Released Iraqi documents - what do they tell us?

We've plowed this ground so many times, its pointless. The fact is Bush got authorization to go to war by Congress, based on the reasons put forth by the administration. Enough of Congress agreed with the administration to authorize it, based on what was known at the time, and the opinions about what was known. End of story. The effort to rewrite what was known along with the attempt to get people to believe Bush made it all up and pulled the wool over everybody's eyes has met with some success. I personally do not think it is correct or even logical to think one man could orchestrate such a scenario if he tried. The fact is that Hussein had a WMD program, the UN tried to monitor the situation for years, got kicked out, went back, but Hussein continued to evade, dodge, and lie. Congress concluded he continued to be dangerous and therefore voted to go to war. Get over it Parados.

I really don't know what Mr. Parados is talking about. He rarely gives links or documentation. What teams? What did they search? How long did they search?Where did they search?

I don't think you know what you are talking about, Mr. Parados.

Your statement flies in the face of information from German, British and yes, French Intelligence and, as I have quoted, statements from Gore, Kerry and HR Clinton. You aren't saying that they are liars, are you?

I know of no one who disputes the fact that Saddam has been
a homicidal maniac since the age of 10.
His biography repeatedly shows a vindictive nature.
Saddam was not ( and probably still is not ) happy
with us, since Kuwait.

Both Clinton and W were irresponsible
in leaving Saddam intact until W finally got the war started,
after seemingly endless discussion thereof.
It seemed to me, at the time,
that each day and each nite that Saddam remained in power
might have become the occasion of a nuclear 9/11.
His relatives ( by marriage ) who were among his top ranking
assistants came here and told us, on national TV,
that he was involved in nuclear preparations.
( Shud a word to the wise be sufficient ? I think it shud. )


Saddam 's nuclear ambitions were never
a trivial matter. I was concerned that he 'd put a mini-nuke
on a little boat which wud detonate, as it approached a
major American port.
Wealthy homicidal maniacs with grudges against us,
and nuclear ambitions, can bring bad luck, but no more.


As a citizen of a major American port city,
I feel a lot safer now; I really do.

Obviously, W 's father ( for whom I voted ) bears responsibility
for leaving Saddam intact after the First Gulf War.
Terrible policy; shameful.

I would think someone as intelligent as yourself would be aware of the Iraqi Survey Group. You don't live in a cave, do you Bernard?


From that ISG report




In case you can't use google. The report can be found here..
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/duelfer.html
or here
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/

I know of the Report. It is full of holes. READ THE EVIDENCE BELOW CAREFULLY ESPECIALLY THE SECTION ON CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS---



What Charles Duelfer Missed
By Christopher S. Carson
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 21, 2005

It pains me to be hard on Charles Duelfer. A smart and dedicated civil servant with vast experience in Iraq, he at least had an understandable reason for wrapping up his investigation into Iraq's WMD programs: Osama bin Laden's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was trying to blow him up. Dr. Duelfer told London's Independent in April of this year that a car bomb set by Zarqawi's men "tried to get me and my follow car. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since." This was the unofficial reason that Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had to "cut short" its concluding look into the transfer of WMD material to Syria. His predecessor, Dr. David Kay, resigned in protest because CentCom was repeatedly transferring away members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) team in order to deal with terrorism.

These aren't exactly ideal working conditions. Duelfer and Kay had other problems as well: Zarqawi and the ex-Baathist terrorists were also killing off as many Iraqi scientists as they could. According to Congressman Steve Buyer last year, at least nine Iraqi scientists questioned by ISG were assassinated within the year after Operation Iraqi Freedom and another fifty scientists simply fled the country. Mr. Duelfer told Congress that he was struck by the "extreme reluctance of Iraqi managers, scientists and engineers to speak freely."




We needn't search too deeply into why the Iraqis with knowledge of Saddam's WMD programs were specifically being targeted by Zarqawi's terrorists. It surely wasn't because all Iraqi WMD programs had been dismantled twelve years earlier, shortly after the first Gulf War. But for those of you who haven't carted this tome to the beach yet, Duelfer's 1,500-plus page "Comprehensive Report," issued in rough form in September and in final form this spring, argues that this is more or less what happened.



Duelfer's Report suffers from curious lapses. In the months and years immediately before Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Saddam was not nearly as WMD-free as Duelfer surmises. The Report is valuable for what it does reveal, but it certainly does not serve as any basis for the media's and administration critics' angry claims of a harmless Iraq.



In his Report, Duelfer works hard to impute rational calculations to an apparently irrational dictator. But his narrative is constrained by this model. Duelfer argues that Saddam, whom he describes as the Iraqi regime personified, can only be understood as a man who had clear goals but imperfect information. Saddam wanted to have WMD capabilities as long as he could, because WMD had saved him from Iranian human-wave attacks in the 1980's and from the Shi'ite rebellion in the south after the Gulf War. Chemical weapons were good for gassing the Kurds into intimidated slavery as well, at least in Saddam's twisted mind.



But the Iraqi president was hamstrung by the oil embargo during the 1990's, and wanted an end to these sanctions at almost any cost. There was no tax base to pay for the security services and the outlandish multitude of palaces he wanted to build. The U.N.'s Oil-for-Food bribery program saved his regime from crumbling, and Saddam managed to skim more than $20 billion off the top: for himself, al-Qaeda and its affiliates like Ansar al-Islam and Abu Sayyaf, and hungry European governments like France and Russia.



By the turn of the millennium, Duelfer writes, things were going well for Saddam. A few years of bribing foreign governments and businesses through Oil-For-Food had managed to erode the sanctions regime entirely. The U.S. was quickly becoming the last holdout in favor of continuation. The Baghdad International Fair in November 2001 was attended by hundreds of companies, and "the Oil Minister was treated like a rock star." The end of UN sanctions was finally in sight.



Duelfer believes that Saddam, who had already been heavily bombed in 1998 for not complying with UNSCOM's inspections, thought he could keep his WMD human expertise (but not his visible stockpiles) preserved but inactive, and wait out the sanctions. Then he'd become flush and powerful again from pumping oil. When sanctions went finally kaput, Saddam could go back to growing anthrax and making VX in serious quantities. But back in 2002-3, if his WMD programs were inactive anyway, why was Saddam willing to pay so dearly for not complying with UN resolutions on WMD? By pretending he actually had WMD stockpiles, Saddam told the ISG from his jail cell, he would deter Iran, his real enemy. Duelfer accepts Saddam's jailhouse explanation uncritically.




This had the appearance of logic, though: Saddam was obviously no suicide bomber and badly needed the cash that the end of sanctions would bring. But the dictator misjudged the United States' intentions after the catastrophe of September 11th, and thought that he could keep his game going. As we all now know, this turned out to be wrong. President Bush, as Saddam's sons lamented shortly before their deaths from an American TOW missile, was "not like Clinton." The chastened American president was not interested in "strategic ambiguity" concerning Iraqi WMD, and so dismantled the regime by force in March 2003. In Duelfer's mind, it was war over a fiction?-but it was not George Bush's fiction: Saddam had acted guilty, after all. Duelfer believes that the major pretext for war turned out to be Saddam's own fiction, contrived for Saddam's unique purposes and stemming from his flawed strategic information.



But a great deal of information in Duelfer's own Report contradicts his tidy model of a disarmed-but-coyly-pretending dictator. Take the little matter of the secret biological laboratories hidden throughout Baghdad and under the control of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). UNSCOM had spent years roaming Iraq and never so much as heard a whiff about them. Hans Blix and his successor agency, UNMOVIC, found Iraq in non-compliance in 2002 without stumbling over a single white lab coat. These labs were unknown to any intelligence agency in the world until after the Iraq War, when ISG uncovered their existence. They were all in egregious violation of the UN resolutions on disclosure and disarmament.



These labs deserve more than a mention because the real danger from Saddam's Iraq was never really a large-scale use of chemical or biological weapons on a battlefield. American troops could defend against this kind of attack. It was the danger that Saddam would arm terrorists with these weapons, and use them against select American civilian targets.



And why wouldn't Saddam? His men trained foreign al-Qaeda and other terrorists at Salman Pak in aircraft hijacking, helped to bankroll al-Qaeda and its affiliates, kept Zarqawi, Abu Nidal, and Abu Abbas as house pets, tried to kill former President Bush, tried to blow up Radio Free Europe, and apparently sent an active colonel in the Fedayeen Saddam to baby-sit the 9-11 hijackers in the 2000 Malaysia planning summit, for starters.



No one has yet figured out who cooked up and freeze-dried into spores the military-grade anthrax sent to Senators Leahy and Daschle's offices in the fall of 2001. The entire resources of the US government have not been able to replicate the lethality of these spores. Former Iraq Survey Group member Col. Bob Kadlec said during a presentation at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the secret Baghdad labs were not just a "proliferation threat"-- they could also provide the "missing link" to a better understanding of the regime's biological weapons programs.



Dr. David Kay reported to Congress in October 2003 that one scientist was ordered to conceal reference strains of BW organisms like anthrax, ricin and Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever in his own refrigerator. The scientist knew of other seed stocks but these were missing when ISG investigators showed up to collect them. We also know now that a special unit of the IIS, like the Nazi SS, was conducting "secret experiments on human beings, resulting in their deaths." As Duelfer wrote later, "the aim was probably the development of poisons, including ricin and aflatoxin, to eliminate or debilitate the Regime's opponents." Why not American opponents? Duelfer also judged that a "break-out production capability" in BW existed at one site, the State Company for Drug Industries and Medical Appliances, SDI, at Samarra.



Then there was the smallpox research. Recall that smallpox, the greatest killer disease in the history of mankind, was not only illegal, but supposed to be eradicated from the face of the Earth. Smallpox kills 33% of its victims. There is no cure.



Duelfer writes that ISG cannot be sure whether Saddam maintained his government's prior work on weaponization of smallpox virus up to March 2003. But Duelfer reported that "According to Dr. Mahmud Farraj Bilal Al Sammarai, a senior official involved in the weaponization and testing of CBW agents, the aim of the viral BW program was intended for the weaponization of smallpox." Dr. Bilal told Duelfer that his team started with Camel pox since it was easier to work with for development, but ultimately the program was intended to progress to smallpox. Dr. Bilal claimed that he "did not know for a fact that samples of smallpox existed within Iraq." Dr. Rihab Taha, usually known as Dr. Germ, told Duelfer that she had destroyed her own samples and capability in 1990 or 1991, but Duelfer often found Dr. Germ's credibility to be severely wanting. She is likely facing prosecution for Crimes Against Humanity, after all. Lying about her involvement in illegal activities is to be expected. Dr. Germ is still in US custody somewhere in Iraq.



