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Still waiting for the final tests. You should too.

...and the UN still has not approved of your actions in Iraq or has it?

quote:

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Originally posted by Lindi:
I just checked the cnn website, they said it also might be pesticide, more importantly they also said none of the chemicals were "weaponized". Also all of the US soldiers that reported feeling ill and having rashes were said to be feeling fine again.

Still waiting for the final tests. You should too.

...and the UN still has not approved of your actions in Iraq or has it?

[ 04-08-2003: Message edited by: Lindi ]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lindi:
Was there some specific point in that timeline you wanted me to read?

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LOL, Yea, umm, like the whole of it.

quote:

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Iraq does not have WMD

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-Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf during various UN sessions last year.

quote:

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Be assured Baghdad is safe, secure and great

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-Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, while dodging bullets during rooftop news conference in Baghdad 04/07/03

quote:

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Originally posted by outrider:
quote:
Be assured Baghdad is safe, secure and great

-Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, while dodging bullets during rooftop news conference in Baghdad 04/07/03

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Now...we both know that is propaganda

O

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quote:

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It's as if a bad Saturday Night Live skit is playing in Baghdad.

The Iraqi information minister stands in front of the cameras, a grim smile on his face, a military beret on his head, and declares forcefully, "There are no American troops in Baghdad!" Meanwhile, black smoke rises in the distance behind him, weapons fire can be heard all around, and American tanks rumble down streets only yards away.

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USA Today

My whole point is that hasn't it ALWAYS been "propaganda" as far as Saddam's regime is concerned? Look at the link I gave which Lindi asked if there was anything specific I wanted him to read.

Here is a good article on the poor quality of Arab media in general, written by an Arab:
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD49103

It's no wonder though, when just about all of the media in the middle east is own by dictators or governments. When we DO find saddam's WMD, the arab media will probably just accuse us of planting it because, after all, Iraq has plainly stated in the past that they no longer have any WMD, just like they are now stating we are hundreds of miles from Baghdad.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rivendell:
Now...we both know that is propaganda

[ 04-08-2003: Message edited by: Rivendell ]

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I say "We are fine, how are you"?

quote:

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Originally posted by outrider:
LOL, Yea, umm, like the whole of it. [/QB]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cyborg6:
It really doesn't matter Ellen. There are lots of well documented weapons that have not been found YET.

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The Iraqis say they have destroyed the weapons, the U.N. inspectors say it's unlikely they have more weapons, none of these alleged weapons have been used so far in the war and I've even seen former U.S. officials stating it's highly unlikely Iraq would or could produce weapons without anyone finding out with the close scrutiny they've been under since the Gulf War in -91.

Or the ballistic missiles with chemical warheads? Ready to be loaded with said sarin?

I think even more nasty shit will be found once we start rooting out all the underground bunkers and storage facilities within Iraq. Remember, this is a medium sized country, and it will take a while to search properly.

Imagine that I have a nuke. And I hide said nuke in a building somewhere in California. How long would it take to find it? Quite a while, as we have a lot of ground to cover.

O

O

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This is pesticides. I'm leaving work now, but I'll dig up the confirmations this were no chemical weapons later. And certainly not Sarin - nor mustard.

quote:

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Some soldiers involved in the raid at the military camp reported feeling ill, but it appears they were suffering from dehydration, Freakly said. They're all feeling fine now, he added.

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I have to dig up the articles which confirms what they found weren't chemical weapons later (I've read them), as I said, but take note that this was posted on the 7th of april. Makes you wonder why Pentagon hasn't confirmed the finding of chemical weapons yet, right?

quote:

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"No hard finding" on Iraqi chemical weapons: Pentagon

WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 08, 2003
US forces have yet to make a confirmed discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq, a top military official said Tuesday.
US defense officials on Monday said preliminary tests showed that barrels found at a military site near the central Iraqi town of Karbala contain chemical agents.

But Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice director for operations at the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news briefing there were some positive field tests "but they were mixed."

"We have taken samples out to get definitive testing," he said. "It is something we're looking at closely, but no hard finding."

According to US news reports, US Marines said they found a warehouse near Baghdad's main airport containing missiles loaded with warheads filled with mustard gas and sarin.

