{ WarBlog 28.3.03 }

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:04

Banned Weapons Remain Unseen

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A28

President Bush pledged again yesterday to rid Iraq of "weapons of terror," but coalition forces have so far failed to find proof of Iraqi biological or chemical weapons a week after the start of the U.S.-led invasion.

Pentagon officials pointed to the discovery Tuesday of Iraqi chemical protection suits at a hospital near Nasiriyah as evidence that Iraq's military had prepared for a chemical attack. Yet, the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- either in the battlefield or in caches uncovered by U.S. troops -- has remained a notable feature of the military campaign so far, intelligence officials and weapons experts say.

Teams of weapons "hunters" acting on intelligence tips found no banned weapons yesterday during extensive searches of ammunition dumps near the port city of Umm Qasr. Earlier in the week, another team scoured a factory near Najaf that was initially thought to be a chemical-weapons plant. Numerous other sites identified as likely storage areas for biological or chemical weapons were searched by Special Forces units in the opening hours of the conflict, U.S. military officials have acknowledged. No unconventional weapons were found at any of the sites, the officials said.

more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34232-2003Mar26?language=printer

by warblog Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:16

http://editorandpublisher.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=5812143&fb=Y&partnerID=60

In a Jan. 7 Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll, 44% of respondents said they thought "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17% of those polled offered the correct answer: none. This was remarkable in light of the fact that, in the weeks after 9/11, few Americans identified Iraqis among the culprits. So the level of awareness on this issue actually plunged as time passed. Is it possible the media failed to give this appropriate attention?

In the same sample, 41% said that Iraq already possessed nuclear weapons, which not even the Bush administration claimed. Despite being far off base in crucial areas, 66% of respondents claimed to have a "good understanding" of the arguments for and against going to war with Iraq.

Then, a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey released Feb. 20 found that nearly two-thirds of those polled believed that U.N. weapons inspectors had "found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction." Neither Hans Blix nor Mohamed ElBaradei ever said they found proof of this.

The same survey found that 57% of those polled believed Saddam Hussein helped terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks, a claim the Bush team had abandoned. A March 7-9 New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that 45% of interviewees agreed that "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," and a March 14-15 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found this apparently mistaken notion holding firm at 51%.

The significance of this is suggested by the finding, in the same survey, that 32% of those supporting an attack cited Saddam's alleged involvement in supporting terrorists as the "main reason" for endorsing invasion. Another 43% said it was "one reason."

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:19

Perle resigns as key Rumsfeld adviser

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/27resign.html

Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official, resigned Thursday as chairman of the Defense Policy Board that is a key advisory arm for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

....

Perle was an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. He took the advisory board chairman's post early in Rumsfeld's tenure.

Perle became embroiled in a recent controversy stemming from a New Yorker magazine article that said he had lunch in January with controversial Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist.

The industrialist, Harb Saleh Zuhair, was interested in investing in a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, of which Perle is a managing partner. Nothing ever came of the lunch in Marseilles; no investment was made. But the New Yorker story, written by Seymour M. Hersh, suggested that Perle, a longtime critic of the Saudi regime, was inappropriately mixing business and politics.

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:19

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/03/27_lies.html

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:22

Crude fake documents back U.S. claims that Iraq is working on nukes, says U.N. source

http://www.enn.com/news/2003-03-26/s_3534.asp

26 March 2003
By Reuters

VIENNA — A few hours and a simple Internet search was all it took for U.N. inspectors to realize documents backing U.S. and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear program were crude fakes, a U.N. official said.
Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the U.N. nuclear agency, who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, described one as so badly forged his "jaw dropped."

"When (U.N. experts) started to look at them, after a few hours of going at it with a critical eye, things started to pop out," the official said, adding a more thorough investigation used up "resources, time, and energy we could have devoted elsewhere."

The United States first made the allegation that Iraq had revived its nuclear program last fall when the CIA warned that Baghdad "could make a nuclear weapon within a year" if it acquired uranium. President Bush found the proof credible enough to add it to his State of the Union speech in January.

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:26

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1220/p01s04-wome.html

A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy
If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a radioactive trail in Gulf War.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KHARANJ, IRAQ - The rusting tanks are gathered in Iraq's southern desert like an open-air exhibit of the 1991 Gulf War.

But these are not just museum pieces. This still radioactive battlefield - and the severe health problems many Iraqis and some US Gulf War veterans ascribe to it - may also be an omen of an unsettled future.

As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf War II, analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears about depleted uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm for its "silver bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU as their most effective - and most controversial - tank-busting bullet.

-------------------

Depleted uranium still haunts Balkans

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2884761.stm

The "new and significant findings" identified by the [UN] study are: ground contamination occurs at low levels where solid fragments of DU have penetrated, and is limited to about one or two metres around point of impact the fragments have corroded rapidly, losing 25% of their mass within seven years. They will corrode completely within 25-35 years of impact this is the first time DU contamination of groundwater has been found. Unep recommends using alternative water sources, with sampling continuing for several years air contamination was found at two separate sites, including inside two buildings, showing that winds or human activities can disturb DU dust long after the event. The study recommends collecting DU fragments, covering contaminated points with asphalt or clean soil, proper disposal of DU material, keeping records of contaminated sites, and investigating all health claims.

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:29

Standing Up to Uncle Sam
by Naomi Klein

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0327-05.htm

'So while Europe warns of the rise of a new age of imperialism, what we are witnessing in North America is, ironically, the opposite: a superpower's surprising vulnerability, as dependent as it is dangerous. It may be able to live without the United Nations, and it could probably make do without France. But the U.S. could no more protect its people economically and physically without the help of Mexico and Canada than it could secede from planet Earth.

The implications of that realization will be far-reaching. Because there can be no all-powerful empires without faithful colonies.'

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:33

SIX DAYS OF SHAME
http://www.mirror.co.uk/printable_version.cfm?objectid=12776744&siteid=50143

''Yesterday, Blair said that 400,000 Iraqi children had died in the past five years from malnutrition and related causes. He said "huge stockpiles of humanitarian aid" and clean water awaited them in Kuwait, if only the Iraqi regime would allow safe passage.

In fact, voluminous evidence, including that published by the United Nations Children's Fund, makes clear that the main reason these children have died is an enduring siege, a 12-year embargo driven by America and Britain.

As of last July, $5.4billion worth of humanitarian supplies, approved by the UN and paid for by the Iraqi government, were blocked by Washington, with the Blair government's approval. The former assistant secretary general of the UN, Denis Halliday, who was sent to Iraq to set up the "oil for food programme", described the effects of the embargo as "nothing less than genocide". Similar words have been used by his successor, Hans Von Sponeck.

Both men resigned in protest, saying the embargo merely reinforced the power of Saddam.

Both called Blair a liar.''

by warblogger Fri Mar 28, 2003 14:36

BBC chiefs stress need to attribute war sources

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,924172,00.html

"We're absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding they're not true. The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I've covered, including the first Gulf war and Kosovo," said a senior BBC news source.

"On Saturday we were told they'd taken Basra and Nassiriya and then subsequently found out neither were true. We're getting more truth out of Baghdad than the Pentagon at the moment. Not because Baghdad is putting out pure and morally correct information but because they're less savvy about it, I think.

"I don't know whether they [the Pentagon] are putting out flyers in the hope that we'll run them first and ask questions later or whether they genuinely don't know what's going on - I rather suspect the latter." ''