"Palme D'Or" for Mike Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11&

[kandrathe]

So what you are saying is that according to you Irak still had chemical or biological or nuclear weapons?

Maybe?

Let's simplify this to the ridiculous. Let's say I'm a survivalist nutcase, and I decide one day to go postal and take over the neighbors house. It is known in the neighborhood that I have a huge stash of illegal weapons, including documentation that I have recently puchased 2 tons of amonium nitrate fertilizer. After a siege, I surrender back my neighbors house and retreat back to my fortified bunker. The police agree not to press charges if I promise not to invade my neighbors house again, pay for all the costs and damages, surrender all my illeagal weapons, let them search my house for the weapons, and come visit me once in awhile to make sure I'm being a good citizen. Well, I say ok, of course.

Then, I refuse to let the marshalls search my house, I stall them while my buddies are busy "doing something" in the back. Then I let them in and they find a small sample bomb I forgot to hide, made from the fertilizer I claimed I didn't have. Then I feign to come clean again, and I admit that I have maybe 1/2 a ton and I let them take that away. Etcetera, ad naseum, and this goes on for years. Then one day, there is a new chief of police that says, "Hey, this is crazy." He thinks I'm just jerking the police around, and that I never intended to surrender my weapons. In fact, while they are poking around, taking a shotgun from me here, and some ammonium nitrate there, I'm in fact purchasing much better stuff to replace it. What a bunch of chumps those police guys are, here they thought they could turn me around and make me into a model citizen. Then, the new police chief decides one day that enough is enough, and they arrest me. They search my house and they find some stuff, but not the 1.5 tons of ammonium nitrate I'm supposed to have, and I'm not telling them where it is. Maybe I hid it, or maybe I fertilized the roses, or just maybe I sent it off to another nutball down the street. And, I ain't talking copper, ya see! {ok, enough of the Cagney} :)

My point is that Iraq had 12 years to come clean, and they never did. I think the US actually gave the UN and Mr. Blix one last opportunity to go back into Iraq to see if Iraq, would finally with adequate pressure comply with the inspections. They didn't. It was back to the cat and mouse game, dodge, distract and deceive all over again. Re-read David Kay's October 2003 findings. They did find extensive evidence of weapons programs, and they had only searched 10 of 130 known sites. What they did not find was something you would recognize as a stockpile of CW or BW munitions. Maybe all those 55 gallons barrels of "insecticide" hidden in camoflage bunkers were for something other than keeping the gnats away from the ammunition? How long does it take to grow, and process enough anthrax to stop an Army? How much anthrax would you need to start that process with? One test tube?

So let's revisit Doug Hanson's article...

Case Not Closed: Iraq’s WMD Stockpiles -- March 2nd, 2004
In the summer of 2003, I served as Chief of Staff in the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), an organization formerly called the Ministry of Atomic Energy. The Ministry had a small staff of Americans and Iraqis, and was one of several ministries of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad. One of our key tasks was to transition several thousand Iraqi scientists and engineers from military and state-owned enterprises to private enterprises involved in more peaceful endeavors.  Working there, I enjoyed a unique vantage point on the activities of the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG), the inspection agency headed by Dr. David Kay, charged with finding WMD.
...
In his recent testimony, Dr. Kay pronounced that there are no large stockpiles of WMD.  This is a pretty bold assertion considering that actual surveys of sites we were familiar with were haphazard and uncoordinated.  Also, according to his own interim report published in October of 2003, the ISG had not even searched 120 of the 130 known ammo storage points, much less any underground sites.  In addition to these known sites, “neighborhood” arms caches are discovered all the time in Iraq.  It is entirely possible that WMD stockpiles were moved out of Iraq, or that they were dispersed in Baghdad neighborhoods and throughout Iraq.  All of this may even have been accomplished while the unfocused search operations were ongoing.
...
Douglas Hanson was a US Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and is a Gulf War I combat veteran.  He has a background in radiation biology and physiology, and was an Atomic Demolitions Munitions (ADM) Security Officer, and a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Officer.  As a civilian analyst, he has worked on stability and support operations in Bosnia, and helped develop a multi-service medical  treatment manual for nuclear and radiological casualties.  He was initially an operations officer in the operations/intelligence cell of the Requirements Coordination Office of the CPA, and was later assigned as the Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Doug Hanson has street cred with me. Reading just CNN or other mainstream press, I might have agreed with you. But, when I see stuff like this article, written by someone who was there, working with the CPA, and the ISG, then I begin to have some doubts.