What do you liberals think of this???

[jaxmike]

wrong. that is not the case. you are a fool if you actually think that the sites were sealed and monitored. the ONLY monitoring they could do was via satellite. it was NOT under lock and key. you have a dillusional idea of what the IAEA and UN actually did, which is closer to nothing than anything.

[nicky g]

You are presenting this as if this was concealed WMD that justified the invasion. The fact is that these were declared stockpiles inspected, sealed and monitored by the IAEA and others. If Saddam had have gone anywhere near these, tried to mvoe them or use them, we would have known. Now we have no ida where they other, other than that they are in the hands of people who may use them against the west. Massive own goal.

"ONLY monitoring they could do was via satellite."

Quite simply not true. There is ample information on the monitoring systems used by UNSCOM, the IAE and others. For a start, inspectors regularly visited the sites to see whether their seals had been tampered with. If you wish to read about it I suggest starting with Dilip Hiro's book on Iraq.

[nicky g]

Or, for instance:

"The Ongoing Monitoring and Verification (OMV) system mandated by the Security Council in 1991, for example, installed an elaborate network of radiological and chemical sensors, cameras, ground-penetrating radar, and other detection systems, bolstered by aerial surveillance and no-notice visits to weapons facilities by inspectors. "

Foreign Affairs article

You've postd an article in the belief that it revealed undeclared weapons in Iraq, when in fact those potential weapons components were decelared and monitored and all the article proves is how massively counterproductive the war was, effectively handing dangerous materials to the people it was presented as preventing from getting those materials.

[jaxmike]

[ QUOTE ]
"ONLY monitoring they could do was via satellite."

Quite simply not true. There is ample information on the monitoring systems used by UNSCOM, the IAE and others. For a start, inspectors regularly visited the sites to see whether their seals had been tampered with. If you wish to read about it I suggest starting with Dilip Hiro's book on Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

You do realize that all inspectors had been repeatedly kicked out of Iraq right? There was no real monitoring.

From the NYT article.

[ QUOTE ]
In an interview, a senior atomic energy agency official said the agency had used the reconnaissance photos to study roughly 100 sites in Iraq but that the imagery's high cost meant that the inspectors could afford to get updates of individual sites only about once a year.

[/ QUOTE ]

World Class Monitoring.

[ QUOTE ]
Agency inspectors, in visiting other countries, have discovered tons of industrial scrap, some radioactively contaminated, from Iraq, the report noted.

[/ QUOTE ]

No nuclear program for sure.

[nicky g]

"You do realize that all inspectors had been repeatedly kicked out of Iraq right? There was no real monitoring. "

They were withdrawn once, by the UN itself in the run up to the American bombardment. They had been back for a while before the war. The seals on this type of material were not broken during their absence. Furthermore they might never have had to leave had the US and UK not been placing their own intelligence agents, who among other things used the inspections as a cover to pick targets for allied airstrikes, in the inspection teams.

"World Class Monitoring."

Satellite monitoring was not the only method available to them. It's also not at all clear if this quote refers to now or before the invasion, or both. Furthermore most of this stuff would not need regularly monitoring; it consisted largely not of weapons but of equipment and components that could be used to restart a weapons programme. Even if it was a year before anyone noticed they were gone, Iraq could not have done much with much of them in that time. Now however, they are gone permanently and whoever had them has all the time in the world to use them or sell them to others to improve their programmes.

This was never even part of the case for war; the US as much as anybody else was not complaining that these sites were not adequately monitored.

"No nuclear program for sure."

Literally no intelligent source believes any longer that Iraq had a functioning nuclear programme for years prior to the war. It is well known that it had monitored sites which stored domestically produced yellowcake uranium (which incidentally is virtually useless in making a nuclear bomb without highly advanced technology that Iraq didn't have access to), and that it had had such a programme before the first gulf war. Those sources are most certainly where the radioactivity came from; it has been established for over a year that those sites were amongst others looted during the war.

Look, knock yourself out arguing about this and making stuff up in the hopes of covering your mistake. You quite clearly don't understand the first thing about the WMD situation in Iraq. You posted something thinking it showed that the NYT had admitted Iraq had clandestine WMD programmes/equipment prior to the war; now that your mistake has been explained to you you're using factually incorrect stalling arguments and arguing that in your view inadequate monitoring arrangements that were well known and settled upon prior to the war somehow justified it, when these were never part of the case for war. Soon you'll be making up your own private definitions for well understood terms again to further stall the argument. There's no point taking this further with you.

[jaxmike]

[ QUOTE ]
Look, knock yourslef out arguing about this. You quite clearly don;t understand the first thing about the WMD situation in Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's you that needs to look into the situation more. You are under the impression, for some reason, that ALL weapon sites were under seal and monitoring. They were not. There was a systematic attempt by Saddam and his regime to undermine the efforts of the UN to monitor his weapons programs. It worked.

Saddam expelled UN monitoring teams on more than 1 occasion. Yet you think that he is innocent. If he had nothing to hide, why did he expell monitors?

The simple fact is that you are wrong. The UN's monitoring and inspection teams were unsucessful. They may have been incompetent, they may have been cripled by a corrupt bureaucracy, they may have been defeated by Saddams tactics. I think its a combination of all three.

To put ANY faith in the UN and their monitoring programs is MORONIC. At no point did they display the ability to complete their charge.

Your blind faith is disturbing.

[nicky g]

I'll try one more time, with some simple facts for you.

"You are under the impression, for some reason, that ALL weapon sites were under seal and monitoring. They were not."

All of these sites were by definition under monitoring. All known sites storing dual use equipment and materials that had not been destroyed from past WMD programmes were monitored.

"There was a systematic attempt by Saddam and his regime to undermine the efforts of the UN to monitor his weapons programs. It worked."

It did not work - the consensus of all serious involved people including those intially arguing for the war such as Duelfer and the governements invloved is that Saddam had next to nothing or nothing in the way of clandestine WMD activities for years prior to the war, that his large stockplies of chemical weapons were destroyed and that his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes were ended.

"Saddam expelled UN monitoring teams on more than 1 occasion."

He "expelled" them once. In fact they were withdrawn by the UN because of imminent allied airstrikes on Iraq. The Iraqis subsequently declared they would not cooperate with them if they returned as they correctly inisted they had already disarmed and were gaining nothing for their efforts, and claimed that the monitoring teams had been infiltrated by US and UK intelligence which was using infomration garnered amongst other things to select targets for airstrikes - a charge that subsequently turned out to be true. They were eventually readmitted and were their right up until the war with no indication of future explusion.

"The UN's monitoring and inspection teams were unsucessful. "

See above. The programme was clearly successful.

I also see you have gone completely off the orignial topic. You claimed that the existence of these sites is some kind of revelation or about turn. It is not; they were known about and monitored, and their existence was not part of the case for war or a bone of contention, it was agreed upon as a storage method for materials that weren;t to be destoryed for whatever reasons (dual use, the right of future use etc).

[sam h]

Why would you embarass yourself by referencing articles that don't even support the contentions you are making?

[thatpfunk]

its called trolling

[jaxmike]

your blind faith in the UN is disturbing.