100's of WMD's found in iraq

MaynardMeek

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This is just breaking, but it has been verified that coalition forces from 2003 and now have found over 500 units of WMD that contain Chemical and Biological Weapons consiting of Mustard gas and saran gas. The De-classified form of the doccument has confirmed they have found and have in posetion 500 units of these WMD's. Senate committee is currently looking over the classified doccument which hold even more information regarding more WMD finds In iraq and WMD found to have been moved out of Iraq. Senate is hoping to declassify more of this doccument.
 
motiv8er

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This is just breaking, but it has been verified that coalition forces from 2003 and now have found over 500 units of WMD that contain Chemical and Biological Weapons consiting of Mustard gas and saran gas. The De-classified form of the doccument has confirmed they have found and have in posetion 500 units of these WMD's. Senate committee is currently looking over the classified doccument which hold even more information regarding more WMD finds In iraq and WMD found to have been moved out of Iraq. Senate is hoping to declassify more of this doccument.
Yeah!

(And Bush's polls creep up another 2%)
 
CDB

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Yeah!

(And Bush's polls creep up another 2%)
I seriously doubt this will matter regarding polls. He's been in charge during a war where over 2500 soldiers died, that probably has his party screwed more than a little, even if they turn out to be right about the WMDs. From what I understand though they are pre '91 war and might have even been buried before that war, so it's not a confirmation of an existing WMD program since the first gulf war. I'm waiting to see what else they have found.
 
Jayhawkk

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Re: WMD's Found In Iraq

Repubs or Demos...Different sides of the same sleezy coin.
 

MaynardMeek

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more of the story... in full.. or sorta full ... something full.. maybe 50% full... i am gunna go now




By THOMAS WATKINS
Associated Press Writer

(AP) - Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically "sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles," in Iraq.

Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

According to Santorum, "That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country."

Reading from the document, Santorum added, "Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the Black Market. Use of these weapons by terrorist or insurgent groups would have implications for coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside of Iraq cannot be ruled out. The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles. And I underscore filled."

Santorum said the "purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions."

While acknowledging that the agents "degrade over time," the document said that the chemicals "remain hazardous and potentially lethal."

The media has reported that "insurgents and Iraqi groups" want to "acquire and use chemical weapons," Santorum noted.

The Pennsylvania senator called the finding "incredibly" significant.

"The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false," Santorum said. "We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country."
 

size

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I am not surprised. In my mind, Iraq and surrounding nations in the region probably all have biological weapons. It is simply a game of hide and seek.
 
yeahright

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more of the story... in full.. or sorta full ... something full.. maybe 50% full... i am gunna go now


By THOMAS WATKINS
Associated Press Writer

(AP) - Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically "sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles," in Iraq.

Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

According to Santorum, "That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country."

Reading from the document, Santorum added, "Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the Black Market. Use of these weapons by terrorist or insurgent groups would have implications for coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside of Iraq cannot be ruled out. The most likely munitions remaining are sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles. And I underscore filled."

Santorum said the "purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions."

While acknowledging that the agents "degrade over time," the document said that the chemicals "remain hazardous and potentially lethal."

The media has reported that "insurgents and Iraqi groups" want to "acquire and use chemical weapons," Santorum noted.

The Pennsylvania senator called the finding "incredibly" significant.

"The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false," Santorum said. "We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country."

:icon_lol: This is the news? That our troops have stumbled across little caches of 30 year old mortar and artillery shells (which we supported Iraq using during the Iran-Iraq war)?

The reason I'm so dismissive of this is the whole "we can now show you excerpts of a secret classified report"......just in time to try and save ourselves in the upcoming congressional elections.

Ask yourself this. Can you think of a SINGLE reason why the finding of such projectiles would have been classified?

A single one?

Iraq is freakin covered with ammunition dumps and unexploded ordinance. I would be stunned if we hadn't been stumbling across and cleaning up such ordinance. Santorum is 30% behind in the polls and freakin desperate.
 

MaynardMeek

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one reason would be to hide the locations of said agents to maybe prevent anyone going in to find more in near by locations to use on us or sell? but again.. total guess on my part
 
yeahright

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one reason would be to hide the locations of said agents to maybe prevent anyone going in to find more in near by locations to use on us or sell? but again.. total guess on my part
With 130,000 troops in country you'd imagine we would just take care of them. Sarin degrades really quickly. Mustard gas isn't all that bad as long as it isn't inhaled.

Setting aside our usual political banter :duel: this just smells like the half-truths that got us into the war. If this were true. George Bush would have pulled out a box of them during the 2004 election to shut Kerry the hell up.
 

MaynardMeek

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you are 100% correct... if there was information during election time.. Bush should have waved that flag around like a PR on Pride Day...

but... bush doesn't really care what anyone thinks.. so... hummmm ... or something
 

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EDITED POST: Merged with existing thread on the same article.


FOXNews.com - Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq - U.S. Senate

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq

Wednesday, June 21, 2006




WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document.

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified documents from Iraq," Barnes said.

The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.

At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.

FOX News' Jim Angle and Sharon Kehnemui Liss contributed to this report.
 
CDB

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If this were true. George Bush would have pulled out a box of them during the 2004 election to shut Kerry the hell up.
Unless he honestly believed the information should have remained classified. I don't have a high opinion of politicians but they don't always act like scum. Reasons for classification aren't always clear, aren't always there. The government is in the habit of keeping secrets. Christ it took them like 5 decades to declassify info about experiments with mylar balloons. However, perhaps we don't necessarily have the manpower to get rid of them as quickly as we'd like, or as securely as we'd like. Maybe we have the manpower but can't make it a priority now for other reasons. Perhaps we don't want people knowing where the stashes are because they might discern a pattern in the stashes that would lead to finding undiscovered ones. Maybe any number of other reasons, up to and including the fact that these were pre '91 weapons and so not relevant to the debate.