Could Saddam have kept smallpox stores and concealed them from the inspectors? Duelfer's technical advisors believe the answer is yes, particularly in liquid nitrogen freezers. And "several institutes" in Iraq had such freezers. One "institute" had an interesting story attached, according to Duelfer:



ISG learned of a television news report that was broadcasted on Western television in mid-April 2003 that reported the CPHL had been [recently] looted of highly infectious virus such as smallpox, polio and influenza. ISG visited the latter and interviewed senior researchers who described the incident….ISG did identify a "secret lab" that was operated there, which had been vacated in December 2002. The nature of the research in that laboratory was not determined [by ISG]. (Italics mine)



Somehow, when reporting that the Duelfer Report "proved" that the "case for war" was bogus, the mainstream media missed the part about the "senior researchers" telling ISG that their "secret lab" had just been looted of all their good smallpox.



But it's not just Duelfer's own evidence that flies in the face of his conclusions. He ignores completely a major but unreported find, first revealed on Cybercast News Service last year. American soldiers literally found some of Saddam's purchase orders for mustard gas and "malignant pustule," a known code-phrase for anthrax (according to UNSCOM) in a government building. What is interesting are the amounts of the WMD and the dates: five kilograms of mustard gas on August 21, 2000, and three ampules of anthrax on September 6th, 2000. The orders came with protective equipment.



I spoke at length with the reporter who broke the story, Scott Wheeler. I asked him about his authentication efforts with known Iraq experts. "I can't find anyone who won't authenticate them," he said, with an air of regret. Retired CIA official Bruce Tefft described the documents to Wheeler as "accurate." I personally asked former Clinton campaign advisor and Iraq expert Dr. Laurie Mylroie what her confidence level in the (related) terrorist-ties documents was. She emailed back "One hundred percent." Dr. Walid Phares, a renowned Lebanese-American expert on the Middle East, told Wheeler that the documents were a "watershed" and "big" in their implications. Scott Wheeler got a high-level former UNSCOM inspector to authenticate the documents, too. The UNSCOM veteran told Wheeler that he had "zeroed in on the signatures on the documents and ?'the names of some of the people who sign off on these things….[The Iraqis] were meticulous record keepers.'"



Almost not believing that ISG could be disinterested in this story, I contacted my old graduate professor at Georgetown, Dr. Assad AbuKhalil. Dr. AbuKhalil has become a violent critic of Israel and the Bush Administration's Iraq War, running a weblog called "the Angry Arab" chock full of pictures of suffering Palestinians and Iraqis sent to him by God-knows-who. This angry Arab (with whom I maintain a certain affection and respect) enjoys attacking government officials on television over various policy errors and mistranslations of the Arabic language, such as the Bin Laden videotapes. I sent him the original Arabic documents via email. "Interesting," he wrote back. He said "nothing would surprise me" about the depths of Saddam's depravity anyway, and the documents would have to be studied "more carefully." I never heard back. The fact that this virulently anti-Administration professor could not dismiss these documents as fakes speaks well of their authenticity, in my humble opinion.



I sent the documents to ISG, offering to assist them with experts and authentication. I got a polite "we'll-call-you." If Dr. Duelfer's experts somehow knew about these documents and why they were fakes, he wasn't sharing this with the American people. One thing was certain: if they weren't fakes, Duelfer's tidy model of Saddam only pretending to have WMD to deter Iran wasn't holding up. Saddam at least wanted a terrorist-friendly WMD capability, three ampules of anthrax at a time, which in the end was one of the things that we were afraid of anyway.



In the summer of 2000, around the time of his purchase orders to Iraqi companies for new mustard and anthrax, Saddam gave an unusually belligerent speech aimed at the rest of the world. Iraq would never give up its "special" weapons, he stared into the camera, if its neighbors would not. "Neighbors" was interpreted by the US to mean Israel. At the same time, Saddam ordered his underlings to speed up development of a long-range missile, which would defy the 150 km range limit imposed by the United Nations. Duelfer's predecessor David Kay later reported that around this time Saddam had ramped up illegal SCUD-variant fuel production capacity and had sent agents to North Korea to buy parts for the No Dong missile, which has a range in excess of 1,500 km. In June of 2002 Saddam ordered development of the Jinin cruise missile, which had a prototype range of 1000 km. He developed the al-Samoud II missile with ranges over 600 km.



There was no doubt that as America and Britain pushed harder for Iraqi compliance in 2002, Saddam became alarmed enough to re-admit the inspectors. He tried to hide the evidence on a massive scale. The US satellite intercepts re-played by Colin Powell in February 2003 refer to officers getting rid of the "nerve agents" before the inspectors got there. Saddam told his surprised generals shortly before the war that he had no WMD, and ordered the scientists to "cooperate completely" with the inspectors. He agreed to destroy his al-Samoud missiles, and suspended work on the Jinin cruise missile. As part of his effort to vacuum up all the evidence, his men resorted to tactics like dumping mustard gas barrels and cyanide in the Euphrates, never minding that the local people use this river for their drinking water. The US Marines found "significant quantities" of the poisons in the river near Nasiriyah in June of 2003. Duelfer never mentions this find.



Shortly before the war, Hans Blix's UNMOVIC teams found and destroyed at Al-Muthanna 10 155-millimeter artillery shells and four plastic containers filled with mustard gas. Duelfer mostly denies Blix's find here has any significance, because it doesn't fit his model. He writes off the 58-plus chemical weapons shells found all over Iraq after the War as being "residual" shells left over from before the 1991 Gulf War. I somehow doubt that the Marine unit that was targeted by terrorists with one of these shells was interested in the date of its construction. I also doubt that if Saddam wanted to send over the next Ramzi Yousef to dump one of these shells in the Sears Tower HEVAC system, the thousands of victims' families would much care, either. Duelfer also doesn't pay much attention to how the Polish Army actually purchased cyclosarin (five times deadlier than sarin) rockets from the black market in Iraq to keep them out of the hands of Zarqawi's terrorists. So clearly Saddam didn't have time to bury all the evidence.



It's really too bad about Duelfer's work being "cut short" because of Zarqawi. The trail of WMD isn't cold. It leads to Syria and the Bekka Valley of formerly Syrian-occupied Lebanon, according to a Syrian defector to US intelligence. Gen. Tommy Franks himself leans this way, telling the media that "Two days before the war, on March 17 [2003], we saw through multiple intelligence channels - both human intelligence and technical intelligence, large caravans of people and things, including some of the top 55 [most wanted] Iraqis, going to Syria." What was so important to move to Syria immediately before the War with the top regime officials? Duelfer's next stop should have been Damascus. With Syrian President Bashar Assad now admitting that he has stockpiles of WMD, perhaps it should be ours.
***********************************************************

and Mr. Parados, I have quoted Hillary Rodham Clinton, perhaps the smartest woman in the world, and Al Gore along with John Kerry who, as late as 2002, indicated that Saddam had WMD's.

Are you sources better than theirs? Why do you not rebut them?

Do you think that they might perhaps have access to BETTER information than you do? It is clear from the report above the Duelfer Report is filled with inaccuracies and omissions.

******************************************************

Try, Mr. Parados, to explain the quote below from the most expert---Hans Blix( far more involved than Duelfer ever was)

I know of the Report. It is full of holes. READ THE EVIDENCE BELOW CAREFULLY ESPECIALLY THE SECTION ON CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS---



What Charles Duelfer Missed
By Christopher S. Carson
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 21, 2005

It pains me to be hard on Charles Duelfer. A smart and dedicated civil servant with vast experience in Iraq, he at least had an understandable reason for wrapping up his investigation into Iraq's WMD programs: Osama bin Laden's man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was trying to blow him up. Dr. Duelfer told London's Independent in April of this year that a car bomb set by Zarqawi's men "tried to get me and my follow car. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since." This was the unofficial reason that Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had to "cut short" its concluding look into the transfer of WMD material to Syria. His predecessor, Dr. David Kay, resigned in protest because CentCom was repeatedly transferring away members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) team in order to deal with terrorism.

These aren't exactly ideal working conditions. Duelfer and Kay had other problems as well: Zarqawi and the ex-Baathist terrorists were also killing off as many Iraqi scientists as they could. According to Congressman Steve Buyer last year, at least nine Iraqi scientists questioned by ISG were assassinated within the year after Operation Iraqi Freedom and another fifty scientists simply fled the country. Mr. Duelfer told Congress that he was struck by the "extreme reluctance of Iraqi managers, scientists and engineers to speak freely."




We needn't search too deeply into why the Iraqis with knowledge of Saddam's WMD programs were specifically being targeted by Zarqawi's terrorists. It surely wasn't because all Iraqi WMD programs had been dismantled twelve years earlier, shortly after the first Gulf War. But for those of you who haven't carted this tome to the beach yet, Duelfer's 1,500-plus page "Comprehensive Report," issued in rough form in September and in final form this spring, argues that this is more or less what happened.



Duelfer's Report suffers from curious lapses. In the months and years immediately before Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Saddam was not nearly as WMD-free as Duelfer surmises. The Report is valuable for what it does reveal, but it certainly does not serve as any basis for the media's and administration critics' angry claims of a harmless Iraq.



In his Report, Duelfer works hard to impute rational calculations to an apparently irrational dictator. But his narrative is constrained by this model. Duelfer argues that Saddam, whom he describes as the Iraqi regime personified, can only be understood as a man who had clear goals but imperfect information. Saddam wanted to have WMD capabilities as long as he could, because WMD had saved him from Iranian human-wave attacks in the 1980's and from the Shi'ite rebellion in the south after the Gulf War. Chemical weapons were good for gassing the Kurds into intimidated slavery as well, at least in Saddam's twisted mind.



But the Iraqi president was hamstrung by the oil embargo during the 1990's, and wanted an end to these sanctions at almost any cost. There was no tax base to pay for the security services and the outlandish multitude of palaces he wanted to build. The U.N.'s Oil-for-Food bribery program saved his regime from crumbling, and Saddam managed to skim more than $20 billion off the top: for himself, al-Qaeda and its affiliates like Ansar al-Islam and Abu Sayyaf, and hungry European governments like France and Russia.



By the turn of the millennium, Duelfer writes, things were going well for Saddam. A few years of bribing foreign governments and businesses through Oil-For-Food had managed to erode the sanctions regime entirely. The U.S. was quickly becoming the last holdout in favor of continuation. The Baghdad International Fair in November 2001 was attended by hundreds of companies, and "the Oil Minister was treated like a rock star." The end of UN sanctions was finally in sight.



