Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.
Six weeks ago, Saddam Hussein announced that he would no longer cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspectors called UNSCOM. They are highly professional experts from dozens of countries. Their job is to oversee the elimination of Iraq's capability to retain, create and use weapons of mass destruction, and to verify that Iraq does not attempt to rebuild that capability.
The international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.
So we will pursue a long-term strategy to contain Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction and work toward the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.
huh
this is 2 years before Bush and 3 years before 911
And for any analysts unclear on what the administration wanted to hear, Vice President Dick Cheney, whom several Bush officials told me was not as smart as the president, made sure they got the message on August 26, 2002, when he delivered a public speech that had not been vetted by the White House or cleared by Bush. “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,’’ he said. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”
The clear message to the worker bees at the CIA: The White House knew Saddam had the weapons. Disagree at peril to your career.
But Cheney’s unspoken threat came too late to influence analysts at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who were circulating a devastating report with a simple conclusion: The idea that Saddam possessed WMDs was built on air. There was no evidence any Iraqi facilities produced, tested or stored biological weapons. No mobile production plants could be found. They found nothing showing Iraq had the processes to produce chemical devices. The analysts even doubted Saddam had long-range missiles.
so Dick Cheyney's biggest lie is essentially the same motivation Clinton had for this attack unless Clinton did indeed say all that to distract from his affair ---
Yeah, a lot of people forget the extent to which the Clinton administration set the stage for the Iraq invasion with its bombing campaign and the dreadful sanctions. ---
What examples of missing weapons did the inspectors give?
Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said Monday that Iraq still hasn’t accounted for weapons and weapons-related materials that previous U.N. disarmament reports had documented. Iraq has argued that it has destroyed the weapons in question. Critics say, if that is true, there would be some physical evidence of their destruction, records of it, or eyewitness accounts to back up Baghdad’s claims.
Prior to their departure, the inspection teams had destroyed or made unusable 48 long range missiles, 14 conventional missile warheads, 30 chemical warheads, "supergun" components, close to 40,000 chemical munitions, 690 tonnes of chemical weapons agents and the al-Hakam biological weapons plant. It had discovered evidence of a nuclear programme that was more advanced than previously expected.
Some inspectors suspected that Iraq's NBC programmes remained intact. However, the former Unscom inspector, Scott Ritter, insisted that Iraq was left with no capability to resume NBC programmes or weaponise any hidden stocks. The Bush administration refuses to accept this, but with no reliable monitoring since 1998, there is no way of knowing if Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.