The idea that Republicans and/or Bush would take the beating they did over the WMD issue if they had proof otherwise seems just as fishy to me. I mean what's the plan, let themselves get ****ed left and right on this issue and then pull out the chastity belt? The Dems already shot their load over this issue and Reps have for the most part acknowledged it was a screw up. To turn around and then say "Oh, we were right..." makes them look even more idiotic and incompetent to anyone and everyone except their already loyal followers.
 
yeahright

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This is your explanation for this unexpected revelation:

paSenateMay

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll in Pennsylvania shows Republican Senator Rick Santorum solidifying his standing as most vulnerable congressional incumbent this election season.

Santorum now trails Democratic challenger Bob Casey 56% to 33%. Our latest survey of the governor's race also brings good news for the Democrat in that contest.
 
Jayhawkk

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They closed down a post in Maryland and before they turned it over for civilian useage they had to dig through housing for UXO's. They found morters, artillary shells, grenades, and mustard gas...Military families had been living over this stuff for years.


Of ****in course there's covered munitions over there.
 

Irish_Rogue

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We all know there are WMD, the US sold them too Iraq during their war with Iran. The gas used to kill all the Kurds was American purchased.
 

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This is ridicoulous!!!

Why can't both sides take some credit here and move on and right over other issues?

Both, Republicans and Democrats should take credit for ousting Sadam Hussain, for him being tried right now, for killing his two scum sons, for killing Zarquai, for having a complete democratic government set up there.

A lot of Democrats voted for this war. So they should be happy WMD's were found.

I knew far left liberals would minimize this. We, as the general public know now that 5oo weapons of mass killings were found. Who knows, maybe there are tons more. To trivalize this, as, well, these are pre 1991 weapons. HE WASN'T SUPPOSE TO HAVE ANY WMD's!!!!! NONE!!!!! And he agreed to that, well over 10 years ago.

We werent just about re-constituted programs of WMD's, but also hiding old WMD's, that he was barring inspetors from finding.

And using this as a ploy for the elections in Nov. Come on. That is ridicolous also. Bush would have used this info for his re-election that he was supposedly going to lose. There are only a few seats up for grabs. from now to Nov is a long time away. If that was the case, they would release this is mid Sept/Oct. By then this will be a story in the back pages.

Far left liberals are really too much. The worst part is that the Democratic party is catering to these people. sad. This was the party of WW II.

And to equate Iraq with WW II, that it is longer than WW II is forgetting a few facts. WW II was going on much longer than before we entered it. There was more American deaths in WW II. A nuke was used, 2x, to end that war. And we were in Europe and Japan a very long time, costing us plenty in troops, money to re-build those places.

And then to equate Iraq with Vietnam is also forgetting facts. Vietnam lasted much longer and the death tolls were much greater.

2500 American soliders killed in action is horrible. But in warfare, you have to put that in prospective compared to every other war we have been in. Excluding the 1st Gulf War, 2500 KIA is not alot. With that said, every soliders life is precious, and I pray for each and everyone of them to come back home, alive and in one piece.

If Democrats didnt vote for this war, then they could dump on anything good coming out of there and say, lets get out. But they did vote to go to war. So the good things that come out of this, take some credit. Stand with the Republicans and say, HOORAH, for all the good positive things happening and weep for every solider that loses his life or a part of themselves there.
 
yeahright

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So they should be happy WMD's were found.
But they weren't. We have a Senator who is 30% behind in his re-election claiming that some decades old artillery shells are "WMDs" to try and salvage his sad political career. At best, they have some old (probably inert) battlefield munitions which I've heard reports about since shortly after "mission accomplished" was declared. There doesn't appear to be anything new here at all....just a new spin put out by some desperate politicians.
 

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But they weren't. We have a Senator who is 30% behind in his re-election claiming that some decades old artillery shells are "WMDs" to try and salvage his sad political career. At best, they have some old (probably inert) battlefield munitions which I've heard reports about since shortly after "mission accomplished" was declared. There doesn't appear to be anything new here at all....just a new spin put out by some desperate politicians.
These are 500 missels filled with mustard and saran gasses. These were the same agents Sadam Hussian used to kill thousands of his own country men, women and children. And he didnt use 500 missels to do it either. This weapons are from 1991. That is only 15 years ago. I wouldnt be too comfortable with him selling, giving 500 missels filled with 15 year old sara and mustard gas missels to explode in our country.

This is all new. and there is supposedly more out there. And dont forget all those tapes they found, which they are translating of sadam talking about WMD's and using them to go to war with us.

This is insane. Saddam agreed right after the 1st Gulf war to get rid of his stock piles of WMD's, which included chemical and biological weapons. He agreed to not develop new WMD's. He agreed unfettered access by UN Inspectors to make sure his stock piles were gone and accounted for. He agreed to a no fly zone, to protect the kurds.

And what did he do instead. He played games with the inspectors for over 10 years. Violated the no fly zone, and took shots at our piolts who were enforcing the no fly zone. They have tapes of him talking about re-constituting his WMD programs and we find old (1991 old missels, not 1941 missels, so I guess you would call 15 year old saran gas and mustard gas too old to use, your dreaming) WMD's that were suppose to have been destroyed and accounted for to the UN inspectors.

I doubt Bush, politically speaking, would hold onto this report, for 5 years, just in case a few seats would be jeopardy of losing, when he, himself was in jeopardy of losing the presidency over Iraq. I think he would have pulled this card out to Kerry during the debates.