Duelfer believes that Saddam, who had already been heavily bombed in 1998 for not complying with UNSCOM's inspections, thought he could keep his WMD human expertise (but not his visible stockpiles) preserved but inactive, and wait out the sanctions. Then he'd become flush and powerful again from pumping oil. When sanctions went finally kaput, Saddam could go back to growing anthrax and making VX in serious quantities. But back in 2002-3, if his WMD programs were inactive anyway, why was Saddam willing to pay so dearly for not complying with UN resolutions on WMD? By pretending he actually had WMD stockpiles, Saddam told the ISG from his jail cell, he would deter Iran, his real enemy. Duelfer accepts Saddam's jailhouse explanation uncritically.




This had the appearance of logic, though: Saddam was obviously no suicide bomber and badly needed the cash that the end of sanctions would bring. But the dictator misjudged the United States' intentions after the catastrophe of September 11th, and thought that he could keep his game going. As we all now know, this turned out to be wrong. President Bush, as Saddam's sons lamented shortly before their deaths from an American TOW missile, was "not like Clinton." The chastened American president was not interested in "strategic ambiguity" concerning Iraqi WMD, and so dismantled the regime by force in March 2003. In Duelfer's mind, it was war over a fiction?-but it was not George Bush's fiction: Saddam had acted guilty, after all. Duelfer believes that the major pretext for war turned out to be Saddam's own fiction, contrived for Saddam's unique purposes and stemming from his flawed strategic information.



But a great deal of information in Duelfer's own Report contradicts his tidy model of a disarmed-but-coyly-pretending dictator. Take the little matter of the secret biological laboratories hidden throughout Baghdad and under the control of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). UNSCOM had spent years roaming Iraq and never so much as heard a whiff about them. Hans Blix and his successor agency, UNMOVIC, found Iraq in non-compliance in 2002 without stumbling over a single white lab coat. These labs were unknown to any intelligence agency in the world until after the Iraq War, when ISG uncovered their existence. They were all in egregious violation of the UN resolutions on disclosure and disarmament.



These labs deserve more than a mention because the real danger from Saddam's Iraq was never really a large-scale use of chemical or biological weapons on a battlefield. American troops could defend against this kind of attack. It was the danger that Saddam would arm terrorists with these weapons, and use them against select American civilian targets.



And why wouldn't Saddam? His men trained foreign al-Qaeda and other terrorists at Salman Pak in aircraft hijacking, helped to bankroll al-Qaeda and its affiliates, kept Zarqawi, Abu Nidal, and Abu Abbas as house pets, tried to kill former President Bush, tried to blow up Radio Free Europe, and apparently sent an active colonel in the Fedayeen Saddam to baby-sit the 9-11 hijackers in the 2000 Malaysia planning summit, for starters.



No one has yet figured out who cooked up and freeze-dried into spores the military-grade anthrax sent to Senators Leahy and Daschle's offices in the fall of 2001. The entire resources of the US government have not been able to replicate the lethality of these spores. Former Iraq Survey Group member Col. Bob Kadlec said during a presentation at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the secret Baghdad labs were not just a "proliferation threat"-- they could also provide the "missing link" to a better understanding of the regime's biological weapons programs.



Dr. David Kay reported to Congress in October 2003 that one scientist was ordered to conceal reference strains of BW organisms like anthrax, ricin and Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever in his own refrigerator. The scientist knew of other seed stocks but these were missing when ISG investigators showed up to collect them. We also know now that a special unit of the IIS, like the Nazi SS, was conducting "secret experiments on human beings, resulting in their deaths." As Duelfer wrote later, "the aim was probably the development of poisons, including ricin and aflatoxin, to eliminate or debilitate the Regime's opponents." Why not American opponents? Duelfer also judged that a "break-out production capability" in BW existed at one site, the State Company for Drug Industries and Medical Appliances, SDI, at Samarra.



Then there was the smallpox research. Recall that smallpox, the greatest killer disease in the history of mankind, was not only illegal, but supposed to be eradicated from the face of the Earth. Smallpox kills 33% of its victims. There is no cure.



Duelfer writes that ISG cannot be sure whether Saddam maintained his government's prior work on weaponization of smallpox virus up to March 2003. But Duelfer reported that "According to Dr. Mahmud Farraj Bilal Al Sammarai, a senior official involved in the weaponization and testing of CBW agents, the aim of the viral BW program was intended for the weaponization of smallpox." Dr. Bilal told Duelfer that his team started with Camel pox since it was easier to work with for development, but ultimately the program was intended to progress to smallpox. Dr. Bilal claimed that he "did not know for a fact that samples of smallpox existed within Iraq." Dr. Rihab Taha, usually known as Dr. Germ, told Duelfer that she had destroyed her own samples and capability in 1990 or 1991, but Duelfer often found Dr. Germ's credibility to be severely wanting. She is likely facing prosecution for Crimes Against Humanity, after all. Lying about her involvement in illegal activities is to be expected. Dr. Germ is still in US custody somewhere in Iraq.



Could Saddam have kept smallpox stores and concealed them from the inspectors? Duelfer's technical advisors believe the answer is yes, particularly in liquid nitrogen freezers. And "several institutes" in Iraq had such freezers. One "institute" had an interesting story attached, according to Duelfer:



ISG learned of a television news report that was broadcasted on Western television in mid-April 2003 that reported the CPHL had been [recently] looted of highly infectious virus such as smallpox, polio and influenza. ISG visited the latter and interviewed senior researchers who described the incident….ISG did identify a "secret lab" that was operated there, which had been vacated in December 2002. The nature of the research in that laboratory was not determined [by ISG]. (Italics mine)



Somehow, when reporting that the Duelfer Report "proved" that the "case for war" was bogus, the mainstream media missed the part about the "senior researchers" telling ISG that their "secret lab" had just been looted of all their good smallpox.



But it's not just Duelfer's own evidence that flies in the face of his conclusions. He ignores completely a major but unreported find, first revealed on Cybercast News Service last year. American soldiers literally found some of Saddam's purchase orders for mustard gas and "malignant pustule," a known code-phrase for anthrax (according to UNSCOM) in a government building. What is interesting are the amounts of the WMD and the dates: five kilograms of mustard gas on August 21, 2000, and three ampules of anthrax on September 6th, 2000. The orders came with protective equipment.



I spoke at length with the reporter who broke the story, Scott Wheeler. I asked him about his authentication efforts with known Iraq experts. "I can't find anyone who won't authenticate them," he said, with an air of regret. Retired CIA official Bruce Tefft described the documents to Wheeler as "accurate." I personally asked former Clinton campaign advisor and Iraq expert Dr. Laurie Mylroie what her confidence level in the (related) terrorist-ties documents was. She emailed back "One hundred percent." Dr. Walid Phares, a renowned Lebanese-American expert on the Middle East, told Wheeler that the documents were a "watershed" and "big" in their implications. Scott Wheeler got a high-level former UNSCOM inspector to authenticate the documents, too. The UNSCOM veteran told Wheeler that he had "zeroed in on the signatures on the documents and ?'the names of some of the people who sign off on these things….[The Iraqis] were meticulous record keepers.'"



Almost not believing that ISG could be disinterested in this story, I contacted my old graduate professor at Georgetown, Dr. Assad AbuKhalil. Dr. AbuKhalil has become a violent critic of Israel and the Bush Administration's Iraq War, running a weblog called "the Angry Arab" chock full of pictures of suffering Palestinians and Iraqis sent to him by God-knows-who. This angry Arab (with whom I maintain a certain affection and respect) enjoys attacking government officials on television over various policy errors and mistranslations of the Arabic language, such as the Bin Laden videotapes. I sent him the original Arabic documents via email. "Interesting," he wrote back. He said "nothing would surprise me" about the depths of Saddam's depravity anyway, and the documents would have to be studied "more carefully." I never heard back. The fact that this virulently anti-Administration professor could not dismiss these documents as fakes speaks well of their authenticity, in my humble opinion.



I sent the documents to ISG, offering to assist them with experts and authentication. I got a polite "we'll-call-you." If Dr. Duelfer's experts somehow knew about these documents and why they were fakes, he wasn't sharing this with the American people. One thing was certain: if they weren't fakes, Duelfer's tidy model of Saddam only pretending to have WMD to deter Iran wasn't holding up. Saddam at least wanted a terrorist-friendly WMD capability, three ampules of anthrax at a time, which in the end was one of the things that we were afraid of anyway.



In the summer of 2000, around the time of his purchase orders to Iraqi companies for new mustard and anthrax, Saddam gave an unusually belligerent speech aimed at the rest of the world. Iraq would never give up its "special" weapons, he stared into the camera, if its neighbors would not. "Neighbors" was interpreted by the US to mean Israel. At the same time, Saddam ordered his underlings to speed up development of a long-range missile, which would defy the 150 km range limit imposed by the United Nations. Duelfer's predecessor David Kay later reported that around this time Saddam had ramped up illegal SCUD-variant fuel production capacity and had sent agents to North Korea to buy parts for the No Dong missile, which has a range in excess of 1,500 km. In June of 2002 Saddam ordered development of the Jinin cruise missile, which had a prototype range of 1000 km. He developed the al-Samoud II missile with ranges over 600 km.



There was no doubt that as America and Britain pushed harder for Iraqi compliance in 2002, Saddam became alarmed enough to re-admit the inspectors. He tried to hide the evidence on a massive scale. The US satellite intercepts re-played by Colin Powell in February 2003 refer to officers getting rid of the "nerve agents" before the inspectors got there. Saddam told his surprised generals shortly before the war that he had no WMD, and ordered the scientists to "cooperate completely" with the inspectors. He agreed to destroy his al-Samoud missiles, and suspended work on the Jinin cruise missile. As part of his effort to vacuum up all the evidence, his men resorted to tactics like dumping mustard gas barrels and cyanide in the Euphrates, never minding that the local people use this river for their drinking water. The US Marines found "significant quantities" of the poisons in the river near Nasiriyah in June of 2003. Duelfer never mentions this find.



Shortly before the war, Hans Blix's UNMOVIC teams found and destroyed at Al-Muthanna 10 155-millimeter artillery shells and four plastic containers filled with mustard gas. Duelfer mostly denies Blix's find here has any significance, because it doesn't fit his model. He writes off the 58-plus chemical weapons shells found all over Iraq after the War as being "residual" shells left over from before the 1991 Gulf War. I somehow doubt that the Marine unit that was targeted by terrorists with one of these shells was interested in the date of its construction. I also doubt that if Saddam wanted to send over the next Ramzi Yousef to dump one of these shells in the Sears Tower HEVAC system, the thousands of victims' families would much care, either. Duelfer also doesn't pay much attention to how the Polish Army actually purchased cyclosarin (five times deadlier than sarin) rockets from the black market in Iraq to keep them out of the hands of Zarqawi's terrorists. So clearly Saddam didn't have time to bury all the evidence.



