IRAQ: no WMD's - nothing, zero, nada, zip, f#ck-all

Their existence was well documented by the U.N. observers. They had to have gone somewhere. The Iraquis never provided any proof they destroyed them, or even knew how.

Not being able to find them should be a cause for worry, and nothing less.

UNSCOM has destroyed a range of BW production equipment, seed stocks, and growth media claimed by Iraq for use in its BW programs.

UNSCOM supervised the destruction of more than 40,000 CW munitions (28,000 filled and 12,000 empty), 480,000 liters of CW agents, 1,800,000 liters of chemical precursors, and eight different types of delivery systems -- including ballistic missile warheads -- in the past six years.

UNSCOM reports that it supervised the destruction of 48 Scud-type missiles, 10 mobile launchers, 30 chemical and 18 conventional warheads, and related equipment.

UNSCOM has verified Iraq's unilateral destruction of only 83 Scud-type missiles and nine mobile launchers. Iraq has tried to account for the remainder by claiming the missiles were destroyed by having fired in the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars, or used in static tests or for training.

In November 1995, Iraq turned over a previously undeclared SS-21 short-range ballistic missile launcher it acquired from Yemen before the Gulf war, illustrating Iraq's ability to conceal major elements of missile systems from UNSCOM inspectors.

UNSCOM finally pressed Iraq to destroy Al Hakam [Al Hakam BW production facility] in the summer of 1996:

has been quietly ended

U.S. experts, he said, had removed low-enriched uranium and other radioactive sources, and helped secure materials that were known to be in Iraq.

Boucher said besides searching for WMDs, the United States also has provided employment for some 120 Iraqi scientists, who worked on Saddam's plans to make weapons.

He said a U.S.-sponsored program that began last year had successfully employed these scientists for work in fields other than making weapons.

The U.S. stipend, Boucher said, also allowed the scientists to stay in touch with their peers in the United States and exchange information with them in their fields. The program encourages them to work on projects inside Iraq.

Thank god that's all over. Now they can get to the important business at hand--revising history so that kids in high school history classes twenty years from now will never have to see the words "weapons of mass destruction" and "Iraq" in the same sentence ever again, and instead will get to read about how George Bush, that great man, liberated those poor Iraqi people, and how they were greeted with flowers and showered with appreciation.

Their existence was well documented by the U.N. observers.

They had to have gone somewhere.

The Iraquis never provided any proof they destroyed them, or even knew how.