidence that the missiles must have been retained until that date. This would, of course, be yet another example of a failure to declare prohibited activities to the UN.
Iraq was continuing to develop a variety of UAV platforms and maintained two UAV programs that were working in parallel, one at Ibn Fernas and one at al-Rashid Air Force Base.
Ibn Fernas worked on the development of smaller, more traditional types of UAVs in addition to the conversion of manned aircraft into UAVs.
This program was not declared to the UN until the 2002 CAFCD in which Iraq declared the RPV-20, RPV-30 and Pigeon RPV systems to the UN.
All these systems had declared ranges of less than 150km. Several Iraqi officials stated that the RPV-20 flew over 500km on autopilot in 2002, contradicting Iraq's declaration on the system's range.
The al-Rashid group was developing a competing line of UAVs. This program was never fully declared to the UN and is the subject of on-going work by ISG.
Additional work is also focusing on the payloads and intended use for these UAVs. Surveillance and use as decoys are uses mentioned by some of those interviewed. Given Iraq's interest before the Gulf War in attempting to convert a MIG-21 into an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry spray tanks capable of dispensing chemical or biological agents, attention is being paid to whether any of the newer generation of UAVs were intended to have a similar purpose.
This remains an open question.
ISG has discovered evidence of two primary cruise missile programs. The first appears to have been successfully implemented, whereas the second had not yet reached maturity at the time of OIF.
The first involved upgrades to the HY-2 coastal-defense cruise missile. ISG has developed multiple sources of testimony, which is corroborated in part by a captured document, that Iraq undertook a program aimed at increasing the HY-2's range and permitting its use as a land-attack missile.
These efforts extended the HY-2's range from its original 100km to 150-180km. Ten modified missiles were delivered to the military prior to OIF and two of these were fired from Umm Qasr during OIF -- one was shot down and one hit Kuwait.
The second program, called the Jenin, was a much more ambitious effort to convert the HY-2 into a 1000km range land-attack cruise missile.
The Jenin concept was presented to Saddam on 23 November 2001 and received what cooperative sources called an "unusually quick response" in little more than a week.
The essence of the concept was to take an HY-2, strip it of its liquid rocket engine, and put in its place a turbine engine from a Russian helicopter -- the TV-2-117 or TV3-117 from a Mi-8 or Mi-17helicopter. To prevent discovery by the UN, Iraq halted engine development and testing and disassembled the test stand in late 2002 before the design criteria had been met.
In addition to the activities detailed here on Iraq's attempts to develop delivery systems beyond the permitted UN 150km, ISG has also developed information on Iraqi attempts to purchase proscribed missiles and missile technology.
Documents found by ISG describe a high level dialogue between Iraq and North Korea that began in December 1999 and included an October 2000 meeting in Baghdad.
These documents indicate Iraqi interest in the transfer of technology for surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1300km (probably No Dong) and land-to-sea missiles with a range of 300km. The document quotes the North Koreans as understanding the limitations imposed by the UN, but being prepared "to cooperate with Iraq on the items it specified".
At the time of OIF, these discussions had not led to any missiles being transferred to Iraq.
A high level cooperating source has reported that in late 2002 at Saddam's behest a delegation of Iraqi officials was sent to meet with foreign export companies, including one that dealt with missiles. Iraq was interested in buying an advanced ballistic missile with 270km and 500km ranges.
The ISG has also identified a large volume of material and testimony by
cooperating Iraq officials on Iraq's effort to illicitly procure parts
and foreign assistance for its missile program.
These include:
? Significant level of assistance from a foreign company and its network of affiliates in supplying and supporting the development of production capabilities for solid rocket propellant and dual-use chemicals.
? Entities from another foreign country were involved in supplying guidance and control systems for use in the Al-Fat'h (Ababil-100). The contract was incomplete by the time of OIF due to technical problems with the few systems delivered and a financial dispute.
? A group of foreign experts operating in a private capacity were helping to develop Iraq's liquid propellant ballistic missile RDT&E and production infrastructure. They worked in Baghdad for about three months in late 1998 and subsequently continued work on the project from abroad. An actual contract valued at $10 million for machinery and equipment was signed in June 2001, initially for 18 months, but later extended. This cooperation continued right up until the war.
