WP: Panel: U.S. Ignored Work of U.N. Arms Inspectors

[DeepModem Mom]

Panel: U.S. Ignored Work of U.N. Arms Inspectors

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page A06


Of all the claims U.S. intelligence made about Iraq's arsenal in the fall and winter of 2002, it was a handful of new charges that seemed the most significant: secret purchases of uranium from Africa, biological weapons being made in mobile laboratories, and pilotless planes that could disperse anthrax or sarin gas into the air above U.S. cities.

By the time President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested -- and disproved -- by U.N. inspectors, according to a report commissioned by the president and released Thursday.

The work of the inspectors -- who had extraordinary access during their three months in Iraq between November 2002 and March 2003 -- was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and the intelligence community in the run-up to the war, according to the commission led by former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman.

But the commission's findings, including a key judgment that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, are leading to calls for greater reliance on U.N. inspectors to test intelligence where the United States has little or no access....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21854-2005Apr2.html

[TahitiNut]

1. Ignored ... except as an excuse (and a flock of lies).

I think the Bushoilinis knew that Iraq was effectively disarmed and clawless as a result of both the weapons inspectors and constant flyovers with occasional obliteration of AA sites. They kneecapped 'em then they mugged 'em.

[leesa]

2. Of course they knew. Why else would they send so few troops

The UN reports weren't secret. They knew all of it. They are war criminals.

[grytpype]

3. What a crime.

The people responsible for this war deserve hanging.

[magellan]

4. Anyone who didn't know this already probably drinks the kool-aid.

Nice of the WaPost to provide a remedial history course for those living in BushCo's alternate reality.

[LynnTheDem]

5. "was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration". And THAT is where

the buck stops.

PERIOD.

[LynnTheDem]

6. Drones? Yellowcake? Death-mobiles? We KNEW they were BS in Oct 2002

Yellowcake? Tenet himself told bush in October 2002 NOT to use that, as it was "highly doubtful". Took the UN teams 2 hours on the net to discover the documents were forgeries.

We KNEW this, BUSH KNEW this, way before bush's invasion; it was PUBLIC INFO.

Drones? The top experts on UAVs in the USA, the US Air Force, said Iraq's drones were only for field recon. And they said so back in October 2002 on the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate.

We KNEW this, BUSH KNEW this, way before bush's invasion; it was PUBLIC INFO.

Winnebagos of death? The Iraqis and the UK experts (MI5 and MI6) and the DoD and DIA and the State Department said they were for artillery weather balloons. Their dissenting opinions are in the CIA's October 2002 NIE.

We KNEW this, BUSH KNEW this, way before bush's invasion; it was PUBLIC INFO.

The CIA gave ALL opinions, including all the caveats and dissent; BUSH IGNORED all caveats and dissent. PERIOD.

[w13rd0]

7. "And then Bush poked his head in the door and said:

...fuck Saddam, we're takin him out."

Bush and Cheney were dividing up the oil fields and had made their decision before Baker and his crew even began to think about how to steal the 2000 Election.