McChrystal said he had seen a news report on the rocket rounds. "But I have seen nothing in official reports that would corroborate that."

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And another one...where Hans Blix expresses his concerns.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2933923.stm

quote:

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Iraq's weapons 'must be found'

In a presentation before the war, the US tried to prove Iraq still had banned weapons
The US defence secretary has said that finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is still a major concern.
Asked at a news conference whether the rationale behind the war required that such banned weapons be found, Donald Rumsfeld said he did not "quite get the thrust of the question", but agreed that "it obviously is important to find them".

Washington based its case for an invasion on Iraq's alleged possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but UN inspectors failed to find definitive examples of such possession and fears that Iraqi forces would use such weapons have failed to materialise.

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had no doubt they would be found.

Mr Rumsfeld said weapons production facilities needed to be "found and secured".

He warned of a "nexus between terrorist states... and terrorist groups".

The possibility that "some of these weapons could leave the country and [get into] the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect," he said.

'No doubt'

Facing questions in parliament, Mr Blair said it was not surprising that no banned weapons had yet been found, only three weeks after US and British forces invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

But he added: "I have no doubt at all that these weapons of mass destruction exist... The truth is there has been a six-month campaign of concealment."

It was important for the world to have any banned weapons finds "objectively verified", perhaps by United Nations inspectors, he added.

This concern was echoed by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Mr ElBaradei said any suspected weapons finds by the UK or the US should be verified by UN inspectors "to generate the required credibility".

Mr Blair and Mr ElBaradei's stress on external verification of suspect weaponry found is being seen as tacit acknowledgement that some observers believe coalition forces could be tempted to fabricate such "evidence" if it proves elusive.

Blix's doubts

In an interview with Spanish daily El Pais, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix hinted he believed Iraq's contended possession of weapons of mass destruction had served as a pretext for a US-led invasion.

"There is evidence this war was planned well in advance," he said.

"You ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they [the US] did to try and demonstrate that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons, like the fake contract with Niger," he said.

He was referring to the discovery by UN inspectors that documents the US alleged proved Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state had been forged.

Mr Blix said he thought finding banned weapons in Iraq was now a low priority for coalition forces - and that "today, the main aim is to change the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein".

'Threat remains'

US commanders continue to stress the threat posed by banned weapons.

On Wednesday, US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks warned that Saddam loyalists were still holding out in some parts of northern Iraq, and might resort to using weapons of mass destruction.

On Monday, US defence officials said that initial field tests on a number of chemicals found near the city of Karbala suggested the possible presence of the nerve agents sarin and tabun, as well as mustard gas.

But there have already been a series of false alarms.

On Saturday, US officials admitted to the latest, when they said tests on thousands of vials of white powder touted to be a possible chemical warfare agent revealed it was more likely to be an explosive or antidote.

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And to address Outtie's post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1573-2003Apr9.html

quote:

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Nuclear Site Safety Tightened
Radiation Detected At Iraqi Complex

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A36

Days after the site was overrun by Marines, U.S. military commanders said yesterday they have imposed heightened security and safety measures at a nuclear complex where the Iraqi government warehoused radioactive material.

Iraqi forces abandoned the Tuwaitha nuclear site over the weekend, prompting fears among nuclear experts that the facility might be plundered, or that arriving U.S. troops or Iraqi civilians might be exposed to potentially dangerous doses of radiation.

The site, about 15 miles south of Baghdad, is Iraq's only internationally sanctioned repository for nuclear material. Since the early 1990s, large quantities of uranium and dozens of radioactive devices used in medicine and research have been stored at the site in warehouses that are sealed and monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

Marines who have held the facility since Sunday have entered some of the complex's bunkers and recorded high levels of radiation inside, according to reports from embedded journalists. The accounts fueled speculation initially that the troops had discovered a secret nuclear weapons laboratory.

Among U.S. and international nuclear experts familiar with the site, the reports raised concerns that the IAEA's seals may have broken, leaving the nuclear material vulnerable and Iraqis and U.S. troops in danger of radioactive contamination.

