Scud fired: if inspectors had found it, that would have been the smoking gun

[Jazz]

This is APPARENTLY a fact (Fox): "A British military spokesman, Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt, confirmed three missiles were fired by the Iraqis into Kuwait, including one Scud that was intercepted by a Patriot. Col. Youssef al-Mullah, spokesman for the Kuwaiti military, said four missiles were fired at Kuwait."

This means Saddam lied when he said all banned weapons had been destroyed. Had the inspectors found this Scud and of course the others, that would have been the 'smoking gun' that some were holding out for. Well, it's still smoking.

Anyone with 2 ounces of functional gray matter would logically conclude that if Saddam lied through his still-chattering teeth about a delivery system like the Scuds, he was far more likely to have lied about his WMDs. And if he was successful for evading detection of those Scuds and the launch systems for the past 12 years, it also proves he had the motive and abilitity to hide systems of a size a lot bigger than the other WMDs he's accused of hiding. That's logic. What is completely illogical is to assume that giving Saddam more time to dissemble, deceive and deploy (my term) would have accomplished disarmament.

Some of you (a very few of the fringe element) think I'm blood-thirsty - that's ridiculous. I never once suggested we should go in before the terms of resolution 1441 stated (with the final inspection last week). Place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Saddam and countries like France, who are scrambling now to save face, not for the least of which reasons is that Iraqi oppostion groups have announced they will not honor contracts that Saddam signed.

On a good note, I am extremly pleased that Spain has supported us in addition to Britan, Australia and the other countries in the coalition, which includes all (I think) of the former Soviet republics (of course not Russia) - gee, I wonder why they might be?

 

I never doubted one minute that Saddam had banned weapons. He said he once had WMD. I think he still does.

 

[Vikings2]

France & Hans Blix still think inspections must continue...

 

[Jazz]

I know, General, just wanted to make sure this fact was known - here's a CBC article making my point about the banned aspect before anyone questions that - and please, don't confuse them with the much much shorter range Al Sahmoud missiles he was destroying ...

============================================

Scud Missiles

Justin Thompson, CBC News Online | Dec. 11, 2002

Although the first 'Scud' missile came into service in the mid-1950s, variants of the original are still manufactured and in use in some parts of the world. Based on the German V2 rocket, the original Scud, or Scud A, was designed and developed in the Soviet Union. It had a range of approximately 180 kilometres, and carried a single nuclear warhead rated at approximately 50 kilotons. The weapon was mounted on a reconfigured tank chassis, which acted as a mobile launch platform.

Why is it called a 'Scud'?

According to the Oxford dictionary, 'scud' has been used to describe a darting motion for more than 400 years. It's defined as running, moving or flying lightly and quickly. Oxford says 'scud' may be related to the word 'scut,' which means to race like a hare.
According to the deputy commander of Defence Contract Management in Ottawa, 'Scud' is the moniker NATO assigned to the missile during the Cold War. Darrell Webb says 'Scud' was chosen because it was a derogatory sounding name that could be used in propaganda. To its Soviet designers, the 'Scud A' was known simply as R-11.

In 1962, the Scud B was introduced. This variant is still being manufactured in different forms by a handful of countries, and has a longer range than the original. The Scud B is able to carry a variety of payloads, from nuclear warheads to conventional explosives to chemical warheads. A number of countries keep the missile in active duty, including Egypt, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In Afghanistan, both Northern Alliance and Taliban troops have been reported to possess Scud missiles.

According to Jane's Information Group, the Scud B and modifications to the missile have been manufactured in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The Iraqi version, known as the Al Hussein or "stretch Scud," was modified for greater range and used during the Gulf War in 1991. The missiles, which have a range of more than 600 kilometres, are listed among weapons Iraq has been banned from possessing under UN sanctions.

The preferred delivery vehicle for the Scud B is the eight-wheeled MAZ 543 self-propelled launcher. According to Jane's, it takes a crew of between three and five about an hour to prepare the vehicle for launch. That, in addition to the vehicle's 650-kilometre range, makes the Scud a highly versatile weapon that’s easy to move and difficult to track.

Although early versions of the Scud are known for poor accuracy, newer variants are reported to have far greater range and accuracy. North Korean-built Scud D missiles, which have the same payload capability as the Scud B, have a range of 700 kilometres. In September 2000, Syria test-fired a Scud D capable of hitting targets anywhere within Israel.

 

[KennyB]

What a surprise,

You mean to tell me that Iraq still has SCUD missles??? I am SHOCKED.

I thought inspections were working???

France and Germany (euro-sissies) were wrong???

I am sure that he has more WMD.

Where is the outrage at Sadam for lying to the UN???

 

[SAFETANA]

I trust Hans more than W!

----------------------------------------
MY BIGGEST LIES:
1- I love you!
2- The check is in the mail!
3- I wont cum in your mouth!

 

[radiofreecostarica]

And I trust Blix much more than British Intelligence. (Plagiarism, anyone?

 

[SAFETANA]

Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake
U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A01


A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

"There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities," ElBaradei said.

Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said.

"We fell for it," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.