I would love to see what liberals would say if Bin Laden is caught in the near future.
 
yeahright

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These are 500 missels filled with mustard and saran gasses.
500 missiles? Where do you get this? Not even Fox News is claiming this. Munitions are not the same as missiles. The term munitions generally refers to ammunition (not applicable here), mortar and artillery rounds. Missiles are an entirely different type of weapon and generally speaking, they aren't armed with nerve or blistering agents (they don't disperse well from a missile).

EDITED: Just went and read the "report" released by Santorum. It's more of a joke than I originally thought. It talks about "filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War" (i.e. from the Iran-Iraq war) "projectiles" are "assessed to still exist.". In other words, they've found a couple hundred old artillery shells and mortar rounds (some empty, some containing degraded traces of old chemical weapons) and they are guessing (assessed) that there are others laying about the country.

:icon_lol:

I think the real story here is "Senator Santorum in a desperate bid to save his failing re-election campaign issues blatantly false claims about WMDs."
 
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All the argument over WMD as the cause of regime change in Iraq, misses one irrefutable fact, ie. Saddam was on the verge of getting rid of UN sanction and was on track to reconstitute his temporarily halted WMD programs. There was no ambiguity about this. UN Oil for Food program was already busted by Saddam. The weapon inspectors were thrown out of Iraq long ago. Saddam was shooting at Allied airplanes everyday. Saddam was at the brink of success in enlisting Russia, China and the hypocritical French and German to lift UN sanction. Saddam has already invited Al Qaeda over to Iraq. Zarqawi met Dr Germs and Mrs Anthrax, 2 of Saddam's biological weapon specialists.

Anyone who thinks that it was wrong to get rid of Saddam simply either does not know all the facts or chooses to ignore them. Anyone who thinks that Saddam was going to live a life of peace and harmony and be like Dalai Lama, is a fvcking moron.
 

BioHazzard

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All this bellyaching reminds me of a remark by a retired intelligence operative.

He said if we had gone into Afghanistan and killed Osama before 9/11, all the leftists and bleeding heart would be crying foul. They would be crying about no evidence of Osama intending to carry out 9/11. They would be crying about there was no evidence of any bomb. They would be crying about a crap load of other legality garbage.

So, what else is new?
 

BioHazzard

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....I would love to see what liberals would say if Bin Laden is caught in the near future.....
1. They would say it doesn't matter, because Al Qaeda is sooo powerful.

2. They would say it doesn't change a thing, because Jihad is so frightening.

3. They would say it doesn't matter as they are a thousand Osama's to take his place.

4. They would say it doesn't matter, because America is still the threat to world peace and is responsible for all the terrorism in the world.


Until we catch Osama, they will just complain that Osama is still at large.

Liberals are genetically predisposed to talking from both sides of the mouth. :D
 

BioHazzard

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..... If this were true. George Bush would have pulled out a box of them during the 2004 election to shut Kerry the hell up....
During the 2004 campaign there was a brief period when reelection looked like in doubt, Bush agonized over whether to release classified information regarding the success made in the gloabl war against terrorism. It was a choice between potentially jeorpadizing the continuing war effort and thus risking American and its allies' lives, and winning an election. Ultimately Bush decided not to compromise the war effort. Still, he went on and got re-elected, and thus passed the test of true character.

When historians look back, the world will remember GW Bush as one of the greatest American Presidents.
 
yeahright

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June 21, 2006
Poll: Santorum Approval Rating Declines
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Sen. Rick Santorum's approval rating has skidded to a four-year low, the latest sign of distress for the outspoken conservative and ally of President Bush, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The lead for Santorum's Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Bob Casey, has stretched to 18 percentage points since early May.

Casey leads Santorum by 52 percent to 34 percent -- the biggest margin since October, when the numbers were the same, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.

Only 38 percent of respondents said they approved of the way Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, is handling his job. Forty-five percent said they disapproved and 16 percent did not express an opinion.

It was the first time Santorum's approval rating dropped below 40 percent since Quinnipiac began measuring it in June 2002.

Bush's approval rating in the state rebounded somewhat in the latest poll, to 34 percent from 30 percent in May. The proportion of Pennsylvania voters who approved of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq increased to 35 percent from 29 percent.

''Senator Santorum appears to be his own worst enemy in his battle for re-election,'' said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Connecticut-based university's polling institute.

In the May survey, Casey, the son of late Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey, led Santorum by 49 percent to 36 percent.

More than 40 percent of Casey's supporters said they are more against electing Santorum to a third term than for Casey, the poll showed.

Virginia Davis, a Santorum campaign spokesman, said polls are unreliable at this stage in the campaign. Santorum plans to air the first statewide TV commercials of his campaign on Friday, she said.

Larry Smar, a spokesman for the Casey campaign, agreed that it is too early to read too much into the polls but that Casey's continuing strength in polling bodes well for the November election.

Quinnipiac conducted telephone interviews with 1,076 Pennsylvania voters between June 13 and Monday. The results carry a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

------

On the Net:

Quinnipiac polls in Pennsylvania: Quinnipiac University | Pennsylvania (PA)
 
yeahright

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During the 2004 campaign there was a brief period when reelection looked like in doubt, Bush agonized over whether to release classified information regarding the success made in the gloabl war against terrorism. It was a choice between potentially jeorpadizing the continuing war effort and thus risking American and its allies' lives, and winning an election. Ultimately Bush decided not to compromise the war effort. Still, he went on and got re-elected, and thus passed the test of true character.