It's really too bad about Duelfer's work being "cut short" because of Zarqawi. The trail of WMD isn't cold. It leads to Syria and the Bekka Valley of formerly Syrian-occupied Lebanon, according to a Syrian defector to US intelligence. Gen. Tommy Franks himself leans this way, telling the media that "Two days before the war, on March 17 [2003], we saw through multiple intelligence channels - both human intelligence and technical intelligence, large caravans of people and things, including some of the top 55 [most wanted] Iraqis, going to Syria." What was so important to move to Syria immediately before the War with the top regime officials? Duelfer's next stop should have been Damascus. With Syrian President Bashar Assad now admitting that he has stockpiles of WMD, perhaps it should be ours.
***********************************************************

and Mr. Parados, I have quoted Hillary Rodham Clinton, perhaps the smartest woman in the world, and Al Gore along with John Kerry who, as late as 2002, indicated that Saddam had WMD's.

Are you sources better than theirs? Why do you not rebut them?

Do you think that they might perhaps have access to BETTER information than you do? It is clear from the report above the Duelfer Report is filled with inaccuracies and omissions.

******************************************************

Try, Mr. Parados, to explain the quote below from the most expert---Hans Blix( far more involved than Duelfer ever was)

quote
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
end of quote
I am very much afraid that there is no definitive proof that Saddam did not have WMD's despite Duelfer's failure to find them.

Your long winded argument has no bearing in the discussion of whether WMD was moved to Syria in 2003.

What people said in 1999 or 2001 prove nothing about the existence of the WMD on the eve of the US invasion.

Because Saddam didn't reveal everything in 1991 means nothing to the discussion of WMD's being moved in 2003.




Really? I seem to recall Saddam claimed he did NOT have WMD in 2003. When was he claiming he did have them? Please provide some evidence of said claim.

This is an interesting claim. Secret biological labs hidden throughout Baghdad? The report lists 5 facilities. 2 were destroyed in 1996. 1 contained UNSCOM tagged equipment. Another had destroyed equipment under UNSCOM direction. That leaves one facility. One facility is hardly secret labs unknown to any intelligence agency.

The problem isn't that the Duelfer report is filled with innaccuracies. The problem is your article claiming such innaccuracies is filled with innacuracies.

This one is laughable. The US has never made military-grade anthrax? The US created the process used.

You say, Mr., Parados:

This is an interesting claim. Secret biological labs hidden throughout Baghdad? The report lists 5 facilities. 2 were destroyed in 1996. 1 contained UNSCOM tagged equipment. Another had destroyed equipment under UNSCOM direction. That leaves one facility. One facility is hardly secret labs unknown to any intelligence agency.

You did not read my post0 The report you refer to is incomplete. You also did not comment on the quote from Hans Blix, Why Not?

You have no evidence that WMD's did not go into Syria. I have no evidence that they did but General Franks noted a great deal of traffic just before the invasion. That alone is suspicious.

Here is a pretty good summary of Iraq's biological weapons program, including production of anthrax. I believe most or all of the information provided is verifiable.

http://www.jcpa.org/art/brief1-8.htm

No need to comment on a preliminary report by Blix when the final report speaks for itself.

The report is incomplete? If you would possibly provide evidence then maybe we could discuss that. I already pointed out glaring errors that your post made about what is in the report. Such errors point to problems with your claim that things aren't in the report. How can you know what isn't in the report when you get wrong what IS in it?

Traffic doesn't mean a thing without evidence of WMD existing to actually ship. Vehicles drive every day. Just because they do doesn't prove that nuclear weapons are being shipped. Nor does it prove that anything else is in those vehicles. In order for there to actually be shipment of WMDs then you have to have those WMDs to ship. Until you can show me evidence of those WMDs in direct contradiction to the people that actually DID the searches and asked the people you don't have much to prove your claim. In fact you have NOTHING to prove your claim.

The report says there were secret labs in the mid 90s. By 1996 those labs were discovered and destroyed or inspected. Your post claims those labs were still secret in 2003. That is a false claim and such shoddy investigation points to other shoddy investigation.

More errors by your source..
In reality the al Samoud barely exceded the 150km range. The UNSCOM report says Iraq was trying to get it to the 200km range when they were destroyed for violating the 150km range. UNSCOM estimates the range was 180km.

specs for the Al Samoud

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/samoud.htm

More of the made up accusations..
The shell was used as part of an IED and had residual gas in it. It set off detectors but Marines were not targeted with mustard gas. Setting off such a shell in that manner in the Sears tower would have not gassed anyone. The argument is made up and unsupported by reality.

First of all, Mr. Parados, on the issue of Anthrax, which you cavalierly dismiss, you did not read or respond to the excellent summary of evidence on Anthrax given by Foxfyre- Why?

Anyone can say that we won the war
because the purpose of the war was to
overthrow Saddam. HE IS NOW IN OUR JAIL.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.


Anything after that is only foreign aid,
and a waste.

First of all, Mr. Parados, You have not replied to Mr. Foxfyre's excellent post on anthrax( the anthrax you so blithely dismissed).

Second, your comment on Blix shows you don't really know what Blix has said;

Read below and see my comments in CAPS!!!

Posted: 2:47 AM EST (0747 GMT)



Blix addresses the Security Council.

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TRANSCRIPTS

Transcripts of weapons inspectors' presentation to the U.N. on Iraq
• Blix's report
• ElBaradei's report
• Powell's response
• Iraqi ambassador's response

RELATED
• U.S. unswayed by inspectors' report

SPECIAL REPORT

• Interactive: Council on Iraq
• Latest: Iraq Tracker
• Explainer: Al Samoud
• Special Report: Showdown Iraq

(CNN) -- Following is a transcript of chief weapons inspector Hans Blix's February 14 presentation to the U.N. Security Council on the progress of the inspection effort in Iraq.

Mr. President, since I reported to the Security Council on 27th of January, UNMOVIC has had two further weeks of operational and analytical work in New York and active inspections in Iraq. This brings the total period of inspections so far to 11 weeks.

Since then, we have also listened on the 5th of February to the presentation to the Council by the U.S. secretary of state and the discussion that followed.

Lastly, Dr. ElBaradei and I have held another round of talks in Baghdad with our counterparts and with Vice President Ramadan on the 8th and 9th of February.

Let me begin today's briefing with a short account of the work being performed by UNMOVIC in Iraq.

We have continued to build up our capabilities. The regional office in Mosul is now fully operational at its temporary headquarters. Plans for a regional office at Basra are being developed. Our Hercules L-100 aircraft continues to operate routine flights between Baghdad and Larnaca. The eight helicopters are fully operational.

With the resolution of the problems raised by Iraq for the transportation of minders into the no-fly zones, our mobility in these zones has improved. We expect to increase utilization of the helicopters.

The number of Iraqi minders during inspections has often reached a ratio -- had often reached a ratio as high as five per inspector. During the talks in January in Baghdad, the Iraqi side agreed to keep the ratio to about 1:1. The situation has improved.

Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.

The inspections have taken place throughout Iraq, at industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centers, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile-production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites.

At all sites which had been inspected before 1998, rebase lining activities were performed. This included the identification of the function and contents of each building, new or old, at a site. It also included verification of previously tagged equipment, application of seals and tags, taking samples, and discussions with the site's personnel regarding past and present activities. At certain sites, ground-penetrating radar was used to look for underground structures or buried equipment.

Through the inspections conducted so far, we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq, as well as of its missile capability. But as before, we do not know every cave and corner. Inspections are effectively helping to bridge the gap in knowledge that arose due to the absence of inspections between December 1998 and November 2002.

BUT AS BEFORE, WE DO NOT KNOW EVERY CAVE AND CORNER

More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened, using our own analytical laboratory capabilities at the Baghdad center. The results to date have been consistent with Iraqi declarations.

We have now commenced the process of destroying approximately 50 liters of mustard gas declared by Iraq that was being kept under UNMOVIC seal at the Muthanna site; one-third of the quantity has already been destroyed. The laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, which we found at another site, has also been destroyed.

The total number of staff in Iraq now exceeds 250 from 60 countries. This includes about 100 UNMOVIC inspectors, 50 IAEA inspectors, 15 air crew and 65 support staff.

Mr. President, in my 27th of January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process -- most importantly, prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure.

This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that have never been declared or inspected, as well as to presidential sites and private residences.

In my last updating, I also said that a decision to cooperate on substance was indispensable in order to bring, through inspection, the disarmament task to completion and to set the monitoring system on the firm course.

Such cooperation, as I have noted, requires more than the opening of doors. In the words of Resolution 1441, it requires immediate, unconditional and active efforts by Iraq to resolve existing questions of disarmament, either by presenting remaining proscribed items and programs for elimination or by presenting convincing evidence that they have been eliminated.

In the current situation, one would expect Iraq to be eager to comply.

While we were in Baghdad, we met a delegation from the government of South Africa. It was there to explain how South Africa gained the confidence of the world in its dismantling of the nuclear weapons program by a wholehearted cooperation over two years with IAEA inspectors. I have just learned that Iraq has accepted an offer by South Africa to send a group of experts for further talks.

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programs? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions which should have been declared and destroyed.

ONLY A SMALL NUMBER OF EMPTY CHEMICAL MUNITIONS WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN DECLARED AND DESTROYED.

Another matter, and one of great significance, is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for.

ANOTHER MATTER, AND ONE OF GREAT SIGNIFICANCE, IS THAT MANY PROSCRIBED WEAPONS AND ITEMS ARE NOT ACCOUNTED FOR.

To take an example, a document which Iraq provided suggested to us that some 1,000 tons of chemical agent were unaccounted for. I must not jump to the conclusion that they exist; however, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

1,000 TONS OF CHEMICAL AGENT WERE UNACCOUNTED FOR. 1,000 TONS--THAT IS TWO MILLION POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programs continue to exist. The U.S. secretary of state presented material in support of this conclusion.

Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. The inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on the evidence which they can themselves examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.

WE ARE FULLY AWARE THAT MANY GOVERNMENTAL INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS ARE CONVINCED AND ASSERT THAT PROSCIBED WEAPONS, ITEMS AND PROGRAMS CONTINUE TO EXIST. THE US SECRETARY OF STATE PRESENTED MATERIAL IN SUPPORT OF THIS CONCLUSION. GOVERNMENTS HAVE M A N Y S O U R C E S OF I N F O R M A T I O N T H A T A R E N O T A V A I L A B L E T O G O V E R N M E N T I N S P E C T O R S.

Mr. President, in my earlier briefings, I have noted that significant outstanding issues of substance were listed in two Security Council documents from early 1999 and should be well known to Iraq.

I referred, as examples, to the issues of anthrax, the nerve agent VX, and long-range missiles, and said that such issues -- and I quote myself -- "deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq rather than being brushed aside," unquote.

