Just My Opinion - The Patrick Cambio Blog

Were there WMD in Iraq?

The simple answer is yes there were, but the question of, when, remains the major debating issue. Were they still there when President Bush ordered the action on Iraq? If they were there just prior to when we went in, where did they go? Or were they even there after 1999-2001 action.

There are a number of neo-conservative web sites that claim some sort of elaborate cover-up regarding the possibility that there were sites where massive amounts of WMD were found shortly after the campaign and due to incompetence with the group(s) involved all those weapons were spirited away by Syrian intelligence with the help of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean intelligence. They claim that the Bush administration covered it up due to embarrassment that they lost all these weapons to the terrorists that they agreed with the democrat hierarchy, who would have been red faced to admit they (the WMD) were there in the first place, not to admit that they found anything.

On the other side of the political spectrum you have the uber-liberal democrat Blogs and web sites that are claiming there were no WMD from 1999 on, and that Saddam was no longer planning on his rebuilding of the Babylonian Empire with force. They dismiss any and all information from the neo-cons as pure fiction.

Maybe there is somewhere, in the middle, that is more a possibility and one supported by a reliable resource, the specialty investigation team from the U.N. called the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

I will elaborate on the findings of this report further on in this article, but first I have to ask why this account has NEVER been reported by the media, is ignored by the neo-cons, and not even recognized by those on the left, even though anything U.N. is sacred to them.

First of all there have been numerous reports by the UNMOVIC group, but this is the final one in the investigation of Iraqi WMD, written in 2004, S2004/435. Much of the detail in this report was done just prior to as well as during and after the U.S. invasion into Iraq, which was March 20th to May 1, 2003. It is important to recognize those dates because the timeline drawn in the UNMOVIC reports shows that Iraq DID have WMD right up to and possibly even during the early days of combat in that country. This report is based on investigation from March 1, 2004 to May 31, 2004. So the data included in this report has to do with what Iraq had and where it went.

The first findings of the UNMOVIC report have to do with unmanned aerial vehicle programs and long-range missiles. Here is the actual text from this report.

The Commission’s experts are conducting an investigation in parallel with the
IAEA Iraq Nuclear Verification Office regarding the discovery of items from Iraq
that are relevant to the mandates of UNMOVIC and IAEA at a scrap yard in the
Netherlands. In particular, following a visit of IAEA to a scrap yard in Rotterdam to investigate increased radiation readings, it was discovered, through photographs taken at the time, that engines of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles were among the scrap. They are the type of engines used in the Al Samoud 2 proscribed
missile programme. In addition, a number of items and equipment that may also be relevant to the UNMOVIC mandate were seen among the scrap. The existence of missile engines originating in Iraq among scrap in Europe may affect the accounting of proscribed engines known to have been in Iraq’s possession in March 2003. Both IAEA and UNMOVIC have kept the Security Council informed of this matter.

Please note that it was determined by both the IAEA and UNMOVIC that these long-range missiles were in Iraqi hands at the beginning of the U.S. incursion. How where they moved and who moved them is a question yet to be answered.

It goes on to state:

A team of Commission experts visited the site concerned in the Netherlands
and examined one missile engine that had been salvaged from the scrap metal
process. By comparing the serial production number on the engine with information in the UNMOVIC database, the experts were able to confirm that the engine was one from an SA-2 missile that had been tagged by United Nations inspectors in the past and had not been declared as having been fired.

This proves that a previously tagged WMD that should have been disposed of years before had been kept in Iraq and not disposed of as originally thought.

Representatives of the scrapyard company indicated that a number of similar engines (5 to 12) had been seen in the scrapyard in January and February of this year. More engines could have been processed and passed through the yard unnoticed. Company staff confirmed that other items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys bearing the inscription “Iraq” or “Baghdad” had been observed in shipments delivered from the Middle East since November 2003. A number of items were examined and sampled on-site by UNMOVIC experts with a portable metal analyser and were determined to be composed of inconel and titanium — both dual-use materials subject to monitoring. Photographs of other materials bearing Arabic script were taken.

The section I marked in bold clearly shows that these items from Iraq had not arrived till long AFTER the conclusion of the occupation of Iraq by the U.S.

In addition, the Commission is aware from comparative analysis of recent satellite imagery that a number of sites previously known to have contained equipment and materials subject to monitoring have been either cleaned out or destroyed. An example of such imagery is provided in the appendix to the present report. It is not known whether such equipment and materials were still present at the sites(in Iraq) during the time of coalition action in March and April of 2003. However, it is possible that some of the materials may have been removed from Iraq by looters of sites and sold as scrap.

Yes it is possible that looters or maybe Saddam’s henchmen and compatriots in Syria and Lebanon may have removed these during or even after the coalition entry into Iraq, but there is no proof of who took these weapons away.

Again the UNMOVIC report states that Iraq had purchased components for its banned missile program.

There is much evidence that from 1999 to 2002 Iraq procured materials, equipment and components for use in its missile programs. In several instances, the items procured were used by Iraq for programs, such as the production of Al Samoud 2 missiles, that were determined by UNMOVIC in February 2003 to be proscribed. This can be illustrated by the acquisition of at least 380 SA-2 missile engines for Iraq’s prime missile establishment by an Iraqi government-owned trading company controlled by the Military Industrialization Commission through a local Iraqi trading company and a foreign trading company.

Again please note the date.

Lastly the UNMOVIC report mentions the ‘disappearance’ of materials sites and whole buildings during and after the initial assault on Iraq while under satellite surveillance.

While sites in Iraq were being monitored for updates through satellite imagery, it was detected that some sites subject to monitoring by UNMOVIC had been cleaned up and equipment and material had been removed from the sites. In other areas, whole buildings that had previously contained equipment and materials subject to monitoring had been completely dismantled. The work continues to cover all known sites in Iraq.

The bottom line is that both Bush and the neo-cons have essentially given the left an out by claiming they were “misled”, when in fact the intelligence reports from Germany, France, the U.K. as well as Israel’s Mossad and our CIA were in fact correct. Why the subterfuge I have no answer for, however we now have a so-called backlash against conservative representatives that have left this country in the hands of far left proponents.

As I have often stated in my other posts on this site those that have called themselves neo-conservatives are not conservatives at all but in fact liberal lite. It is my opinion that this has been a calculated and well-orchestrated plan to move our country into the hands of socialists. The final push was the economic tumble of the banking and investment market, but that is a discussion for another time.