When historians look back, the world will remember GW Bush as one of the greatest American Presidents.
:blink: :toofunny:
 

BioHazzard

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Yeah. But Bush is the president and you are not. :D

You can't argue with history, and history is being made by GW Bush. History will remember GW Bush well. And his critics? ;) Who will remember them or even know of them? ;)

What can you do? :)
 
yeahright

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Yeah. But Bush is the president and you are not. :D

You can't argue with history, and history is being made by GW Bush. History will remember GW Bush well. And his critics? ;) Who will remember them or even know of them? ;)

What can you do? :)

LOL. It's all good. You're entitled to your (crazy) opinions. :)
 

BioHazzard

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Your irrational hatred has blinded you and rendered you unable to recognize an exceptionally noble and selfless act. :nono:

We must not let our emotion cloud out rational thought. ;) Especially not for a lawyer. :nono:
 

Nullifidian

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Your irrational hatred has blinded you and rendered you unable to recognize an exceptionally noble and selfless act. :nono:

We must not let our emotion cloud out rational thought. ;) Especially not for a lawyer. :nono:
I love when Republicans pull this. It seems like no one is capable of disagreeing with Bush without being "blinded by hatred."

*sigh*

Anyway, on the subject of Santorum, I can't stand him. I just wish the Republicans would tell him he can't run again and replace him. I don't even know this Casey guy, but generally speaking I hate Democratic Senators because of their support of ridiculous spending bills.

It's like what Louis Black said about the 2004 election. When you go in there to vote, you have a choice between 2 piles of ****. The only difference is the smell.

So I always vote for a Libertarian when one is available. Yeah my vote is a waste, but if no one sticks to their ideals then change will never happen. Personally I like the way the German system works. They assess percentage of votes for each party and determine how many reps will be in government based on that. So even smaller parties get to have a few representatives as long as they have enough votes. In our system it's majority or nothing because each elected official is voted on specifically.


Oh, and about the "WMDs", a bunch of degraded, inactive canisters and shell casings don't really say much to me. Especially ones that have been buried for several decades. We act like Iraq had this phenominal record keeping system. Honestly if you ask me, their method of "destroying" most of these things was likely just to bury them. It costs too much to actually dispose of them and Iraq didn't have that kind of cash with all the sanctions against them. Heck I wonder if they even had the means by which to destroy most of them.
 

MaynardMeek

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this is going to go down to be just like bill clinton's "what is "is"" Dems beat their chest saying there have not been any WMD's in Iraq at all. And Bush lied yada yada... so whats going to happen is this...

We can obviously can see that bush didn't lie.. there were WMDs in Iraq ( though due to faulty world wide information) the WMD's is pre gulf war... but.. saddam obviously knew about it even after the gulf....so something like that will happen...
 
CDB

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LOL. It's all good. You're entitled to your (crazy) opinions. :)
Actually he's probably right. Even if the far left opinion of Bush is correct in a large sense he will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. Every president who agrandizes state power and expands it to any significant degree is remembered as great by the mostly pro state intellectuals, left and right alike. Some of our supposedly greatest presidents, like Lincoln, were borderline if not over the border fascist or socialist in their political leanings and policies. And now, 'we' celebrate them.

As for the WMDs I seriously doubt a lot of liberals would acknowledge they were there even if our military found thousands of nuclear and biological weapons in boxes labeled "Made in Iraq/Destination: Random Al Qeda Cells." I don't often agree with Biohazard, and while I don't necessarily think he's right about anyone here, way too many liberals are blinded by hate for George Bush to acknowledge anything positive about him. He's a war time president and he's just going to take a lot of flack for that. It's inevitable that most of it will come from the other party, and that some large degree of people will be unhinged over the issue.
 

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...We act like Iraq had this phenominal record keeping system. ....
We don't act. We know for a fact. One of the reasons the Europeans are so against the invasion is the intelligence archive the Iraqis kept. All those records of black room dealing.

When we took Baghdad, the US got the intelligence bonanza. We took the whole archive of Saddam's dealing with the Europeans (how do you think the corruption of the UN Oil for Food program was discovered?) and the whole archive of Russia's spy network in the middle east, operating out of their Iraqi liason offices. Word is, we got some record of Chirac's family business dealing with Saddam and co. Chirac has been a good buddy of Saddam for years. It was Chirac who sold him the nuke reactor that the Israelis took out in Osirak. (Only the French can pretend with a straight face that the world's second largest oil reserve needs nuclear reactor for energy.) The funny thing is, before the invasion to topple Saddam, Chirac actually offered to lead the invasion. His condition was, the French alone would take and occupy Baghdad. Yeah, the American knew he wanted to secure the papers that link him to Saddam. Tough sh1t, Chirac! After that, the French decided that invading Iraq is a bad thing. LOL

Well, word is, the US got the whole archive instead. And the papers will be used to blackmail Chirac when necessary. LOL

In most dictatorship, exhaustive record keeping is the norm. When you work for a murderous scum like Saddam and co, you need all the paperwork to cover your ass. So, good record keeping is a matter of necessity, when you work for a ruthless murderer.

As for WMD, we have tons of solid info on what WMD materials Iraq had and are currently unaccounted for. Hundreds of tons of chemicals and toxins, don't just disappear into thin air. The last I heard, we had the coordinates where they are buried in the Syrian desert. That is not some top secret. The information was given to Dr. Hans Blix. I have no idea why there is no follow up on that. It is widely known, among the intelligence circle, that the Baathists, the Syrians and the French intelligence have been collaborating hard to makesure that no WMD can be found in Iraq. Their objective is to deny the US any proof. The Baathist's case is clear. The Syrian did it, because they wanted the Iraq invasion to be a failure. They are afraid that they will be experiencing regime change too. The French.. oh well. Nothing new there.


