U.S. Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq

[total180]

The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials.

The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.

A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that team is "still waiting for something to dispose of," said a survey group member.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/i...&en=6fa2589bdf284cc9&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER

 

[Baruch]

And?

 

[waggie945]

Posted by Phil Fraering on November 03, 2003 in WAR NEWS:

Everyone's probably already read this article from the Washington Post about Tariq Aziz's account of Saddam Hussein's strategy for avoiding war or surviving it politically intact, but I ran across an interesting passage concerning his procedure regarding weapons of mass destruction:

American and British interrogators have asked dozens of generals who served in high-ranking command roles in Iraqi army divisions during this year -- some imprisoned, some living freely -- why Hussein did not use chemical weapons to defend Baghdad. A number of these generals have said that they, too, believed chemical weapons would be deployed by Hussein for the capital's defense. Yet none of the officers admitted receiving such weapons himself.

"The only consistent pattern we've gotten -- 100 percent consistent -- is that each commander says, 'My unit didn't have WMD, but the one to my right or left did,' " said the senior U.S. official involved. This has led some American interrogators to theorize that Hussein may have bluffed not only neighboring governments and the United States, but his own restive generals.

"He would not hesitate to deceive even his hand-chosen commanders if he thought that by this he could achieve success," agreed Jubouri, the former general.

This is consistent with the possibility that his WMD were meant as much for use internally, to keep his own armed forces in line, as they were for use against enemy militaries or civilians.

Also seems like our very own Intelligence Agency picked-up WMD chatter from all of the various upper-level Iraqi cronies and yes-men around Saddam, who had been "snowing" Saddam with their own lies about WMD programs, and lining their pockets as they did so.

Could it be that these WMD programs were not as "extensive or capable" as we had thought, or even had Saddam thought, due to his own upper-level cronies and scientists just telling him what he wanted to hear?

Quite possible.