The declaration submitted by Iraq on the 7th of December last year, despite its large volume, missed the opportunity to provide the fresh material and evidence needed to respond to the open questions.

This is perhaps the most important problem we are facing. Although I can understand that it may not be easy for Iraq in all cases to provide the evidence needed, it is not the task of the inspectors to find it. Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid belittling the questions.

In my January update to the Council I referred to the al-Samud II and the Al Fatah missiles, reconstituted casting chambers, construction of a missile engine test stand and the import of rocket engines, which were all declared to UNMOVIC by Iraq.

I noted that the al-Samud II and the Al Fatah could very well represent prima facie cases of proscribed missile systems, as they had been tested to ranges exceeding the 150 kilometers limit set by the Security Council.

I also noted that Iraq had been requested to cease flight tests of these missiles until UNMOVIC completed a technical review.

Earlier this week, UNMOVIC missile experts met for two days with experts from a number of member states to discuss these items. The experts concluded unanimously that, based on the data provided by Iraq, the two declared variants of the al-Samud II missile were capable of exceeding 150 kilometers in range. This missile system is therefore proscribed for Iraq pursuant to Resolution 687 and the monitoring plan adopted by Resolution 715.

As for the Al Fatah, the experts found that clarification of the missile data supplied by Iraq was required before the capability of the missile system could be fully assessed.

With respect to the casting chambers, I note the following: UNSCOM ordered and supervised the destruction of the casting chambers, which had been intended for use in the production of the proscribed Badr 2000 missile system. Iraq has declared that it has reconstituted these chambers. The experts have confirmed that the reconstituted casting chambers could still be used to produce motors for missiles capable of ranges significantly greater than 150 kilometers. Accordingly, these chambers remain proscribed.

The expert also studied the data on the missile engine test stand that is nearing completion and have assessed it to be capable of testing missile engines with thrusts greater than that of the SA-2 engine. So far the test stand has not been associated with the proscribed activity.

On the matter of the 380 SA-2 missile engines imported outside of the export-import mechanism and in contravention of paragraph 24 of Resolution 687, UNMOVIC inspectors were informed by Iraq during an official briefing that these engines were intended for use in the al-Samud II missile system, which has now been assessed to be proscribed. Any such engines configured for use in this missile system would also be proscribed. I intend to communicate these findings to the government of Iraq.

At the meeting in Baghdad on the 8th and the 9th, February, the Iraqi side addressed some of the important outstanding disarmament issues and gave us a number of papers -- for instance, regarding anthrax and growth material, the nerve agent VX and missile production.

Experts who were present from our side studied the papers during the evening of 8th of February and met with Iraqi experts in the morning of 9 February for further clarifications.

Although no new evidence was provided in the papers and no open issues were closed through them or the expert discussions, the presentation of the papers could be indicative of a more active attitude focusing on the important open issues.

The Iraqi side suggested that the problem of verifying the quantities of anthrax and two VX precursors, which had been declared unilaterally destroyed, might be tackled through certain technical and analytical methods. Although our experts are still assessing the suggestions, they are not very hopeful that it could prove possible to assess the quantities of material poured into the grounds years ago. Documentary evidence and testimony by staff that dealt with the items still appears to be needed.

ALTHOUGH OUR EXPERTS ARE STILL ASSESSING THE SUGGESTIONS, THEY ARE NOT VERY HOPEFUL THA TIT COULD PROVE POSSIBLE TO ASSESS THE QUANTITIES POURED INTO THE GROUND YEARS AGO.

Not least against this background, a letter of the 12th of February from Iraq's National and Monitoring Directorate may be irrelevant. It presents a list of 83 names of participants, I quote, "in the unilateral destruction in the chemical field which took place in the summer of 1991," unquote.

As the absence of adequate evidence of that destruction has been and remains an important reason why quantities of chemicals had been deemed unaccounted for, the presentation of a list of persons who can be interviewed about the actions appears useful and pertains to cooperation on substance.

AS THE ABSENCE OF ADEQUATE EVIDENCE THAT DESTRUCTION HAS BEEN AND REMAINS AN IMPORTANT REASON WHY QUANTITIES OF CHEMICALS HAD BEEN DEEMED UNACCOUNTED FOR>

I trust that the Iraqi side will put together a similar list of names of persons who participated in the unilateral destruction of other proscribed items, notably in the biological field.

The Iraqi side also informed us that the commission, which had been appointed in the wake of our finding 12 empty chemical weapons warheads, had its mandate expanded to look for any still existing proscribed items. This was welcomed.

A second commission, we learned, has now been appointed with the task of searching all over Iraq for more documents relevant to the elimination of proscribed items and programs. It is headed by the former minister of oil, General Amir Rasheed, and is to have very extensive powers of search in industry, administration and even private houses.

The two commissions could be useful tools to come up with proscribed items to be destroyed and with new documentary evidence. They evidently need to work fast and effectively to convince us and the world that it is a serious effort.

The matter of private interviews was discussed at length during our meeting in Baghdad. The Iraqi side confirmed the commitment which they had made to us on the 20th of January to encourage persons asked to accept such interviews whether in or out of Iraq. So far, we have only had interviews in Baghdad.

A number of persons have declined to be interviewed unless they were allowed to have an official present or were allowed to tape the interview. Three persons that had previously refused interviews on UNMOVIC terms subsequently accepted such interviews just prior to our talks in Baghdad on the 8th and 9th of February. These interviewed proved informative.

No further interviews have since been accepted on our terms. I hope this will change. We feel that interviews conducted with any third party present and without tape recording would provide the greatest credibility.

At the recent meeting in Baghdad, as on several earlier occasions, my colleague, Dr. ElBaradei, and I had urged the Iraqi side to enact legislation implementing the U.N. prohibitions regarding weapons of mass destruction. This morning we had a message that a presidential decree has now been issued, containing prohibitions with regard to importation and production of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. We have not yet had time to study the details of the text of the decree.

Mr. President, I should like to make some comments on the role of intelligence in connection with inspections in Iraq.

A credible inspection regime requires that Iraq provide full cooperation on process, (inaudible) granting immediate access everywhere to inspectors, and on substance, providing full declarations supported by relevant information and material and evidence.

However, with the closed society in Iraq of today and the history of inspections there, other sources of information, such as defectors and government intelligence agencies, are required to aid the inspection process.

I remember myself how in 1991, several inspections in Iraq, which were based on information received from a government, helped to disclose important parts of the nuclear weapon program. It was realized that an international organization authorized to perform inspections anywhere on the ground could make good use of the information obtained from governments with eyes in the sky, ears in the ether, access to defectors, and both eyes and ears on the market for weapons-related material.

It was understood that the information residing in the intelligence services government could come to very active use in the international effort to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This remains true, and we have by now a good deal of experience in the matter.

International organizations need to analyze such information critically and especially benefit when it comes from more than one source. The intelligence agencies, for their part, must protect their sources and methods. Those who provide such information must know that it will be kept in strict confidence and be known to very few people.

UNMOVIC has achieved good working relations with intelligence agencies, and the amount of information provided has been gradually increasing. However, we must recognize that there are limitations and that misinterpretations can occur.

Intelligence information has been useful for UNMOVIC. In one case, it led us to a private home where documents mainly relating to laser enrichment of uranium were found. In other cases, intelligence has led to sites where no proscribed items were found. Even in such cases, however, inspection of these sites were useful in proving the absence of such items and, in some cases, the presence of other items, conventional munitions. It showed that conventional arms are being moved around the country and that movements are not necessarily related to weapons of mass destruction.

The presentation of intelligence information by the U.S. secretary of state suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programs.

I would like to comment only on one case which we are familiar with, namely the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect.

We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart.

The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection.


THE REPORTED MOVEMENT OF MUNITIONS AT THE SITE C O U L D J U S T A S E A S I L Y H A VE BEEN A ROUTINE ACTIVITY( OR THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN A ROUTINE ACTIVITY.

********************************************************

It is clear to me, Mr. Parados, that you are almost completely unfamiliar with the findings of Mr. Blix.

You are requested to especially note my comments in caps above and respond to them!!!

Now, let us examine Blix's last report to the UN, on March 7, 2003, just 13 days before the US went into Iraq on March 20th. IT IS JUST AS FILLED WITH QUALIFIERS AS THE PRIOR REPORT. NOTE MY COMMENTS IN CAPITALS.

QUOTE:

As delivered







SECURITY COUNCIL 7 MARCH 2003



Oral introduction of the 12th quarterly report of UNMOVIC

Executive Chairman Dr. Hans Blix


Mr. President,



For nearly three years, I have been coming to the Security Council presenting the quarterly reports of UNMOVIC. They have described our many preparations for the resumption of inspections in Iraq. The 12th quarterly report is the first that describes three months of inspections. They come after four years without inspections. The report was finalized ten days ago and a number of relevant events have taken place since then. Today's statement will supplement the circulated report on these points to bring the Council up-to-date.



Inspection process


Inspections in Iraq resumed on 27 November 2002. In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998. This may well be due to the strong outside pressure.



Some practical matters, which were not settled by the talks, Dr. ElBaradei and I had with the Iraqi side in Vienna prior to inspections or in resolution 1441 (2002), have been resolved at meetings, which we have had in Baghdad. Initial difficulties raised by the Iraqi side about helicopters and aerial surveillance planes operating in the no-fly zones were overcome. This is not to say that the operation of inspections is free from frictions, but at this juncture we are able to perform professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq and to increase aerial surveillance.



American U-2 and French Mirage surveillance aircraft already give us valuable imagery, supplementing satellite pictures and we would expect soon to be able to add night vision capability through an aircraft offered to us by the Russian Federation. We also expect to add low-level, close area surveillance through drones provided by Germany. We are grateful not only to the countries, which place these valuable tools at our disposal, but also to the States, most recently Cyprus, which has agreed to the stationing of aircraft on their territory.





Documents and interviews


Iraq, with a highly developed administrative system, should be able to provide more documentary evidence about its proscribed weapons programmes. Only a few new such documents have come to light so far and been handed over since we began inspections.


IRAQ, WITH A HIGHLY DEVELOPED ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM, SHOULD BE ABLE TO PROVIDE MORE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE ABOUT ITS PROSCRIBED WEAPONS PROGRAMMES. ONLY A FEW FEW FEW FEW FEW NEW SUCH DOCUMENTS HAVE COME TO LIGHT SO FAR AND BEEN HANDED OVER SINCE WE BEGAN INSPECTIONS.

( why? why? why?)



It was a disappointment that Iraq's Declaration of 7 December did not bring new documentary evidence. I hope that efforts in this respect, including the appointment of a governmental commission, will give significant results. When proscribed items are deemed unaccounted for it is above all credible accounts that is needed - or the proscribed items, if they exist.



