Senator Byrd...The Truth Will Emerge.

by searchfothetruth 63 Replies latest members adult

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  searchfothetruth

  And the declaration said that they had NO WMD...but these were lies by Saddam.
• 

  freeman

  Search, I don’t want anything other then parity, equity, and fairness. If you give Iraq 10 + years to produce these weapons or evidence of their destruction, why is it now unreasonable to allow the US or Britain some time to do the same? I seems that the people that were telling us to be patient, to go slow and wait for the inspectors are the very same people that want immediate results now with regard to finding WMDs.

  As an aside, since the I told you there never were any WMDs crowd is becoming so very vocal, should they not also place some blame on a few others besides the US and Britain?

  You can start the blame game with Saddam himself who decided to purchase thousands of anti- nerve-agent inoculation kits for his troops for no particular reason (as we know he has no WMDs). Then there were all the chem-bio suits that were found that once again he apparently had for no particular reason. Let’s not forget the very expensive mobile field decontamination units he had, and all the empty chemical warheads he had, once again all for no reason, certainly not any bad reason. Then there was the movement and disposal of thousands and thousands of tons of earth around some suspected chemical weapons facilities, only to be replenished with fresh earth and even shrubbery before weapons inspectors arrived. All of this done under the watchful eye of US spy satellites. Obviously the Iraqi government did these costly things for genuinely innocent reasons, it was perhaps an attempt at beatifying these dull drab fumitories. It’s just that US intelligence was playing devils advocate, looking for something bad going on.

  It’s so unfortunate that Saddam’s mobile baby formula production labs that were recently found just happen to exactly match the description of mobile bio-weapons labs that Iraq defectors described in detail to US intelligence officials. Obviously these defectors were lying and these million-dollar labs were put on wheels to move the production of baby formula into the countryside where it is needed.

  It’s a shame that the Iraqi government innocently ordered very expensive aluminum tubing milled to the exact and precise specifications used in the centrifugal process of uranium enrichment. It’s also unfortunate that documents that indicated a hidden, and ongoing nuclear enrichment program were found in the home of a top Iraqi nuclear scientist by inspectors after US intelligence agents tipped off the UN inspectors to look in his personal home (as reported in the London Telegraph some months back). Obviously the US planted this evidence in the poor man’s home knowing that these documents alone showing an ongoing clandestine nuclear program would constitute justification for taking out this regime without delay.

  You know what I find truly amazing is the fact that the US has not planted any bio weapons or chemical agents just to justify their cause. After all it would be so very easy to do, and if they had we would not be having all this debate. It would have been so very easy for them to do this and as we all know, the US, and in particular the Bush administration are not beyond this sort of thing. Or at least that is the indication I hear from so many, including posters on this board.

  Obviously none of this really matters, as we all know the REAL reason the US and the British are in Iraq. Go ahead, you can say it, we all know what the real reason is; they want cheap oil. I know it defies logic, but obviously the Bush administration feels the best way to get that cheap oil is to spend billions and billions of dollars bombing a place and then rebuild it. So it will take decades to just break even on the cost of the war and rebuilding, hey at least we can fill our SUVs without to much pain at the pump.

  Freeman
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  searchfothetruth

  Yes, you can blame others.

  Who went to Iraq in 1983/4 to sell him the weapons?...Donald Rumsfeld

  He was also involved in the sale of nuclear reactors to North Korea.

  Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea swissinfo February 24, 2003 8:51 AM One of two reactors currently under contruction in North Korea. (Keystone Archive) Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was on the board of technology giant ABB when it won a deal to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants. Weapons experts say waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called “dirty bombs”.
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  expatbrit

  well i know of at least 12,000 pages of a declaration made to the UN security council, of which 4000 pages were removed by the US before being distributed to the non- permanent members.

  Such report did not make a full and accurate disclosure as required by the UN. A declaration complying was therefore not made.

  Unless of course you think that those 4000 pages contained details of Iraq's WOMD, in which case you're even more whacked out on conspiracy nonsense than I think you are.

  Of course I forget, Saddam is the good guy here, victimised by the evil governments of the US and UK.

  Expatbrit
• 

  ThiChi

  Search:
  

  Hey you are wrong!

  With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations. There is no proof that Rumsfeld did what you claim durning that visit.

  Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld’s aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld’s achievements helping to “reopen U.S. relations with Iraq.”

  In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department—in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”—pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq.
• 

  searchfothetruth

  ThiChi,

  I hate to shatter your illusions, but I am NOT wrong.