"There is a risk to troops who might enter these secure areas, and there's a risk of looting that could allow the material to be spread around," said one nuclear expert close to the IAEA's Iraq inspection team.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Qatar said coalition forces were familiar with the materials stored at Tuwaitha and had taken steps to protect troops and guard against theft.

Built in the 1960s, Tuwaitha was the birthplace of Iraq's previous nuclear weapons program and the site of a French-built nuclear reactor that was destroyed in an Israeli bombing in 1981. All of Iraq's known stocks of weapons-grade uranium were removed following the 1991 Gulf War, but Iraq was allowed to keep about 1.7 tons of low-enriched uranium and nearly 500 tons of natural uranium at Tuwaitha under IAEA safeguards. Low-enriched uranium is not immediately useable for a weapon but could be valuable to anyone trying to build one.

The site also served as a repository for about 150 pieces of radioactive equipment that Iraq was permitted to keep for medical or industrial applications. Some of the devices contain high levels of radiation and could be potentially used in a "dirty bomb," said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

"This might be a good opportunity for [coalition forces] to take this stuff out now," he said. "Why leave it for the next Iraqi government to deal with?"

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Ok...heading to the gym now...will check back later...

I can see why the CIA focused on the weapons of mass destruction thing cant you? It is exactly as you are implying, that they could gain access to the region and kill the regime. And that is what they did.

Yes freeing the people was part of it.

Yes securing the region is part of it.

Yes a war with radical Islam is under way.

quote:

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BAGHDAD, Iraq U.S. Marines may have found weapons-grade plutonium in a massive underground facility discovered beneath Iraq's Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex, an embedded reporter told Fox News Thursday.

Coalition forces are investigating a stash of radioactive material found at the site south of Baghdad, the reporter, Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, told Fox News.

The material was discovered at the complex, which is operated by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and is located south of Baghdad's suburbs.

While officials aren't prepared to call the discovery a "smoking gun," two preliminary tests conducted on the material have indicated that it may be weapons-grade plutonium.

The discovery of the underground labyrinth of labs and warehouses was unexpected, Fox News has confirmed, and forces in the area are testing a variety of things to best determine the significance of the find.

So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have found 14 buildings that have high levels of radiation, Prine reported Thursday.

His report noted that some of the tests have found nuclear residue too deadly for human contact.

The Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts" a few hundred meters outside the nuclear compound, where locals say "missile water" is stored in enormous caverns, reported Prine, who is embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division.

"It's amazing," Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist told the newspaper. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

This underground discovery could still test to be perfectly legitimate and offer no proof of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The CIA encouraged international inspectors in the fall of 2002 to probe Al Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors came away empty-handed.

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997, told the Tribune-Review.

"The Marines should be particularly careful because of those high readings," he told the paper. "Three hours at levels like that and people begin to vomit. That leads me to wonder, if the readings are accurate, whether radioactive material was deliberately left there to expose people to dangerous levels.

"You couldn't do scientific work in levels like that. You would die."

Capt. John Seegar, a combat engineer commander from Houston, is currently running the operation in Al Tuwaitha. "I've never seen anything like it, ever," he told the Tribune-Review. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

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It does beg to question why not a single inspector would have been concerned about any leaking radiation from that site during the many years of inspections regardless of what it turns out to be(left over waste etc etc). Kinda makes ya wonder just how effective inspections were, eh?

I mean, just what are "IAEA safeguards"?? Making sure the barrels don't rust all the way thru???

quote:

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Iraq was allowed to keep about 1.7 tons of low-enriched uranium and nearly 500 tons of natural uranium at Tuwaitha under IAEA safeguards. Low-enriched uranium is not immediately useable for a weapon but could be valuable to anyone trying to build one

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You only report what you don't expect to find, right?

And WP is leftwing?! Cool...I didn't know that...I only searched for articles supporting my view ;P

Cy...that's kinda my point as well...

quote:

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1382
posted 04-10-2003 03:17 PM
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Come on rivfella and you will also be assimilated!
I can see why the CIA focused on the weapons of mass destruction thing cant you? It is exactly as you are implying, that they could gain access to the region and kill the regime. And that is what they did.