On further note, when Libya came clean on its WMD program, the Libyans handed over their whole archive on WMD. We got the whole dossier on the international nuclear blackmarket with Pakistan's A.Q. Khan as the center figure.

With the European's dramatic failure in persuading Iran to abandon going nuclear, several Gulf states are procuring their own nukes with the help of Pakistan. So, a fine mess is in the making. Let's see how long it takes for all the haters to blame it all on America and Bush. ;)
 
yeahright

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LOL, Department of Defense and CIA official refute Santorum's claims about WMDs being found:


FOX NEWS:

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.


New York Times, June 23, 2006

"Two Republicans, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a news conference on Wednesday to announce that, as Mr. Santorum put it, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

American intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing "degraded" mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found scattered through Iraq since 2003.

Such shells had previously been reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials said."
 

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all those ****ty WMD were given to the Iraqi's by the U.S to help aide in the fight against Iran during the 80's
 

BioHazzard

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LOL, Department of Defense and CIA official refute Santorum's claims about WMDs being found:

FOX NEWS:

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.


New York Times, June 23, 2006

"Two Republicans, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a news conference on Wednesday to announce that, as Mr. Santorum put it, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

American intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing "degraded" mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found scattered through Iraq since 2003.

Such shells had previously been reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials said."
This is only bad for Santorum and Hoekstra. It has no relevance on anything else. OTOH, you can say this shows that the administration does not spin nor lie about the facts, which is a lot more than what one can say about the previous administration. ;)
 

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This is only bad for Santorum and Hoekstra. It has no relevance on anything else. OTOH, you can say this shows that the administration does not spin nor lie about the facts, which is a lot more than what one can say about the previous administration. ;)
It also means this report means diddly squat.


Btw, you were right about Saddam and record keeping. I did some looking up on that, and they were meticulous. In fact, they kept extensive audio records of ALL of their cabinet meetings. There is one particular set of tapes that was analyzed that discussed terrorism in the US and Iraq's WMD program. The conclusions and what was said?

1) Saddam said terrorist acts were goin to happen to the US but Iraq will NOT be a part these acts or be involved in any way, just that he predicts they will happen
3) They planned to start up a WMD program when conditions permitted but conditions did not permit.


In other words, the tapes showed that Iraq was NOT linked to terrorism against the USA and they showed that although Iraq wanted a WMD program and would have started one given the chance, they did not have a WMD program.
 
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It also means this report means diddly squat.


Btw, you were right about Saddam and record keeping. I did some looking up on that, and they were meticulous. In fact, they kept extensive audio records of ALL of their cabinet meetings. There is one particular set of tapes that was analyzed that discussed terrorism in the US and Iraq's WMD program. The conclusions and what was said?

1) Saddam said terrorist acts were goin to happen to the US but Iraq will NOT be a part these acts or be involved in any way, just that he predicts they will happen
3) They planned to start up a WMD program when conditions permitted but conditions did not permit.

In other words, the tapes showed that Iraq was NOT linked to terrorism against the USA and they showed that although Iraq wanted a WMD program and would have started one given the chance, they did not have a WMD program.
I've been looking here and there for translations of those tapes, where'd you find them? I'd be interested in reading more. To the points you made I think you're right, but in the end that means we would have had to continue the sanctions, UN inspections, enforcement of no fly zones and who knows what other measures to keep Saddam marginalized until he died or there was some other shift in the regime that allowed a lessening or removal of those policies. Not to mention that most estimates say those sanctions resulted in the deaths of more than 30-50 times as many Iraqis as did the current war, mostly the poor Iraqis. Those sanctions and our presence in Saudi Arabia were also key points in UBL's mobilization against the US, so there's no guarantee that following that course wouldn't have pissed the terrorists off just as much as the Iraq war. Despite what can justly be seen as strategy screw ups I'm coming more to the opinion that the Iraq war while not justified may have been the only practical solution to ****ty problem that we created ourselves. And lest we forget the apparently unstoppable US urge to mess around in other countries and get ourselves involved in lots of messes is not limited to Republican nation builders.

Not arguing with you on this Null, just seems to me that a lot of people leveling criticisms at Bush, especially on humanitarian grounds, seem to forget the previous situation wasn't all that wonderful itself, either in a humanitarian sense or a strategic sense. We truly were acting as the world police force there, constant patrols and munitions dropped on a regular basis, which would have had to continue to keep this guy marginalized. I guess if you have cancer and have two options, limit its growth or get rid of it, getting rid of it should be the answer unless there's some major health risk involved that's more dangerous to keeping it around, and of course one would also have to weight the benefits of success into that, however unlikely.
 

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Btw, regarding this:

“We have not told them the truth about the imported material,” one says. He adds, “Where was the nuclear material transported to? A number of them were transported out of Iraq.” He also says: “We will confess, but not to the biological program.”

IIRC in 1996 they DID fess up about the biological program after UN investigations uncovered discrepencies in data. These tapes were from circa 1995.
 

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i rly dont like to talk politics much but thoguth id chime my 2cents anyways





The only reason i like bush is....
I think hes doin what he thinks is best for the country, and doesnt listen to a single person tell him otherwise. Me personaly respect someone when it would be sooo easy to change positions, but stick to what he believes is right. No matter what or anyone tells him.



BTW usa is better off without saddam....
 

BioHazzard

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It also means this report means diddly squat...........