Where authentic documents do not become available, interviews with persons, who may have relevant knowledge and experience, may be another way of obtaining evidence. UNMOVIC has names of such persons in its records and they are among the people whom we seek to interview. In the last month, Iraq has provided us with the names of many persons, who may be relevant sources of information, in particular, persons who took part in various phases of the unilateral destruction of biological and chemical weapons, and proscribed missiles in 1991. The provision of names prompts two reflections:



The first is that with such detailed information existing regarding those who took part in the unilateral destruction, surely there must also remain records regarding the quantities and other data concerning the various items destroyed.





The second reflection is that with relevant witnesses available it becomes even more important to be able to conduct interviews in modes and locations, which allow us to be confident that the testimony is given without outside influence. While the Iraqi side seems to have encouraged interviewees not to request the presence of Iraqi officials (so-called minders) or the taping of the interviews, conditions ensuring the absence of undue influences are difficult to attain inside Iraq. Interviews outside the country might provide such assurance. It is our intention to request such interviews shortly. Nevertheless, despite remaining shortcomings, interviews are useful. Since we started requesting interviews, 38 individuals were asked for private interviews, of which 10 accepted under our terms, 7 of these during the last week.





As I noted on 14 February, intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks and, in particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons.

AS I NOTED ON 14 FEBRUARY, INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITIES HAVE CLAIMED THAT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE MOVED AROUND IRAQ BY TRUCKS AND, IN PARTICULAR, THAT THERE ARE MOBILE PRODUCTION UNITS FOR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS.


The Iraqi side states that such activities do not exist. Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found. Iraq is expected to assist in the development of credible ways to conduct random checks of ground transportation.



Inspectors are also engaged in examining Iraq's programme for Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). A number of sites have been inspected with data being collected to assess the range and other capabilities of the various models found. Inspections are continuing in this area.



There have been reports, denied from the Iraqi side, that proscribed activities are conducted underground.


THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS, DENIED FROM THE IRAQI SIDE, THAT PROSCRIBED ACTIVITIES ARE CONDUCTED UNDERGROUND.

Iraq should provide information on any underground structure suitable for the production or storage of WMD. During inspections of declared or undeclared facilities, inspection teams have examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground penetrating radar equipment was used in several specific locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.



I should add that, both for the monitoring of ground transportation and for the inspection of underground facilities, we would need to increase our staff in Iraq. I am not talking about a doubling of the staff. I would rather have twice the amount of high quality information about sites to inspect than twice the number of expert inspectors to send.

I SHOULD ADD THAT, BOTH FOR THE MONITORING OF GROUND TRANSPORTATION AND THE INSPECTION OF UNDERGROUND FACILITIES, WE WOULD NEED TO INCREASE OUR STAFF IN IRAQ.


Recent developments



On 14 February, I reported to the Council that the Iraqi side had become more active in taking and proposing steps, which potentially might shed new light on unresolved disarmament issues. Even a week ago, when the current quarterly report was finalized, there was still relatively little tangible progress to note. Hence, the cautious formulations in the report before you.



As of today, there is more. While during our meetings in Baghdad, the Iraqi side tried to persuade us that the Al Samoud 2 missiles they have declared fall within the permissible range set by the Security Council, the calculations of an international panel of experts led us to the opposite conclusion.

WHILE DURING OUR MEETINGS IN BAGHDAD, THE IRAQI SIDE TRIED TO PERSUADE US THAT THE AL SAMOUD 2 MISSLES THEY HAVE DECLARED, THEY HAVE DECLARED, THEY HAVE DECLARED, FALL WITHIN THE PERMISSIBLE RANGE SET BY THE SECURITY COUNCIL. THE CALCULATIONS OF AN INTERNATIONAL PANEL OF EXPERTS LED US TO THE OPPOSITE CONCLUSION, OPPOSITE CONCLUSION, OPPOSITE CONCLUSION.

Iraq has since accepted that these missiles and associated items be destroyed and has started the process of destruction under our supervision. The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament - indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s. We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed. However, I must add that no destruction has happened today. I hope it's a temporary break.



To date, 34 Al Samoud 2 missiles, including 4 training missiles, 2 combat warheads, 1 launcher and 5 engines have been destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision. Work is continuing to identify and inventory the parts and equipment associated with the Al Samoud 2 programme.



Two ?'reconstituted' casting chambers used in the production of solid propellant missiles have been destroyed and the remnants melted or encased in concrete.



The legality of the Al Fatah missile is still under review, pending further investigation and measurement of various parameters of that missile.



More papers on anthrax, VX and missiles have recently been provided. Many have been found to restate what Iraq had already declared, some will require further study and discussion.



There is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991. A part of this effort concerns a disposal site, which was deemed too dangerous for full investigation in the past. It is now being re-excavated. To date, Iraq has unearthed eight complete bombs comprising two liquid-filled intact R-400 bombs and six other complete bombs. Bomb fragments were also found. Samples have been taken. The investigation of the destruction site could, in the best case, allow the determination of the number of bombs destroyed at that site. It should be followed by a serious and credible effort to determine the separate issue of how many R-400 type bombs were produced. In this, as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results.



Iraq proposed an investigation using advanced technology to quantify the amount of unilaterally destroyed anthrax dumped at a site. However, even if the use of advanced technology could quantify the amount of anthrax, said to be dumped at the site, the results would still be open to interpretation. Defining the quantity of anthrax destroyed must, of course, be followed by efforts to establish what quantity was actually produced.

EVEN IF THE USE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY COULD QUANTIFY THE AMOUNT OF ANTHRAX SAID TO HAVE BEEN DUMPED AT THE SITE. THE RESULTS WOULD STILL BE OPEN TO INTERPRETATION, OPEN TO INTERPRETATION, OPEN TO INTERPRETATION.

With respect to VX, Iraq has recently suggested a similar method to quantify a VX precursor stated to have been unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.



Iraq has also recently informed us that, following the adoption of the presidential decree prohibiting private individuals and mixed companies from engaging in work related to WMD, further legislation on the subject is to be enacted. This appears to be in response to a letter from UNMOVIC requesting clarification of the issue.



What are we to make of these activities? One can hardly avoid the impression that, after a period of somewhat reluctant cooperation, there has been an acceleration of initiatives from the Iraqi side since the end of January.



This is welcome, but the value of these measures must be soberly judged by how many question marks they actually succeed in straightening out. This is not yet clear.



Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated "immediately, unconditionally and actively" with UNMOVIC, as required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002). The answers can be seen from the factual descriptions I have provided. However, if more direct answers are desired, I would say the following:



The Iraqi side has tried on occasion to attach conditions, as it did regarding helicopters and U-2 planes. Iraq has not, however, so far persisted in these or other conditions for the exercise of any of our inspection rights. If it did, we would report it.



It is obvious that, while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as "active", or even "proactive", these initiatives 3-4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute "immediate" cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance. They are nevertheless welcome and UNMOVIC is responding to them in the hope of solving presently unresolved disarmament issues.





Mr. President,



Members of the Council may relate most of what I have said to resolution 1441 (2002), but UNMOVIC is performing work under several resolutions of the Security Council. The quarterly report before you is submitted in accordance with resolution 1284 (1999), which not only created UNMOVIC but also continues to guide much of our work. Under the time lines set by the resolution, the results of some of this work is to be reported to the Council before the end of this month. Let me be more specific.



Resolution 1284 (1999) instructs UNMOVIC to "address unresolved disarmament issues" and to identify "key remaining disarmament tasks" and the latter are to be submitted for approval by the Council in the context of a work programme. UNMOVIC will be ready to submit a draft work programme this month as required.



UNSCOM and the Amorim Panel did valuable work to identify the disarmament issues, which were still open at the end of 1998. UNMOVIC has used this material as starting points but analysed the data behind it and data and documents post 1998 up to the present time to compile its own list of "unresolved disarmament issues" or, rather, clustered issues. It is the answers to these issues which we seek through our inspection activities.



It is from the list of these clustered issues that UNMOVIC will identify the "key remaining disarmament tasks". As noted in the report before you, this list of clustered issues is ready.



UNMOVIC is only required to submit the work programme with the "key remaining disarmament tasks" to the Council. As I understand that several Council members are interested in the working document with the complete clusters of disarmament issues, we have declassified it and are ready to make it available to members of the Council on request. In this working document, which may still be adjusted in the light of new information, members will get a more up-to-date review of the outstanding issues than in the documents of 1999, which members usually refer to. Each cluster in the working document ends with a number of points indicating what Iraq could do to solve the issue. Hence, Iraq's cooperation could be measured against the successful resolution of issues.



I should note that the working document contains much information and discussion about the issues which existed at the end of 1998 - including information which has come to light after 1998. It contains much less information and discussion about the period after 1998, primarily because of paucity of information. Nevertheless, intelligence agencies have expressed the view that proscribed programmes have continued or restarted in this period. It is further contended that proscribed programmes and items are located in underground facilities, as I mentioned, and that proscribed items are being moved around Iraq. The working document contains some suggestions on how these concerns may be tackled.



Mr. President,



Let me conclude by telling you that UNMOVIC is currently drafting the work programme, which resolution 1284 (1999) requires us to submit this month. It will obviously contain our proposed list of key remaining disarmament tasks; it will describe the reinforced system of ongoing monitoring and verification that the Council has asked us to implement; it will also describe the various subsystems which constitute the programme, e.g. for aerial surveillance, for information from governments and suppliers, for sampling, for the checking of road traffic, etc.



How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months. Neither governments nor inspectors would want disarmament inspection to go on forever. However, it must be remembered that in accordance with the governing resolutions, a sustained inspection and monitoring system is to remain in place after verified disarmament to give confidence and to strike an alarm, if signs were seen of the revival of any proscribed weapons programmes.

THE KEY REMAINING DISARMAMENT TASKS?


*********************************************************

I don't think you know very much about the Blix reports, Mr. Parados.

Check out my sentences in CAPS and respond to them, please!

Contrary to Mr. Parados's misinformation, it is clear that Iraq had been working on the Al-Samad II which certainly went beyond 150 Km.


Liquid-Propellant Missile Developments

Iraq demonstrated its ability to quickly develop and deploy liquid-propellant ballistic missiles, such as the Al Samud II, against UN guidelines. ISG believes that, given the order to proceed, Iraq had the capability, motivation and resources to rapidly move ahead with newer longer range ballistic missile designs.