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And that is part of why I disagreed with going to war in the first place...

quote:

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I mean, just what are "IAEA safeguards"?? Making sure the barrels don't rust all the way thru???

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quote:

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Originally posted by Rivendell:
How do we know they didn't detect anything? From my article quoted above:
And that is part of why I disagreed with going to war in the first place...

Now...let's see if they have gotten Saddam already or if they will (I certainly hope so).

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Well, if they didn't detected radiation levels as high as they are talking about, sumtin musta been wrong with their equipment

"You only report what you don't expect to find, right?"

Right.

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997, told the Tribune-Review.

This just...in

More breaking spin from the right:

quote:

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BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Marines near Baghdad may have found a mobile biological- or chemical-weapons lab, Fox News learned Thursday afternoon.

Resembling a refrigerated truck from the outside, and containing guided-missile support equipment, the truck was found to have a false internal wall that concealed an remote-controlled electronic pulley-and-winch system and several open bins and containers.

Investigators told Fox News the system resembled a hazardous-materials lab, where substances could be mixed, cooled and heated without direct human contact.

Hazardous materials may have been found inside the truck as well.

Marines found the truck parked at what resembled a construction site, but it started to drive away as they approached and refused orders to stop. The U.S. forces fired upon the truck. There was no information on the driver, but video footage of the scene showed the driver's-door window shot out.

Anti-aircraft guns, a surface-to-air missile and several caches of weapons and ammunition were also found at the site.

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btw, Riv, the herald is a known left spinner too, hehe.

quote:

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PARIS (AP) France on Thursday hailed the fall of Saddam Hussein, but President Jacques Chirac added that full sovereignty must be returned to Iraq as soon as possible and with the legitimacy of the United Nations.

"It is now necessary to create the conditions which will give the Iraqi people its dignity in newfound freedom", a statement from the French president’s office said.

"We are at a decisive moment in the history of Iraq", French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said, adding that with the fall of Saddam "a somber page is turning."

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"I mean if someone broke into your home or place of bussines with the intent of stealing all your belongings, you would undoubtedly use your constitutional right to blow them away, wouldn't you?"

I dunno, Lindi, what would you do? Slap at them playfully and purr, "Stop that Silly!" with an exaggerated lisp and a sly wink?

quote:

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Originally posted by outrider:
Damn, even when somebody like Chirac says something positive, Lindi still has to be negative, lol.

"I mean if someone broke into your home or place of bussines with the intent of stealing all your belongings, you would undoubtedly use your constitutional right to blow them away, wouldn't you?"

I dunno, Lindi, what would you do? Slap at them playfully and purr, "Stop that Silly!" with an exaggerated lisp and a sly wink?

Get that bike fixed, you need to unwind

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Just thought that if you were going to wildly quote things of the net, why not quote a bit of everything and not just the stuff you want to hear?

When I meantion stuff is negative and needs to be solved you just start critizing my person and go all defencive. Yes you won the war, time to start cleaning up.

Now if my home was being broken into I would first contact the police and then grabb something heavy and try to convince the burglar othervise. I've recently moved to a very quiet neighbough hood just outside of town so that is probably not going to happen to me, but in Bhagdad contacting authorities is not even a possibility because even if you got hold os a US Soldier they seem to lack any interest to do anything about it.

Civilians are affraid to leave their homes to go to hospitals and the hospitals that haven't been robbed have closed their doors in fear of being robbed.

Sounds very chaoting and very depressing to me, wonder why I refuse to see the bright side of it all.

I get a chuckle how you're so concerned with looting of property now that the US forces control Baghdad, but you didn't seem too concerned about the children being jailed or the murder and raping of various adults while saddam controlled Baghdad.

Climb that wall!

We find a ton of fissionable (nuclear) material, and the opposition claims that the Iraqis were merely using it to make glow-in-the-dark watch faces, NOTHING wrong with that!

We find barrels full of chemicals, and missiles in the same building, but NO, they are merely pesticides, and the missiles are the delivery system, I guess!

Now we find this portable chem lab (and probably a few more just like it, before it is all over...) and I am pretty certain that it is merely a hot fudge sundae vendor, and because the fudge is hot, you NEED the unattended handling equipment installed!

O

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