In other words, the tapes showed that Iraq was NOT linked to terrorism against the USA and they showed that although Iraq wanted a WMD program and would have started one given the chance, they did not have a WMD program.
It just means that the two political hacks got eggs on their face.

As for the tapes, the question is, should we have waited till they nuked San Diego first?

With Bin Laden, Clinton's administration repeated dragged its feet and waited and waited and waited......
 

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Far left liberals are getting insane in this debate. It doesnt even pay to debate them on this because it is like talking to a wall. they are arguing over symantecs here. It's like when the debate was not too long ago with the last admin, is a BJ a sex act. It is what it is!!! A old WMD is just as important as a new WMD is that he was suppose to let UN Inspectors see these things. Instead he hid them.

Saddam had WMD's hidden with saran and mustard gas. Doesnt matter if they were 100 years old. They were suppose to give UN Inspectors unfettered, full access to the country to find these things. they prevented and stopped them from doing so. Thewanted to re-constitute the WMD programs. They were planning on concealing this.

The real shame in all this. That the Democratic party is being hijacked by these far left people.

They are distorting important tools the govt is using to find and stop terrorism. like the wire tapping program and the financial program. They are making sound as if the govt is listening to Americans phone conversations and digging into there finances. No, what they are doing is listening to terrorsit overseas, and who calls them or who they call is also who they are listening too. Not Johnnys call to his mom or girlfriend.

And they are not looking into the ordinary Americans finaces. they are following the $$$$$ trail. That is how to catch the bad guy, follow the $$$$$. And they have warrants for these.

But what stories did The Times bury during the week. The 2 American soliders slaughtered by terrorist, who werent too concerned with the Geneva Conference and the 7 Miami home grown terrorists who thought they were talking to the $$$$ men of Al Qauida asking for $$$$$ for weapons and explosives to blow up the Sears Tower, to make that day equal or worse to 9/11. Bank story page 1, 7 Miami terrorist page A 22. I wonder who The NY Times sees as the problem, the Bush admin or terrorism?

level headed Democrats wake up, this is where they are dragging your party to.
 

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:goodpost: That is jsut pure simple common sense.

The problem is, the Dem has turned into a party of hypocrites and traitors. They are willing to sell out America's vital national interests, and cater to terrorists and criminals. They have no statesmanship left anymore. The Blue Dog Democrates have been pushed aside and silenced, by extremists and crooked opportunistic political hacks.

I would love to see the Blue Dog Democrates become the dominant force of the Dem. I would not necessarily object to a Blue Dog Democrate presidency. They are centralist and they are patriots who put America's interests before partisanship. If a Democrate puts America's interests first above ideology, he can have my support.

Sadly, we don't see that in the Dem party. There are Blue Dog Dems there, but they are not in charge of the party.
 
yeahright

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Far left liberals are getting insane in this debate. It doesnt even pay to debate them on this because it is like talking to a wall. they are arguing over symantecs here.

:icon_lol: Not symantecs, facts. Mortar shells are not missiles as you claimed in an earlier post. Random old shells found mixed in large ammo dumps are not stores of weapons ready to be (or even capable of being) used.

What we have here is a couple politicians facing tough re-elections. They make some hysterical claims to try and help their campaigns......claims so absurd on their face that the Pentagon and the CIA came out to immediately refute them.

This is the BUSH ADMINISTRATION saying that Santorum is wrong, not some "crazy left" democrats.

Facts are important things. Public policy should be based upon them, not emotion and half-understood arguments.
 

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:icon_lol: Not symantecs, facts. Mortar shells are not missiles as you claimed in an earlier post. Random old shells found mixed in large ammo dumps are not stores of weapons ready to be (or even capable of being) used.

What we have here is a couple politicians facing tough re-elections. They make some hysterical claims to try and help their campaigns......claims so absurd on their face that the Pentagon and the CIA came out to immediately refute them.

This is the BUSH ADMINISTRATION saying that Santorum is wrong, not some "crazy left" democrats.

Facts are important things. Public policy should be based upon them, not emotion and half-understood arguments.
I thought I read in another article somewhere that there were missels. I am sorry if I was wrong on that.

But you are saying that a regime who agreed to account for ALL WMD's, whenever they were made, were to account for them and let UN Inspectors see where they were. Not hide them. he didnt agree to end the 1st Gulf War, if only he will only account for certain WMD's, where there is no degrading.

And you are that comfortable with this same regime to have 500 mortars of degrading chemical and/or biological weapons. Like they couldnt do any damage whatsoever. What instead of killing 5,000 people only 2,000 will get killed. That old bottle of 1-AD before the ban will degrade, so that person will just take some more to get the same effects.

But whatever the case, I am really not trying to change your mind or anyone elses on whether it was right or wrong to go to war.

But I didnt make my mind up that the war was and is right on half understood arguements and emotions.

I followed the news stories for well over 14 years. I remember when saddam agreed to UN Inspections and giving up WMD programs altogether and account for any WMD's. I remember when he agreed to a no fly zone over the Kurds becuase of what he did to them in the past.

I also saw how since then he played games with the UN Inspectors. He would shut them off and prevent them from going places. Prevent scientist from talking to the UN Inspectors. This was going on right up to before the war. How he kept violating the no fly zones and shot at our planes who were patroling these zones. How he tried to assanate President Bush I. President Clinton said saddam had WMD's and called for regime change there. Even sent a bomb there way.

These are all facts. Not half truths. Regime change policy was set by the Clinton admin. Did they do that because of half understood arguements and emotions?

Fine, you are aganist the war. I am not personally insulting you are aganist the war. I was insulting far left liberals and the democratic party for succombing to these left loonies. I didnt see you or accuse you, yeahright, of being part of the looney left. Obviously aganist the war, but I dont know you well enough to go further at this point. But then you say I am for this war because of emotions and half understood arguements?

