|
Political Asylum Publicly Debate Politics, War, Media. |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes |
28-01-04, 01:54 PM | #21 |
everything you do
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: wlll come back around to you
Posts: 3,982
|
yo scoob way to ignore a request for a link to the original site from gtrguy.
-------------------------------------------- The Nuclear Market: An Array of Vendors By DAVID E. SANGER Published: January 25, 2004 ASHINGTON, Jan. 24 — The bluntly worded conclusion by the chief American arms inspector in Iraq, David Kay, that Saddam Hussein "got rid" of his unconventional weapons long before the Iraq invasion last year underscores a point that has become clear to intelligence experts in the past few months: President Bush moved first, and most decisively, against a country that posed a smaller proliferation risk than North Korea, Libya and Iran or even one of America's allies, Pakistan. While Dr. Kay's team has come up largely empty-handed so far, contributing to his decision to resign on Friday, a team of American experts visiting North Korea were shown what appeared to be at least a rudimentary ability to produce plutonium — though they were not able to confirm that North Korea spent 2003 churning out new weapons. Advertisement Meanwhile, investigators crawling through Libya's newly opened nuclear weapons program have uncovered a remarkably sophisticated network of nuclear suppliers, spanning the globe from Malaysia to Dubai. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, personally acknowledged what his government has slowly begun to admit over the past month: Pakistani nuclear scientists set up a nuclear bazaar that stretches back 15 years, selling sophisticated technology for enriching uranium for what General Musharraf called "personal financial gain." In retrospect, as even some of the administration's own intelligence experts now acknowledge, each of those programs was more advanced than was Iraq's, and consequently posed a greater threat of passing weapons and technology to terrorists. Speaking to reporters on his plane on Saturday on the way to Tbilisi, Georgia, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that Dr. Kay's comments left open the question of whether weapons stockpiles existed in Iraq, but not the question of Saddam Hussein's abilities and intentions to produce and use such weapons. As a result, he asserted, the comments did not undercut the rationale for going to war. Most important, Mr. Powell said, it was clear that the Iraqis were trying to exhaust their enemies, stretch out the process and have sanctions lifted so they could return to their intention of making weapons. But the information also shows that the National Intelligence Estimate, produced in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies, significantly overestimated Iraq's current abilities. The document provided the rationale for going to war quickly, without waiting for the United Nations Security Council to become convinced of the threat. Intelligence officials now say that comparable assessments understated the progress Iran and Libya were making in enriching uranium and missed many of the signals that Pakistan's scientists had provided their designs to Iran and Libya. To this day, the intelligence agencies are arguing over what exactly the North Koreans are able to accomplish, facing a difficult task of sorting out what is boast and what is real. Yet of all these threats, Mr. Bush determined, by his own account, that the combination of Saddam Hussein's ambitions and his potential to obtain unconventional weapons some day in the near future posed the greater threat. His critics say he was motivated by settling unfinished business; his defenders say it would have been foolish to wait, only to discover too late that Mr. Hussein could unleash hidden weapons. Mr. Bush and his aides are still defending their warnings about mobile biological laboratories, active nuclear programs and the like. The president defended his decision all week, with no apologies but using wording that was far more hedged than the claims he made last year. In a carefully worded assessment in his State of the Union address, he said Dr. Kay's group had found evidence of "W.M.D.-related program activities," words drawn straight from Dr. Kay's interim report to Congress. But he avoided any mention of Dr. Kay's broader conclusions at the time, that Iraq had no active stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, much less the chief inspector's more recent conclusion that it was highly unlikely that such stockpiles would ever be found. Traveling the country this week, Mr. Bush made clear that he had no regrets. He told visitors to the White House that he still believed that eventually weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. In public, he told audiences in Ohio, Arizona and New Mexico this week that Mr. Hussein was a "brutal dictator" who gassed his own people and set up gulags and rape rooms, and deserved the fate he met — a line that drew big applause at every stop. Mr. Bush also argued that Mr. Hussein's fall was making other nations with nuclear ambitions come clean. "Nine months of intense discussion with Qaddafi worked because the word of this country matters," Mr. Bush said in Roswell, N.M., on Thursday, referring to the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi. "When you say something, you better believe it. People now trust the word of America." But America's allies and competitors are likely to interpret Dr. Kay's findings very differently: that America's word — or at least its intelligence findings — cannot be fully trusted. Dr. Kay concluded, for example, that Mr. Hussein once had a very active nuclear program — before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. But along with the chemical and biological programs, it was virtually halted, it now appears, by the combination of intrusive inspections by the United Nations, sanctions that made imports of new technology extremely difficult, and Iraq's own decisions to get rid of some of its stockpiles. "The strategy of containing Iraq appears to have been largely successful," Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, concluded in an interview late last year. "As far as we can tell, the system was working." But Dr. ElBaradei's other conclusion is perhaps the most alarming: that