You may want to read the declassified releases of the NIE's since that time. The report to Congress listed that several hundred WMD's have been found since then. If you cross check the NIE to the UN reports, you'll also find that some of the weapons found were reported as destoyed previously.

Some of the empty warheads found never existed according to documentation. Others contained degraded weapons chemicals from obvious long term storage. In either case it shows a trend of claims of destruction not being accurate at all.

Take that into consideration while pouring through the hundreds of pages in the UN report on unresolved weapons issues concerning the location or positive proof of destruction of the old WMDs.

 

Dog gone it! You need to quit confusing the issue with facts and common sense!

 

Are you talking about the NIE report that was Declassified in 2003? Dude, that's OLD news and since been discredited. The CIA's FINAL report has stated pretty Clearly that No WMD have been found.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7634313/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134625,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3718150.stm


Let's not try to rewrite history here....

 

There is no such thing as a FINAL report from the CIA.

 

The CIA is but one agency that reports to form the NIE. It's obvious some research is in order.

 

Again, the latest "Declassified" NIE report I was able to find was from 2003. Could you provide a source of a report since then?

The research I did provided SEVERAL links (I included a few) of the CIA's "final" report on the matter that clearly states they found no WMD. (Just Click on the Blue linky things I provided...)

The CIA's intelligence seemed to be good enough to get us INTO a war, I'd think it would be good enough to explain what's happened Since...

 

Top secret!
If they tell ya , they gotta kill ya!

 

One good point to be made about Saddam being left in power was that he provided a point of stability in an otherwise unstable region. Whether or not he had WMDs, VMDs, or STDs, the fact is that he had a good bluff going and it scared the neighbors. Enough to keep them at bay. Now we have to think about what happens when we leave Iraq and how safe the country will actually be from foreign invasion. The only way for it not to matter to us is to shift our energy dependence.

 

Don't give to much info!!! read post 59 again

 

There are NIEs at least as recent as 2006 that have declassified sections available. One of the '06 reports concerned the effects of the war and possible outcomes.

A document from the National Intelligence Agency to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence dated 21 June 2006 cites approximately 500 mustard and sarin munitions found since the 2003 invasion. I've got a copy of it in Acrobat format, but it's a scan of a fax so I can't copy paste it.


Rather than look at the news people versions of things, over the last few years I've done an exhaustive reading of a large number of actual documents on the UN and various other websites with the actual reports. In many cases you can find positives and negatives in almost all of them, but undisputed facts come to the surface. Even prewar they found chemicals, evidence of reworking equipment for such, and lack of cooperation. One of the first IEDs reported found was a binary chemical warhead, this was reported even on the news as the initial conflict stage ramped down.

My personal opinion is that all the news type "spin" made most people either think nothing existed, or that vast warehouses of stuff existed. Everything I saw leads me to the fact that some chemicals were found, but not in huge quantities. The alarming thing was the fact that Iraq had a great deal of information, equipment, and obvious intent to continue production on short notice if they desired. Much of the above was illegal to have at all due to restrictions placed on them by UN Resolutions. There are also cases shown in the prewar reports where entire buildings were suddenly leveled, all materials removed, and the site sanitized. These buildings contained equipment subject to inspection and such movement or destruction was required to be reported and witnessed by inspectors.

When broken down into looking at raw facts and reports rather than the media's version of things, there is no possible way I could conclude that Iraq was not active in WMD programs.

 

Again, I'd love to read these reports myself. Could you please provide a link.

I had Big issues accepting the "fact" that Iraq was a "threat" when we went in there. We had 60% of the country under a No Fly Zone. Destroying at will any radar installation or facility we saw as a "threat".

The country was Locked down under an embargo. We were monitoring everything going In and OUT of the country (unlike what was going out of North Korea).

We Did have inspecter's on the ground, I don't deny they were being played, but still, not a Threat that warranted Invasion and the Death of 4000 Soldiers, Trillions of dollars spent, 20,000 American Casualties, and Tens of Thousands of Iraqi's Killed...

Al Quada was NOT in Iraq.

Osama Bin Laden, the person that DID attack the US on 9/11 is still at large, sending video's to his group, and we can only assume planning More attacks as we speak...

 

Provide a link? Did you read his post?

You think that you can just point then click and have the entire story? You think that you're getting the entire story from a three minute piece on the evening news, or even some liberal commentator doing an "expose" on one of the cable news networks?

This is off topic, but relevant. Last night I watched a program, Frontline, on PBS. It was about how healthcare is done in some other countries. I believe that it was a fair representation of the selected countries healthcare systems. The commentator would ask at the end of each piece, "how many people go bankrupt in your country paying for healthcare?" The answer was none, because the few countries healthcare systems being highlighted had national healthcare. Sounds good at face value but they didn't mention some pertinent information. Like the size of their populations as compared to ours, or how much tax payers in the US pay for non healthcare related social programs, as compared to the other countries. My point is, though this sounded like a rosey, feel good, lets embrace national healthcare story, it wasn't the entire story.

Unfortunately, people in this country want to just point then click and believe they have the answers. I think that's why people repeat the talking points of the mass media, and frankly, far left, liberal talk radio/blogs, verbatim. They think they have all the answers but it's actually people like signmaster who have put in the effort to come to an educated conclusion who are closer to the truth. I guess it doesn't matter though, if he can't provide a link to his years of effort to find the truth then people just continue to believe what they're being told.

 

Huh? So I should just accept "what I'm being Told" by Signmaster??? I'm asking for a link to the 2006 report so I can Do the Research myself and NOT rely on the media. (which I thought you were praising Signmaster for!)

 

United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission

I would suggest that people really wanting to know the history of events post Gulf War read most if not all of the links on that page, including the UN Security Council Resolutions.

A point that is significant beyond the weapons issues is just how far back some of these resolutions include wording about terrorism, and requirements for ending it. Over this time frame of some 12 years, various countries other than the permament Security Council member nations rotated in and out of the SC. If you cross reference to the SC section and look at the votes, it is rare that any country ever voted in opposition to resolutions taking action against Iraq. These were not all countries were are allied with, and often those most of the western world considers as hostile towards our way of life.




Declassified Key Judgments of the National
Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism:
Implications for the United States” dated April 2006

This breaks down the effects of the war in Iraq and expected reactions by terrorist groups should either sucess or failure on their parts be perceived.



If anyone wants a copy of the fax I mentioned from the National Intelligence Agency that references the chemical munitions since the war start, send me a PM and I'll email it. I can find a bunch of references to it and parts of it in searches, but saved the PDF file of the complete fax some time back. Being as I don't want to show part of the story, I'd rather allow people to see the entire thing.



As for the monitors and what was going in and out of the country, both the UN reports and the Oil For Food Program stuff counters those claims. They found rockets in junk yards in other countries that left just pre-war. They used to have photos of that and some of the vanishing buildings in one of the supplemental sections. The OFFP sites show just how vast the smuggling operations were, and how much money it generated. In theory a few hundred inspectors and monitors sound great, but in reality you can't police a country the size of California with even thousands of people if the country is trying to manipulate them.

 

Great info. Thanks Signmaster!