Yeahright, which is it? Is Bush a liar about why we went to war? he did it out of greed? To control the world?? To make money for his Texas oil friends??? But then the Bush admin says Santorum is wrong and no WMD's. Whats up with that, in your view? What isnt Bush beating the horse and yelling there are WMD's in Iraq
 
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I thought I read in another article somewhere that there were missels. I am sorry if I was wrong on that.

But you are saying that a regime who agreed to account for ALL WMD's, whenever they were made, were to account for them and let UN Inspectors see where they were. Not hide them. he didnt agree to end the 1st Gulf War, if only he will only account for certain WMD's, where there is no degrading.
You should go read the documents. These are not weapons that were hidden, these are weapons that were scattered about in trash dumps, old ammo dumps, etc. These are essentially debris left scattered about the countryside left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Hell, all across Europe they still dig up artillery shells left over from World War I. War is a messy business, munitions get abandoned, lost, dumped in caches for later retrieval and then forgotten about. That's all they've found here and it's nothing new. These reports have been in the news for years now.
 
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Yeahright, which is it? Is Bush a liar about why we went to war? he did it out of greed? To control the world?? To make money for his Texas oil friends??? But then the Bush admin says Santorum is wrong and no WMD's. Whats up with that, in your view? What isnt Bush beating the horse and yelling there are WMD's in Iraq
It's called selective intellgience. It's a trap many people fall into. If you start with a belief, then you embrace the information that conforms with that belief and ignore the information that contradicts it.

We know from Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that the very first cabinet meeting Bush held in early 2001, they were talking about invading Iraq but that they needed an excuse.

Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq?, O'Neill Tells '60 Minutes' Iraq Was 'Topic A' 8 Months Before 9-11 - CBS News

We know from Richard A. Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism in the White House under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, that after 9/11, the Bush administration wanted to use it as an excuse to invade Iraq, but that he and others convinced the Whitehouse to invade Afghanistan instead (where Al Quaeda was headquartered).

So they were hot to invade Iraq from the start of the Bush Presidency. They sought out information to support their ideas and discarded/ignored information which contradicted their ideas. You can read this article from today's Washington Post showing how they were repeatedly warned that the information they were relying upon was wrong, but they relied upon it anyway because it conformed to their beliefs.

_________

Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says


By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 25, 2006; A01



In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.

"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."

While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.

Drumheller, who is writing book about his experiences, described in extensive interviews repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to problems with the defector, code-named Curveball, in the days before the Powell speech. Other warnings came prior to President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003. In the same speech that contained the now famous "16 words" on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, Bush spoke in far greater detail about mobile labs "designed to produce germ warfare agents."

The warnings triggered debates within the CIA but ultimately made no visible impact at the top, current and former intelligence officials said. In briefing Powell before his U.N. speech, George Tenet, then the CIA director, personally vouched for the accuracy of the mobile-lab claim, according to participants in the briefing. Tenet now says he did not learn of the problems with Curveball until much later and that he received no warnings from Drumheller or anyone else.

"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't know the name Curveball until months afterward."

Curveball's role in shaping U.S. declarations about Iraqi bioweapons capabilities was first described in a series of reports in the Los Angeles Times, and later in a March 2005 report by a presidential commission on U.S. intelligence failures regarding allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Drumheller's first-hand accounts add new detail about the CIA's embrace of a source whose credibility was already unraveling.

More than a year after Powell's speech, after an investigation that extended to three continents, the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels.

But in the fall of 2002, Curveball was living the life of an important spy. A Baghdad native whose real name has never been released, he was residing in a safe house in Germany, where he had requested asylum three years earlier. In return for immigration permits for himself and his family, the Iraqi supplied Germany's foreign intelligence service with what appeared to be a rare insider's account of one of President Saddam Hussein's long-rumored WMD programs.

Curveball described himself as a chemical engineer who had worked inside an unusual kind of laboratory, one that was built on a trailer bed and produced weapons for germ warfare. He furnished detailed, technically complex descriptions of mobile labs and even described an industrial accident that he said killed a dozen people.

The German intelligence agency BND faithfully passed Curveball's stories to the Americans. Over time, the informant generated more than 100 intelligence reports on secret Iraqi weapons programs -- the only such reports from an informant claiming to have visited and worked in mobile labs. Other informants, also later discredited, had claimed indirect knowledge of mobile labs.

In late 2002, the Bush administration began scouring intelligence files for reports of Iraqi weapons threats. Drumheller was asked to press a counterpart from a European intelligence agency for direct access to Curveball. Other officials confirmed that it was the German intelligence service.

The German official declined but then offered a startlingly candid assessment, Drumheller recalled. "He said, 'I think the guy is a fabricator,' " Drumheller said, recounting the conservation with the official, whom he declined to name. "He said, 'We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports.' "

When Drumheller relayed the warning to his superiors in October 2002, it sparked what he described as "a series of the most contentious meetings I've ever seen" in three decades of government work.

Although no American had ever interviewed Curveball, analysts with the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed the informant's technical descriptions were too detailed to be fabrications.

"People were cursing. These guys were absolutely, violently committed to it," Drumheller said. "They would say to us, 'You're not scientists, you don't understand.' "

In January 2003, Drumheller received a new request from CIA headquarters to contact the German intelligence service about Curveball. This time, Drumheller recalled, the U.S. spy agency had three questions:

Could a U.S. official refer to Curveball's mobile lab accounts in an upcoming political speech?

Could the Germans guarantee that Curveball would stand by his account?