Iraq began its indigenous liquid-propellant ballistic missile efforts in the early 1990s with the Ababil-100?-later known as the Al Samud. These efforts lead to the more successful Al Samud II program, officially beginning in 2001. Through a series of debriefings of high-level officials from Iraq's missile programs, together with document exploitation, ISG has been able to build a better understanding of the Al Samud II program. Although the infrastructure and technical expertise were available, there is no evidence suggesting Iraq intended to design CBW warheads for either the Al Samud or the Al Samud II system.




Early Liquid-Propellant Missile Efforts

As early as 1988, Iraq displayed ambitions to develop an indigenous, liquid-propellant ballistic missile. These early developmental efforts included the unsuccessful Fahad-300/500 and the G-1 projects. In 1992, an indigenous SA-2 replication (the Al Rafadiyan project) also failed but was tied with the Ababil-100 project. The Ababil project?-initially intended as a compliance measure addressing the UN sanctions of 1991; limiting the range to 150 km and later renamed the Al Samud ?-began as a 500-mm-diameter missile designed by Dr. Hamid Khalil Al ?'Azzawi and Gen Ra'ad Isma'il Jamil Al Adhami at Ibn-al Haytham. The program experienced various problems, especially with the missile's stability. In 1993, Dr. Muzhir [Modher] Sadiq Saba' Khamis Al Tamimi, then Director of both Al Karamah and Ibn-al Haytham, proposed a missile design, which was deemed more stable due to its having an increased diameter of 750 mm. After reviewing various designs of the Ababil project, UNSCOM restricted missile programs to having a diameter of no more than 600 mm in 1994. Husayn Kamil held a competitive design review between Dr. Muzhir's new 600-mm-diameter design and Gen Ra'ad's 500-mm design; Gen Ra'ad's design succeeded. After several years of limited success at MIC, Gen Ra'ad was removed as the head of the program, and Dr. Muzhir was put in charge of the Al Samud program in 1999. Muzhir experimented with the design of the missile?-increasing its reliability?-but work on this program ceased in 2000. All efforts were then refocused on the Al Samud II project. See the Delivery Systems Annex for further information on Dr. Muzhir and Gen Ra'ad.

Diameter Restriction

On 17 March 1994, Rolf Ekeus, the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, submitted a letter to ?'Amir Muhammad Rashid Al ?'Ubaydi concerning designs for the Ababil-100 liquid engine missile.


". . . Iraq disclosed a new design for the Ababil-100 liquid engine missile still under research and development. . . this new design provided for a substantial increase of an airframe's diameter, from 500 mm to 750 mm. Our analysis concluded that such a large diameter is not appropriate or justified for missiles with ranges less than 150 km. . . the Commission has to state that any increase of the diameter in the current design of the Ababil-100 liquid engine missile exceeding 600 mm is not permitted."

Al Samud II

Iraq researched and developed the Al Samud II missile despite UN provisions, which prohibited such a system with its specification. Not only did the missile have range capabilities beyond the 150-km UN limit, but also Iraq procured prohibited items as well as received foreign technical assistance to develop and produce this system. ISG, which has developed a comprehensive history of the system, has no evidence indicating that Iraq was designing CBW warheads for the missile.


Huwaysh's official approval for the Al Samud II diameter increase to 760 mm occurred in June 2001, despite the 1994 letter from UNSCOM Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus specifying that UNSCOM restricted the diameter of Iraq's Ababil-100 missile to less than 600 mm. According to officials within Iraq's missile program, the 760-mm-diameter design was chosen because this gave the missile more stability than the unsuccessful smaller diameter missile and this dimension also allowed Iraq to use HY-2 components for the missiles.


According to a former Iraqi missile program official, Huwaysh approved the 760-mm-diameter design for the Al Samud II in June 2001. Engineers within the program strongly believed that the 500-mm diameter Al Samud was going to be unsuccessful from the very beginning. They had determined, based on their experience and knowledge of Soviet ballistic missile systems, the length/diameter (L/D) ratio of such missiles should be between 8 and 14 but that 12.5 was the optimum. See Figure 1 for a diagram of the Al Samud II missile and Figure 2 for a photo of the Al Samud II missile.
ISG believes that discussions of an "optimum" L/D are fallacious. Iraqi insistence that the diameter increase was intended solely to meet a specific L/D is more probably a ruse to increase the missile's internal volume?-ostensibly for increasing the fuel capacity?-thereby further increasing the maximum range potential.

Although the L/D of the 760-mm-diameter design may be an improvement over that of the 500-mm-diameter designs, this is only one of many inter-dependant parameters contributing to the missile's stability.

An Al Karamah official claimed that Dr. Muzhir, who had previously developed a 750-mm design by 1993, discovered that the airframe and ring assembly for the HY-2 cruise missile was based on a 760-mm diameter. Because of time constraints, these items could easily be used to quickly develop and manufacture his 760-mm-diameter missile. Figure 3 depicts an early Al Samud II using an HY-2 airframe.

Huwaysh stated that the larger diameter design allowed an additional fuel tank. ISG has not found evidence that Iraq intended to add an additional fuel tank to the Al Samud II.

The capability of the Al Samud II missile quickly showed a marked improvement over the unsuccessful Al Samud program. After several flight tests, the first of which occurred in August 2001, Iraq began a production ramp-up of the missile in September 2001. Several sources have corroborated Iraq's efforts to improve the accuracy of the system, using components, expertise, and infrastructure from other missile programs to accelerate fielding the Al Samud II. The key parameters for the Al Samud II are listed in Table 1.



Table 1
Key Parameters of Al Samud II

Key Parameters
Propellants Fuel (TG-02) Oxidizer (AK20K)
Engine Modified SA-2 Engine (Volga)
Guidance and Control C601 and C611 gyroscopes
Body Aluminum Alloy with Stainless Steel Rings

A senior official within Iraq's missile program stated that the Al Samud II used gyroscopes taken from the guidance system of C601 and C611 cruise missiles.

Up to November 2002, a timer system was used by Al Karamah to provide a simple determination of the time for engine cut-off, regardless of the velocity achieved. After that date, the timer was replaced by an integrating axial accelerometer in the analog control system, which was designed to provide an accurate determination of the engine cut-off velocity. This consisted of an AK-5 accelerometer integrated into the control system, calculating the missile velocity using digital integration of the axial acceleration. This modified control system would issue the engine shut down command signal when the target velocity had been reached. A range count, similar to that of the Scud and Al Husayn missiles, could be entered from the launcher to preset the missile range using prelaunch data.

Al Karamah also began the design of a completely digital compensator to be used in place of the analog compensator. The compensator is an analog computer designed to calculate the corrections necessary to maintain missile attitude and flightpath to the target. The digital compensator is very similar to an onboard flight computer. It was to be ready for use by June or July 2003.

The guidance system for the Al Samud II provides outputs to the control system that provide corrective signals to the 4 graphite jet vanes, redirecting the thrust vector of the modified SA-2 Volga engine. This arrangement, similar to the Scud, provides control in 3 axes, but only during the powered portion of flight. The missile reaches apogee as the powered portion of flight ends (approximately 83 seconds in the case of the Al Samud II). The missile is unguided after thrust termination and in a free-fall ballistic flight until impact. This limitation, coupled with the inaccuracies of the guidance and control system, resulted in large miss-distances.

A senior source at Al Karamah informed ISG of a developmental effort to improve the accuracy of the Al Samud II using aerodynamic controls on the inboard sections of the aft stabilization fins. A high-pressure gas bottle would be used to supply air pressure to drive pneumatic-controlled actuators that provide aerodynamic control throughout both the missile's powered flight and through reentry. This improvement in control would have been incorporated following the completion of the initial guidance testing, most likely entering testing as early as the end of 2003.


Around 1999, Iraq was working to import new, modern, complete guidance packages from Russian and FRY entities.

Iraq was intending to purchase Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), fiber-optic systems, and high-precision machinery for indigenous production of guidance and control components.

Iraq relied on foreign assistance to develop the Al Samud II program from its early beginnings. ISG has uncovered Iraqi efforts to obtain technical expertise and prohibited items from other countries.


Russian experts contracted through ARMOS assisted with indigenous production as well as the interface between imported guidance systems and the Al Samud II missile.

A high-level official admitted that Iraq received approximately 280 SA-2 engines through the Polish company Evax by the end of 2001, followed by an additional 100 engines from Al Rawa'a.
According to a former high-level civilian official, Iraq brought foreign experts into the country to assist in its missile programs.

Although advancements in the Al Samud II program were achieved quickly, shortage of necessary components limited production. Several sources estimated the number of missiles produced and delivered to the Army by OIF. Because these accounts vary and are not fully supported by documentary evidence, ISG has compared these claims with earlier information to develop a potential materiel balance for the missiles. See Delivery Systems Annex for more details.


According to a former high-level official, Iraq began serial production of the Al Samud II missile beginning in December 2001. The production goal was to yield 10 full missiles a month. ISG believes that, because of a lack of certain components, Iraq did not always meet this monthly quota, while in some months they may have surpassed it?-the production was dependent upon their success at importing components.

Iraq declared the Samud II system to the UN in its CAFCD in December 2002, disclosing the 760-mm-diameter along with an 83-second engine burn time. Additionally, Iraq admitted in its semi-annual monitoring declarations that the system had exceeded 150 km on at least 13 occasions during flight tests. Because of this, UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix, before the UN Security Council in December 2002, ordered Iraq to freeze all flight tests of the Al Samud II program until technical discussions could occur to determine the capability of the missile.


According to a former senior official at Al Karamah, Iraq produced approximately 20 missiles during the first quarter of 2003.

Another source claimed that, after UNMOVIC inspectors departed the country in March 2003, Iraq was able to assemble about 4 Al Samud II missiles from remaining parts that had been placed in mobile trucks to avoid air strikes. These missiles were not delivered to the Army.

A missile requires a SAFF system to ensure that the warhead is safe to handle and remains unarmed until it has been launched, and then detonates when intended. After launch the SAFF system will activate the firing system and arm the warhead. Detonation of the explosive warhead charge is initiated by the fuze. Common fuzes used by Iraq include timer switches, accelerometers, barometric devices and impact switches (impact switches are either inertia [nose and tail fuzes] or crush [nose fuze only] and can be used as the primary fuze or as a backup to ensure detonation if other fuzing systems fail). For the Al Samud and Al Fat'h warheads, the impact or crush switch was located in the nose tip and activated by the impact of the warhead with the ground. The basic design of the high-explosive (HE) warhead was common between the two missiles and could be interchanged if needed with minimal modifications. The most likely composition of the explosive mixture was 60% TNT, 30% RDX, and 10% aluminum powder.


The submunition warhead developed for the Al Fat'h missile had an airburst fuze to ensure the effective dispersal of the submunitions (bomblets). The warhead contained up to 900 KB-1 anti-tank/anti-personnel (ATAP) submunitions.


