Re: [casi] AOL Headline- Does Iraq have banned weapons?

["ppg" <ppg@DELETETHISnyc.rr.com>]

Thanks for the enclosed URLs..

Here is Powell's response today:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/08/sprj.irq.main/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday it was
"nonsense" to label U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
as bogus.

He said the news media -- not the American people -- were raising concerns
about reports the country may have gone to war in Iraq based on inaccurate
information.

"The American people are quite assured" about the veracity of the
intelligence reports, Powell told reporters at an impromptu news conference
outside Fox News studios. "It's the media that invents words such as bogus."

He said there was "no doubt whatsoever" that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction prior to the U.S.-led invasion.

A 1,300-person team was going to Iraq to continue the hunt for evidence of
such weapons, Powell said.

Powell told CNN's "Late Edition" he spent four days at the CIA before his
U.N. presentation about Iraqi weapons on February 5 "making sure whatever I
said was supported by the intelligence."

"I think the case is clear," Powell said. "The case has been substantiated
over the years. Every nation that voted for U.N. Resolution 1441 voted for a
resolution that said Iraq was in material breach of its obligations, and so
there was nothing bogus about the intelligence."

Powell noted that he showed the security council a drawing of vans purported
to be biological weapons labs "and voila, the vans showed up a few months
later."

"Now, people are debating whether or not these vans truly are biological
vans," he said. "Sure they are. What other purpose are there?"

Powell said there was also a "killer argument" explaining why the vans "are
exactly what I said they were."

"I can assure you that if those biological vans were not biological vans,
when I said they were, on the 5th of February, on the 6th of February, Iraq
would have hauled those vans out, put them in front of the press conference,
gave them to the UNMOVIC inspectors to try to drive a stake in the heart of
my presentation," he said. "They did not."

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Powell also denied that Vice President
Dick Cheney's frequent trips to the CIA before the war pressured the agency
to skew its intelligence analysis.

It is Cheney's style to gather as much information available on a subject
"because he wants to get to the bottom of it," Powell said.

"He did the same thing to me in the first Gulf War," he said. "It's his
style to have all the information available to him so he knows what he's
talking about."

Meanwhile, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote a letter
to British intelligence services reassuring them the government would take
"far greater care" using their material, following a controversy over a
dossier on Iraq's weapons.  ...





----- Original Message -----
From: <VnStroope@aol.com>
To: <soc-casi-discuss@lists.cam.ac.uk>
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 11:02 AM
Subject: [casi] AOL Headline- Does Iraq have banned weapons?


>
> [ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]
>
> WASHINGTON (June 8) - Before the war, the Bush administration portrayed
Iraq
> as full of killer poisons with strange names and deadly effects, which
> terrorists could get hold of and unleash on U.S. cities. Those claims and
fears have
> not been borne out so far.
>
> Was the intelligence regarding Iraq inaccurate or distorted between when
it
> was gathered and presented to the world? Congress is looking into the
matter.
> Prime Minister Tony Blair's government in Britain is facing similar
scrutiny.
>
> A former State Department intelligence official, who viewed classified
> intelligence gathered by the CIA and other agencies about Iraq's chemical,
> biological and nuclear programs during the run-up to the war, accused the
> administration of distorting intelligence and presenting conjecture as
fact.
>
> ``What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements
> made from the very top about what the intelligence did say,'' said Greg
> Thielmann, who retired in September. He was director of the strategic,
proliferation
> and military issues office in the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and
> Research.
>
> On Friday, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency acknowledged he had
no
> hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons last fall but believed Iraq had a
> program in place to produce them. The assessment suggests greater
uncertainty
> about the Iraqi threat than the administration indicated publicly.
>
> CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of State Colin Powell and top
Pentagon
> officials have defended their pieces of the intelligence picture, saying
they
> provided accurate assessments.
>
> Many top U.S. officials contend their prewar assertions will yet be borne
> out. They say Iraq remains too dangerous to conduct a thorough search, but
a new
> hunt is getting under way.
>
> Prewar statements from President Bush, Powell and intelligence officials
> offered many of the specific conclusions that drove the United States and
Britain
> to invade Iraq. Most have yet to be validated.
>
> ``Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between
100
> and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent,'' Powell said at the United
Nations
> in February.
>
> In a paper released in October, U.S. intelligence agencies said that Iraq
had
> begun ``renewed production of chemical warfare agents,'' probably
including
> mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX.
>
> Chemical weapons have not been found in the part of Iraq that was
controlled
> by President Saddam Hussein's government.
>
> Intelligence officials said Saddam would disperse his chemical weapons
among
> his Iraqi Republican Guard units, which would use them if the government
were
> about to fall. This apparently did not happen.
>
> Powell suggested military units had biological weapons in the field.
>
> On May 30, Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top Marine in Iraq, said, speaking
> about the hunt for chemical and biological weapons: ``We've been to
virtually
> every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but
they're
> simply not there.''
>
> The prewar intelligence paper said Iraq had established ``a large-scale,
> redundant and concealed'' biological weapon agent production capability,
which
> included mobile facilities.
>
> Allied forces in Iraq have found two truck trailers equipped with
fermenters.
> The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency said last week they concluded the
> vehicles probably are parts of a mobile biological weapons production
facility.
> Bush seized on the finds as proof Iraq had prohibited weapons.
>
> No complete production system has been found, and tests showed no trace of
> biological agents in either trailer.
>
> ``So far it seems as if all the leads that have been followed up have come
to
> nothing. ... So many false claims have been made in the past, it can only
be
> politically driven. Responsible governments take time to investigate,''
said
> Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest in London.
>
> ``It's like the boy who cried wolf. The credibility of these claims is
shot.''
>
> Powell also had told the United Nations that ``numerous intelligence
reports
> over the past decade from sources inside Iraq'' indicated ``a covert force
of
> up to a few dozen Scud-variant ballistic missiles.''
>
> None has been found.
>
> U.S. allegations that Iraq was trying to develop a nuclear weapon have
also
> not been verified.
>
> Much discussed were some high-strength aluminum tubes Iraq tried to
import.
> The CIA argued they were for centrifuges essential to a nuclear weapons
> program. Experts from the State and Energy departments said they were for
> conventional artillery rockets, Thielmann said.
>
> No centrifuges have been reported found.
>
> In his State of the Union address, Bush said that Britain had learned that
> Saddam ``recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''
>
> The claim rested significantly on a letter or letters between officials in
> Iraq and Niger that were obtained by European intelligence agencies. The
> communications are now accepted as forged.
>
> The administration also suggested Iraq supported terrorists, including
> members of al-Qaida.
>
> The al-Qaida connection was built around the movements of Abu Musab
Zarqawi,
> a senior associate of Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi received medical treatment
in
> Baghdad in 2002 and supported an Islamic extremist movement in Kurdish
Iraq,
> outside Saddam's reach.
>
> A midlevel associate of Zarqawi was detained near Baghdad after the war.
> Zarqawi himself remains at large. Some reports indicated al-Qaida
operatives had
> sought chemical and biological weapons expertise from Iraq, but there was
> little evidence Iraq supplied any.
>
> Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
>
> On the Net: Powell's address to the United Nations:
> http://www.state.gov/p/nea/disarm/
>
> CIA paper on Iraq:
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/iraq(underscore)wmd/Iraq(undersc
ore)Oct(
>
> underscore)2002.htm
>
> State of the Union address:
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html
>
> Bush's Iraqi threat speech:
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
>
>
>
> 06/08/03 05:41 EDT
>
>
>
> Roger Stroope
> Austin College
> Sherman Texas, USA
> www.austincollege.edu
>
>
>
>
>
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