  Here is an article fron the Times Online:

  World News December 31, 2002 How US helped Iraq build deadly arsenal By Tim Reid DONALD RUMSFELD, the US Defence Secretary and one of the most strident critics of Saddam Hussein, met the Iraqi President in 1983 to ease the way for US companies to sell Baghdad biological and chemical weapons components, including anthrax and bubonic plague cultures, according to newly declassified US Government documents. Mr Rumsfeld’s 90-minute meeting with Saddam, preceded by a warm handshake which was captured on film, heralded a US policy under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr of courting the Iraqi leader as an ally throughout the 1980s. The strategy, seen as a bulwark against the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran, was so obsessively pursued that Washington stepped up arms supplies and diplomatic activity even after the Iraqis had gassed Kurds in northern Iraq in March 1988, according to the records. A National Security Directive of November 1983 stated that the US would do “whatever was necessary and legal” to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. Mr Rumsfeld, who was a private citizen at the time, was chosen by Mr Reagan as a special envoy to the Middle East. He met Saddam on December 20 and told him that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the meeting. The policy was followed with such vigour over the next seven years that on July 25, 1990, only one week before Saddam invaded Kuwait, the US Ambassador to Baghdad met Saddam to assure him that President Bush “wanted better and deeper relations”. The extraordinary lengths to which successive US Administrations went to befriend Saddam, while ignoring his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and his own people, was highlighted in The Washington Post yesterday. It is a timely reminder of American involvement in the creation of Saddam’s arsenal as the current President Bush, who has repeatedly cited Saddam’s possession of chemical and biological weapons as a reason for disarming him, prepares for a possible US-led invasion of Iraq. To prevent Iraqi defeat in the Iran-Iraq war, which was started by Iraq and lasted from 1980 to 1988, the Reagan Administration began supplying Saddam with battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop movements. By the end of the decade, Washington had authorised the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications. These included poisonous chemicals and biological viruses, among them anthrax and bubonic plague. A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee disclosed that dozens of biological agents were shipped to Iraq in the mid-1980s under licence from the US Commerce Department, including strains of anthrax. Anthrax has been identified by the Pentagon as a key component of Saddam’s biological weapons programme. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare. In November 1983, a month before Mr Rumsfeld’s first visit to Baghdad, George Shultz, the Secretary of State, was given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops were resorting to “almost daily use of CW (chemical weapons) against the Iranians”. But the Reagan Administration, already committed to wooing Baghdad, turned a blind eye to the reports. In February 1982, despite objections from Congress, the State Department had already removed Iraq from its terrorism list. Mr Rumsfeld recently said that he had, at the December 1983 meeting, “cautioned” Saddam about the use of chemical weapons. That claim does not tally with a declassified State Department note of his meeting. A Pentagon spokesman later said that Mr Rumsfeld issued the caution to Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Foreign Minister. According to an affidavit sworn by Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official during the Reagan Administration, the US “actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third-country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required.” Mr Teicher said that William Casey, the former CIA Director, used a Chilean front company to supply Baghdad with cluster bombs. The Iraqi Air Force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq in late 1987, provoking outrage on Capitol Hill, particularly after the now infamous March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. But, in September 1988, Richard W. Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State, wrote in a memo addressing Saddam’s use of chemical weapons: “The US-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives. We believe that economic sanctions will be useless or counterproductive to influence the Iraqis.” The present President Bush has repeatedly cited Saddam’s use of chemical weapons “against his own people” as justifying “regime change”. David Newton, a former US Ambassador to Baghdad, told the Post: “Fundamentally, the policy was justified. We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. “Our long-term hope was that (Saddam’s) Government would become less repressive and more responsible.”
• 

  ThiChi

  Search:

  Ohhh, if the Times says so, it must be true! Give me a break:

  1. The reason for Rumsfeld’s visit was to open relations. No one person can make the decision to sell or offer what you claim happened at that meeting.

  2. Only the Congress can approve sales of military Applications.

  3. These were civilian Helicopters that Iraq recieved. Once the US found out they were used for the Military, the sales stopped.

  4. Even if your claim was true, so what? History shows that many Nations have gone from friendship to "enemy" as geo-politics change. So what? Another red herring.
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  searchfothetruth

  ThiChi.

  What problem do you have with The Times...it seems that only government resources are to be quoted when offering proof to you, which un-fortunately are going to 'slightly' biased.

  The fact is, Rumsfeld did go to Baghdad AFTER the Kurds were killed with gas and sell them some more. Thats the hypocracy that so infuriates people when he demands that they go in to disarm Saddam from the same chemicals that he sold to him.

  What about the Korean Nuclear plants. As you know, the Koreans used these plants to get their nuclear material to make their Nuclear weapons...but Rumsfeld and ABB didn't know this at the time?

  Give me a break....
• 

  ThiChi

  Greetings Search:

  "Rumsfeld did go to Baghdad AFTER the Kurds were killed with gas and sell them some more.""

  As I remember, this was not your claim. It was that he sold weaponds at their first meeting. True?

  Using your reasoning then, no Nation could stand if they communicated with another Nation that has allegedly violated Human Rights. Does this seem reasonable? Hindsight is 20/20.
• 

  Pork Chop

  Byrd is an old fool that should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. He's an embarassment to the US Senate and the state of West Virginia.