Could German intelligence verify Curveball's claims?

The reply from Berlin, as Drumheller recalls it, was less than encouraging: There are no guarantees.

"They said: 'We have never been able to verify his claims,' " Drumheller recalled. "And that was all sent up to Tenet's office."

When Drumheller listened to Bush's speech several days later, he was astonished to hear the mobile labs described in detail.

"Boom, there it was," he said.

A few days later, Drumheller was handed a draft of another key speech on Iraq: Powell's remarks to the U.N. Security Council accusing Hussein of reconstituting his WMD programs. This time, the speech included an obvious reference to Curveball -- an unnamed "chemical engineer" who worked in one of the labs -- as well as detailed drawings of mobile labs inspired by Curveball's descriptions.

Drumheller said he called the office of John E. McLaughlin, then the CIA deputy director, and was told to come there immediately. Drumheller said he sat across from McLaughlin and an aide in a small conference room and spelled out his concerns.

McLaughlin responded with alarm and said Curveball was "the only tangible source" for the mobile lab story, Drumheller recalled, adding that the deputy director promised to quickly investigate.

Portions of Drumheller's account of his meetings with McLaughlin and Tenet appear in the final report of the Silberman-Robb commission, which was appointed by Bush to investigate prewar U.S. intelligence failures on Iraq's weapons programs. The report cites e-mails and interviews with other CIA officials who were aware of the meetings.

In responding to questions about Drumheller, McLaughlin provided The Post with a copy of the statement he gave in response to the commission's report. The statement said he had no memories of the meeting with Drumheller and had no written documentation that the meeting took place.

"If someone had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell's speech," McLaughlin said in the statement.

In their briefings to Powell on Feb. 4, one day before the secretary's U.N. speech, Tenet and McLaughlin expressed nothing but confidence in the mobile-lab story, according to Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was present during the briefings.

"Powell and I were both suspicious because there were no pictures of the mobile labs," Wilkerson said. The drawings were constructed from Curveball's accounts.

But the CIA officials were persuasive. Wilkerson said the two men described the evidence on the mobile labs as exceptionally strong, based on multiple sources whose stories were independently corroborated.

"They said, 'This is it, Mr. Secretary. You can't doubt this one,' " Wilkerson said.

On the eve of the U.N. speech, Drumheller received a late-night phone call from Tenet, who said he was checking final details of the speech. Drumheller said he brought up the mobile labs.

"I said, 'Hey, boss, you're not going to use that stuff in the speech . . . ? There are real problems with that,' " Drumheller said, recalling the conversation.

Drumheller recalled that Tenet seemed distracted and tired and told him not to worry.

The following day, Tenet was seated directly behind Powell at the U.N. Security Council as the secretary of state presented a detailed lecture and slide show about an Iraqi mobile biological weapons program.

Tenet, responding to questions about Drumheller's accounts, provided to The Post a statement he had given in response to the Silberman-Robb Commission report in which he said he didn't learn of the problems with Curveball until much later. He did not recall talking to Drumheller about Curveball, and said it was "simply wrong" for anyone to imply that he knew about the problems with Curveball's credibility.

"Nobody came forward to say there is a serious problem with Curveball or that we have been told by the foreign representative of the service handling him that there are worries that he is a 'fabricator,' " Tenet said in his statement.

In late summer 2003, seven months after the U.N. speech, Tenet called Powell to say that the Curveball story had fallen apart, Wilkerson said. The call amounted to an admission that all of the CIA's claims Powell used in his speech about Iraqi weapons were wrong.

"They had hung on for a long time, but finally Tenet called Powell to say, 'We don't have that one, either,' " Wilkerson recalled. "The mobile labs were the last thing to go."

Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
 

DinoTrainer

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You should go read the documents. These are not weapons that were hidden, these are weapons that were scattered about in trash dumps, old ammo dumps, etc. These are essentially debris left scattered about the countryside left over from the Iran-Iraq war.
I will read the documents. You are right. I should read the documents for myself. If you have a link, please supply it for me.

But, yeahright, I am dubious in believeing that Saddam was throwing these weapons out in the trash dumpsters all over Iraq, to get rid of them, but did it this way so the garbage men wouldn't give him a hard time.

I would think these dumpsites, are hidden storage sites. Kinda like all those storage sites the terrorist are using as weapons aganist our guys.

But, you are right I should read the documents.
 
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I will read the documents. You are right. I should read the documents for myself. If you have a link, please supply it for me.

But, yeahright, I am dubious in believeing that Saddam was throwing these weapons out in the trash dumpsters all over Iraq, to get rid of them, but did it this way so the garbage men wouldn't give him a hard time.
It's not that Sadaam was dumping these in the trash. Imagine this scenario:

You're part of an Iraqi artillery batallion, you're about to be over-run by Iranian infantry and don't have time to withdraw. So, you make some half-hearted effort to destroy your equipment to keep the enemy from capturing it before you retreat.........

Or you're bouncing across the desert and a box of mortar shells falls off the back of your truck.......

Or you bury a weapons cache expecting to come back to it during the next offensive, but the action moves south 20 miles and you never get back to that weapons cache..........

Imagine events like that over and over again for 8 years. The territory where the battles were waged is going to be scattered with ordinance....and in a war where chemical wepons were extensively used, some portion of that ordinance will be chemical weapons.

Santorum hyped this up to deliberately deceive people. Shame on him.

Here's a link to the documents Santorum was referring to:

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf

Here is what the experts say about them:

"Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them."

AND

" American intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing "degraded" mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found scattered through Iraq since 2003.

Such shells had previously been reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials said."
 

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