while Iraq was contained, the rest of the world had turned into a "Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation," one where many nuclear aspirants — with the notable exception of Iraq — seemed to go shopping regularly, often without detection. Libya had not actually produced a weapon by the time Mr. Qaddafi decided to dismantle his weapons program. But what was found there has "astounded many of my colleagues," a senior American intelligence official said earlier this week. "It looks like there were factories dedicated around the world to the production of centrifuge parts," including one in Malaysia that American officials are now working to shut down. A network of middlemen, some operating in Dubai, apparently with close ties to the Pakistani scientists, operated with comparative freedom, supplying both Iran and Libya. Mr. Bush has not ignored that network. His "Proliferation Security Initiative" has gathered more than a dozen nations in a coalition to fight trafficking in unconventional weapons. NY times source |
28-01-04, 04:31 PM | #22 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 381
|
Quote:
|
|
28-01-04, 05:32 PM | #23 |
everything you do
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: wlll come back around to you
Posts: 3,982
|
true enough, but 'his' speech was undoubtably not written by 'him'. if it was it would contain such jewels as
"most of our imports come from overseas nowadays" without that comic relief included, i dont find what his speech writers say particularlly interesting. talk about repeating the same shit over and over. |
28-01-04, 07:55 PM | #24 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 381
|
Quote:
speaking of comic relief..... |
|
28-01-04, 08:17 PM | #25 |
my name is Ranking Fullstop
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
|
let's see...we launched a pre-emptive war, $150 billion down the tubes, over 500 dead Americans with more dying every day, mired in a military and financial black hole in the Middle East for years to come - all of this to find out that containment worked as well in Iraq as it does in North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Cuba etc.
|
28-01-04, 09:48 PM | #26 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 381
|
david kay at senate hearing today....
Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay...ipt/index.html |
|
28-01-04, 10:06 PM | #27 | |
everything you do
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: wlll come back around to you
Posts: 3,982
|
Re: david kay at senate hearing today....
Quote:
|
|
28-01-04, 10:41 PM | #28 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 381
|
Re: Re: david kay at senate hearing today....
Quote:
you've learned well from the liberal biased media. |
|
28-01-04, 11:11 PM | #29 |
everything you do
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: wlll come back around to you
Posts: 3,982
|
Kay told the senators that the intelligence he had seen before the war indicated Saddam had banned weapons and that France and Germany -- countries that had opposed the war -- had stated that the Iraqi dictator possessed such weapons.
"It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," Kay said. Kay said that while it was "theoretically possible" large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons could be found in Iraq, the prospect was "highly unlikely." the sentance before and after. |
29-01-04, 01:57 AM | #30 |
Apprentice Napsterite
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Second Rock From The Sun
Posts: 58
|
Wow Thanks for your words.
[quote]Originally posted by ranger121
[b]FAO CORRUPTERBUSTER Seems to me, that you are basing your opinion of what war actually is on the Hollywood version of events. Contrary to popular belief, Private Ryan did not exist. The Americans were not the only nationality who died on the beaches of Normandy, and they did not win the war single-handed, as Mr Speilberg would have you believe. You are right this wasn't a true story and I should have mentioned that in my thread. I guess what I was going after was the Realism of the war at least the first 15 min of the movie. |
29-01-04, 02:11 AM | #31 |
===\/------/\===
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 2,704
|
i liked the part (in the first 15 min) where you were underwater with the bullets visually racing by and the trails they made. cool sound effects too.
war is sooo cool on TV |
30-01-04, 06:17 PM | #32 |
Apprentice Napsterite
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Second Rock From The Sun
Posts: 58
|
How did he do that?
Some times I would like to think that people really know what they are talking about when they post a message. Like the person above me, yeah we spent a lot of money on the war, but that will be paid back with Oil, Yeah we lost some good people over there, which is hard no matter how you look at it. What did the Iraqis loose? Well, a whole lot more then what we lost, they lost their whole country. So when you compare that with the money we spent and the troops that died, I don’t think it is as bad as you make it sound. It really could be worse. I am still waiting for some one to let a nuke off in the United States. Now that would get some people’s attention.
|
31-01-04, 10:21 PM | #33 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 381
|
Quote:
according to homeland security there is a heightened concern of terror threat for the next 72 hours. http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/ Quote:
|
||
01-02-04, 04:17 PM | #34 | ||
===\/------/\===
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 2,704
|
Re: How did he do that?
Quote:
Or did you not know what you were talking about? Quote:
How much more attentive can people be? Houston would be a very prime target to drive the fear further to have americans give up the last of our rights. Like Tommy Franks said, after the next terrorist attack the constitution will be shredded and the grand experiment that was democracy will be gone and replaced with a military dictatorship. |
||
01-02-04, 04:53 PM | #35 | |
Salsera
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Sunshine Coast , Australia
Posts: 3,646
|
Quote:
Let me see.......is this the same 'intelligence' that : 1. Didn't know/warn about sept 11 attacks? 2. Gave us the whole WMD fairytale ? pass thankyou! |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|