? A different group of foreign experts traveled to Iraq in 1999 to conduct a technical review that resulted in what became the Al Samoud 2 design, and a contract was signed in 2001 for the provision of rigs, fixtures and control equipment for the redesigned missile.
? Detainees and cooperative sources have described the role of a foreign expert in negotiations on the development of Iraq's liquid and solid propellant production infrastructure. This could have had applications in existing and planned longer range systems, although it is reported that nothing had actually been implemented before OIF.
Uncertainty remains about the full extent of foreign assistance to Iraq's planned expansion of its missile systems and work is continuing to gain a full resolution of this issue.
However, there is little doubt from the evidence already gathered that there was substantial illegal procurement for all aspects of the missile programs.
I have covered a lot of ground today, much of it highly technical.
Although we are resisting drawing conclusions in this first interim report, a number of things have become clearer already as a result of our investigation, among them:
1. Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.
2. In the delivery systems area there were already well advanced, but undeclared, on-going activities that, if OIF had not intervened, would have resulted in the production of missiles with ranges at least up to 1000 km, well in excess of the UN permitted range of 150 km. These missile activities were supported by a serious clandestine procurement program about which we have much still to learn.
3. In the chemical and biological weapons area we have confidence that there were at a minimum clandestine on-going research and development activities that were embedded in the Iraqi Intelligence Service. While we have much yet to learn about the exact work programs and capabilities of these activities, it is already apparent that these undeclared activities would have at a minimum facilitated chemical and biological weapons activities and provided a technically trained cadre.
Let me conclude by returning to something I began with today. We face a unique but challenging opportunity in our efforts to unravel the exact status of Iraq's WMD program.
The good news is that we do not have to rely for the first time in over a decade on the incomplete, and often false, data that Iraq supplied the UN/IAEA; data collected by UN inspectors operating with the severe constraints that Iraqi security and deception actions imposed; information supplied by defectors, some of whom certainly fabricated much that they supplied and perhaps were under the direct control of the IIS; data collected by national technical collections systems with their own limitations.
The bad news is that we have to do this under conditions that ensure that our work will take time and impose serious physical dangers on those who are asked to carry it out.
Why should we take the time and run the risk to ensure that our conclusions reflect the truth to the maximum extent that is possible given the conditions in post-conflict Iraq? For those of us that are carrying out this search, there are two reasons that drive us to want to complete this effort.
First, 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.
It is, however, only by understanding precisely what those difference are that the quality of future intelligence and investment decisions concerning future intelligence systems can be improved. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is such a continuing threat to global society that learning those lessons has a high imperative.
Second, we have found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation.
Even in the area of actual weapons there is no doubt that Iraq had at one time chemical and biological weapons. Even if there were only a remote possibility that these pre-1991 weapons still exist, we have an obligation to American troops who are now there and the Iraqi population to ensure that none of these remain to be used against them in the ongoing insurgency activity.
Mr. Chairman and Members I appreciate this opportunity to share with you the initial results of the first 3 months of the activities of the Iraqi Survey Group.
I am certain that I speak for Major General Keith Dayton, who commands the Iraqi Survey Group, when I say how proud we are of the men and women from across the Government and from our Coalition partners, Australia and the United Kingdom, who have gone to Iraq and are carrying out this important mission.
Thank you.
Post by: Len Budney on November 27, 2007, 08:34:00 AM
Quote
Since he had no WMDs in the first place,
So "Chemical Ali" was exectued for no reason other then the 5,000+/- Kurds were "Faking it". He didn't really use VX, Sarin, Mustard or Taubin on them.
You're talking about crimes that occurred long before the invasion, using weapons that were since destroyed.
--Len.
Post by: Perd Hapley on November 27, 2007, 12:08:18 PM
Quote
I just happen to believe that Iraq was an actual threat
How far does that ability to believe extend?If my neighbor has a gun, has repeatedly stated that he hates my guts and I "believe" - despite having zero evidence that he's taken steps to injure me - that he poses a threat to my life... can I shoot him?
Don't be silly.