Al Samud II Determined To Be an Illegal System

During a UN technical discussion in February 2003, an International Team of missile experts concluded that the Al Samud II missile had range capabilities well beyond the imposed 150-km limit. The UN then ordered Iraq to destroy the Al Samud II and associated support equipment specific to the system. UNMOVIC supervised the destruction of 72 missiles and 3 launchers in March. Due to the inconsistencies in source reporting and the lack of documentary evidence available, ISG has been unable to accurately reconcile the status of the Al Samud II inventory. Refer to the Delivery Systems Annex for an assessment of the Al Samud II missile material balance.

Iraqi Ballistic Missile Warheads


Iraq developed a unitary high-explosive (HE) warhead for delivery by both the Al Samud and Al Fat'h missiles. Iraq also developed a submunition warhead for the Al Fat'h and intended to develop a cluster warhead for the Al Samud.

Traditionally, the payload or warhead of a missile can be defined as an explosive or weapons package, the shell in which the weapons package is contained, and the Safe, Arm, Fuze and Fire (SAFF) system.

Al Samud Warhead

ISG has not discovered any information to suggest that Iraq had considered or designed bulk-filled CBW warheads for the Al Samud. An impact detonation would be an inefficient method for disseminating chemical or biological agents, as the heat and shock of an explosive detonation could destroy much, if not all, of the agents.

Although ISG has recovered no evidence to suggest that "special" warheads were developed for the Al Samuds, the warhead is a direct extrapolation of the impact warhead design for the Scud and Al Husayn missiles and could be modified in the same way Iraq modified the Al Husayn HE warhead to produce crude CBW warheads.

Iraq retained the intellectual capital for reproducing these kinds of "special" warhead designs, so modification and production of this crude type of warhead could be achieved in a matter of weeks with a relatively small team of specialized individuals.

The Al Samud I was designed to carry a unitary HE warhead, and Iraq apparently intended to develop a conventional submunition warhead for the missile. The Al Samud HE warhead is an extrapolation of the Scud warhead design and was later adopted for the Al Fat'h missile. Development of the warhead took about eight months and was completed in the summer of 1994. The Al Samud warhead components are listed in Table 2.


The original Al Samud warhead has a 500-mm-base-diameter and is 2 meters long with a design payload mass of 300 kg. The fuze mechanism is similar to that of the Scud missile. The original warhead design contained one forward booster and two rear boosters at the base of the warhead, one of which serves to provide uniform detonation in the system, the other as an auto destruct mechanism in case the missile deviates from its predetermined trajectory. Because Iraq lacked confidence in the accuracy of the guidance and control system, the backup and emergency boosters were never incorporated, leaving a single forward booster. An impact crush switch is incorporated into the graphite nose of the warhead (see Figure 4, Al Samud warhead design).


Iraq's desire to achieve 150-km range resulted in a quick modification to reduce the payload mass from 300 kg to 200-250 kg with 100-120 kg of HE, according to a senior missile official.

Iraq reduced the warhead mass by relocating the base plate and bulkhead forward into the warhead body, which reduced the available HE volume.

Warhead modifications continued into 2001. A flight test in late 2001 used better constructed cylindrical and conical parts of the warhead with a payload of 240 kg and achieved a range of 151 km.

Table 2

Nose Tip
Graphite
Outer shell 2-mm rolled steel
Insulation layer 3-mm Asbestos
Inner Shell 1-mm rolled steel
Fuze Impact or crush switch housed in nose tip
Booster x 3 The third booster acts as a safety mechanism, detonating if the missile deviates from its predetermined trajectory
Filler 60% RDX, 30% TNT, 10% aluminum powder

After succeeding with the unitary HE warhead, Iraq intended to develop a submunition warhead for the Al Samud, according to a senior Iraqi missile developer. However, no submunition warheads for either Al Samud or Al Samud II were manufactured.


Al Samud II Warhead

ISG has not discovered information to suggest that Iraq had considered or designed CBW warheads for the Al Samud II. The Al Samud II was designed to carry a unitary HE warhead, which is an extrapolation of the Scud and Al Samud warhead designs. At the end of June 2001, Al Karamah modified the Al Samud warhead to accommodate the increase in diameter from 500 mm to 760 mm. A design payload of 300 kg for Al Samud was agreed to with the UN, but the actual payload was 280 kg.


Iraq manufactured a new warhead shell with a 760-mm-base-diameter and a length of 2,142 mm. The HE was housed in the forward section of the warhead and additional space reserved in the base for an air bottle that would provide pneumatics to control surfaces yet to be implemented in the missile fins (see Guidance and Control section). To compensate for the additional weight of the warhead shell and guidance system, the amount of HE was reduced.

The booster for the emergency detonator was to be reinstalled, once confidence was gained in the guidance system. Figure 5 shows a schematic diagram of the Al Samud II warhead with gyroscope housings at the base of the warhead and notional emergency booster rod illustrated with dotted lines.

Within two weeks, Al Karamah produced a prototype that was tested at Al Qayyarah, a site belonging to the Air Force. The test successfully demonstrated the fragmentation and blast radius, resulting in design approval from the Army.


Between January and November 2002, Al Karamah and Al Qa'Qa'a conducted a study to improve the effectiveness of the Al Samud warhead.
The study was to investigate two aspects of the warhead:


Methods by which the density of the explosive material could be increased; and

How the blast effect of the warhead could be improved.

The theoretical filling requirements for the study of the Al Samud II warhead were:


Total weight: 280 kg

Explosive charge weight: 140 kg

Warhead metal container weight: 140 kg

Composition of explosive mixture: 60% RDX= 84 kg, 30% TNT= 42 kg & 10% AL= 14 kg.

Filling of the Al Samud warhead was a manual process; however, the study recommended that compressing the explosive material into the warhead by using a hydraulic press would improve the density and thus effectiveness and safe handling of the explosive material.

What I said



Here is your response to my statement Bernie....


You seem to have a reading comprehension problem Bernie. I said the Al Samud exceeded the 150km range but did NOT come close to the 600 km your source claimed.

This from the piece you posted and didn't provide the source for. (Plagiarism is bad form Bernie...)


Gee Iraq achieved 151 km with the Al Samoud II. That is more than 150, sounds similar to the 180 I said and is a FAR CRY from the 600km your source claimed. Thanks for proving my statement true Bernie. Too bad you can't read or you would have seen that was the case.

No evidence? Did Blix really say "no evidence" of those trailers has been found?.. Why yes, he did say just that.

Hmmm... seems to contradict Bush's claim doesn't it. I am really beginning to question your reading abilities Bernie. You seem to skip right over parts when you read if they don't conform to your desired outcome.

Now do you see why I didn't bother to address your demand that I deal with Blix's statements? I saw no need to. Blix is saying exactly what I said.
NO EVIDENCE OF TRAILERS

Two important points, Mr. Parados.

First, the source of the material on Al Samad II

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/...

THIS IS THE SAME SOURCE YOU USE.

HOW COULD IT BE WRONG FOR ME AND NOT WRONG FOR YOU?

Strike One-Mr.Parados.

I post the entire report from Hans Blix just thirteen days before the invasion and HIGHLIGHT CERTAIN SECTIONS AND

ASKED YOU

TO COMMENT ON THEM, MR. PARADOS.

YOU DID NOT. I wlll repeat the sections in which I challenged you, Mr. Parados.

THE KEY REMAINING DISARMAMENT TASKS?


WHILE DURING OUR MEETINGS IN BAGHDAD, THE IRAQI SIDE TRIED TO PERSUADE US THAT THE AL SAMOUD 2 MISSLES THEY HAVE DECLARED, THEY HAVE DECLARED, THEY HAVE DECLARED, FALL WITHIN THE PERMISSIBLE RANGE SET BY THE SECURITY COUNCIL. THE CALCULATIONS OF AN INTERNATIONAL PANEL OF EXPERTS LED US TO THE OPPOSITE CONCLUSION, OPPOSITE CONCLUSION, OPPOSITE CONCLUSION.



EVEN IF THE USE OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY COULD QUANTIFY THE AMOUNT OF ANTHRAX SAID TO HAVE BEEN DUMPED AT THE SITE. THE RESULTS WOULD STILL BE OPEN TO INTERPRETATION, OPEN TO INTERPRETATION, OPEN TO INTERPRETATION.





AS I NOTED ON 14 FEBRUARY, INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITIES HAVE CLAIMED THAT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ARE MOVED AROUND IRAQ BY TRUCKS AND, IN PARTICULAR, THAT THERE ARE MOBILE PRODUCTION UNITS FOR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS.



THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS, DENIED FROM THE IRAQI SIDE, THAT PROSCRIBED ACTIVITIES ARE CONDUCTED UNDERGROUND.

I SHOULD ADD THAT, BOTH FOR THE MONITORING OF GROUND TRANSPORTATION AND THE INSPECTION OF UNDERGROUND FACILITIES, WE WOULD NEED TO INCREASE OUR STAFF IN IRAQ.


Now, the capitalized sections above are taken from Mr. Blix's final report just thirteen days before the invasion.

Then Mr. Parados wrote:

No need to comment on a preliminary report by Blix when the final report speaks for itself.


My quotes in caps above are quotes from the final report which, Mr. Parados says speaks for itself.

It doesn't speak- It shouts--and anyone, anyone with two ounces of brains who reads the final report will say that the Report is not definitive and finalized and that it raises more questions than it answers.

Speaks for itself indeed----International Panel reaches opposite conclusion from Iraqi on Samoud II( see above)

Speaks for itself indeed- Results on amount of Anthrax said to have been dumped open to interpretation( see above).


Speaks for itself indeed-Intelligence Sources are saying "WMD's being moved around Iraq by trucks"

Speaks for itself indeed- "Proscribed activities being conducted underground"

Speaks for itself indeed-To monitor, we would need to increase our staff"

Speaks for itself indeed-THE KEY REMAINING DISARMAMENT TASKS-

REMAINING????


__________

Anyone who would label Hans Blix's final report as definitive and one that answered all of the questions still out there IN THE FACE OF HANS BLIX'S OWN ADMISSION THAT NOT ALL OF THE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED AND THAT THERE ARE OTHER CLAIMS ABOUT WMD'S STILL IN PLAY JUST THIRTEEN DAYS BEFORE THE INVASION, is either a fanatic partisan or someone who just doesn't understand what a definitive report is supposed to say.

If you can't explain why Hans Blix made all of those "reservations" in his final report, Mr. Parados, I am very much afraid that I will have to say:

Strike Two!

One more strike and you are out, sir!!!

Om Sig David- Even though you are a skilled attorney, I am afraid you have met your match. Don't you know that the Germanic mind is superior to all others in the world? He disposed of your argument in just one word-
NO.