A spokesman for the IAEA said the agency did not blame either Britain or the United States for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good faith," he said.

The discovery was a further setback to U.S. and British efforts to convince reluctant U.N. Security Council members of the urgency of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Powell, in his statement to the Security Council Friday, acknowledged ElBaradei's findings but also cited "new information" suggesting that Iraq continues to try to get nuclear weapons components.

"It is not time to close the book on these tubes," a senior State Department official said, adding that Iraq was prohibited from importing sensitive parts, such as tubes, regardless of their planned use.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein pursued an ambitious nuclear agenda throughout the 1970s and 1980s and launched a crash program to build a bomb in 1990 following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. But Iraq's nuclear infrastructure was heavily damaged by allied bombing in 1991, and the country's known stocks of nuclear fuel and equipment were removed or destroyed during the U.N. inspections after the war.

However, Iraq never surrendered the blueprints for nuclear weapons, and kept key teams of nuclear scientists intact after U.N. inspectors were forced to leave in 1998. Despite international sanctions intended to block Iraq from obtaining weapons components, Western intelligence agencies and former weapons inspectors were convinced the Iraqi president had resumed his quest for the bomb in the late 1990s, citing defectors' stories and satellite images that showed new construction at facilities that were once part of Iraq's nuclear machinery.

Last September, the United States and Britain issued reports accusing Iraq of renewing its quest for nuclear weapons. In Britain's assessment, Iraq reportedly had "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear program that could require it."

Separately, President Bush, in his speech to the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 12, said Iraq had made "several attempts to buy-high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Doubts about both claims began to emerge shortly after U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq last November. In early December, the IAEA began an intensive investigation of the aluminum tubes, which Iraq had tried for two years to purchase by the tens of thousands from China and at least one other country. Certain types of high-strength aluminum tubes can be used to build centrifuges, which enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and commercial power plants.

By early January, the IAEA had reached a preliminary conclusion: The 81mm tubes sought by Iraq were "not directly suitable" for centrifuges, but appeared intended for use as conventional artillery rockets, as Iraq had claimed. The Bush administration, meanwhile, stuck to its original position while acknowledging disagreement among U.S. officials who had reviewed the evidence.

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, Bush said Iraq had "attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Last month, Powell likewise dismissed the IAEA's conclusions, telling U.N. leaders that Iraq would not have ordered tubes at such high prices and with such exacting performance ratings if intended for use as ordinary rockets. Powell specifically noted that Iraq had sought tubes that had been "anodized," or coated with a thin outer film -- a procedure that Powell said was required if the tubes were to be used in centrifuges.

ElBaradei's report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals, ElBaradei said.

Moreover, further work by the IAEA's team of centrifuge experts -- two Americans, two Britons and a French citizen -- has reinforced the IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were ill suited for centrifuges. "It was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program," ElBaradei said.

A number of independent experts on uranium enrichment have sided with IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were at best ill suited for centrifuges. Several have said that the "anodized" features mentioned by Powell are actually a strong argument for use in rockets, not centrifuges, contrary to the administration's statement.

The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based research organization that specializes in nuclear issues, reported yesterday that Powell's staff had been briefed about the implications of the anodized coatings before Powell's address to the Security Council last month. "Despite being presented with the falseness of this claim, the administration persists in making misleading arguments about the significance of the tubes," the institute's president, David Albright, wrote in the report.

Powell's spokesman said the secretary of state had consulted numerous experts and stood by his U.N. statement

----------------------------------------
MY BIGGEST LIES:
1- I love you!
2- The check is in the mail!
3- I wont cum in your mouth!

 

Scud = WMD
Mother of All Bombs = non-WMD?

 

[KillerWatermelon]

They weren't scuds, but what do you expect when you use Fox News as your source.

 

[Jazz]

It wasn't just Fox news, it was other media as well. I didn't post this until I heard that one of the missiles had been positively identified as a Scud.

BUT, tonight I heard on Fox that the Pentagon never confirmed any of the missiles were in fact Scuds, and that they have not been so far.

I don't have a problem with the truth, so I'm bumping this up so people will know that my original post was based on incorrect information - no Scuds have yet been verifiably fired.

Some of you will be in shock and awed at my posting this, but I assure you, any time I see solid evidence to the contrary I accept it.

 

Jazz,
I heard Hans Blix speak tonight, and he brought up an interesting point. Iraq has neither had the existance of WMD proven or disproven. Blix (I don't know how he knows this) claims that Hussein is VERY concerned about his legacy & would not want to be remember as a liar, so even if Iraq has WMD Blix believes the chances of them using suchs weapons under Hussein's orders would be minimal.

Interesting point, but I disagree. I think when your country is being attacked you do ANYTHING you can to defend it. I believe he will (if not already) use the SCUDS & chemicals (if they do indeed exist).

 

[Benassflick]

Another example of Jazz the brainwashed sheep being led by the nose. Nice thread Jazz

 

[Benassflick]

Come on Jazz your input is needed. Otherwise you just look like all the other uneducated guys on here. Oh yeah that is your gig you blindly follow the masses.