manicus

Quite a day it was... im dead tired.... For the most part I believe that there still is a chance of finding evidence. You know they have had it I.E. Testing on their own people for chem weapons. Liberations of Iraqi's is awesome. They now have a lot more freedom than before. How would you like it if you spoke against the dictator... next day BAM... all utilities shut off, your spouse is shot and a bill sent to the family for the bullets. What kind of life is this. If we dont find any evidence at least there is SOME GOOD coming out of it. Yes we lost lives, but it is way below the military standard for acceptable deaths. If it were me i would be proud to be able to liberate people, give them freedom.

Dyre Straits

In today's (October 20, 2003) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a guest column by Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss is printed.

Here's the column:
___________________________________
Media ignore facts on WMD

By SAXBY CHAMBLISS

Recently, I sat in a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee and listened to David Kay describe his preliminary findings on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs.

When I later read his very detailed declassified summary, I expected to wake up the next morning to a flurry of media reports about how far-reaching Iraq's banned programs had progressed and how the French and Germans were going to have to eat some crow.

Instead, I woke up to a very different kind of media frenzy. I saw such headlines as "No evidence of Iraq WMD programs found," which by any objective standard is an untrue statement.

Pundits and partisan politicos savaged the Bush administration in ways that made me wonder whether they were ignorant not only of the report's contents, but also of the fact Saddam gassed 5,000 Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988 and fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel in the first Gulf War. It was as though Saddam didn't have WMD, never had them and never sought to acquire them, which couldn't be further from the truth. This willful ignorance of facts reminded me not of professional journalists investigating a story, but of those members of the Flat Earth Society who still ignore all evidence the Earth is round.

I wonder whether we all read the same summary. What I read was that Kay and his team, working in extraordinarily difficult conditions, found hidden in a WMD scientist's home strains of biological organisms, including live botulinum, used in manufacturing bioweapons.

Kay found a prison laboratory complex that might have been used to test biowarfare agents on humans, unmanned aerial vehicle and missile technology banned by the United Nations and equipment for uranium enrichment that could have helped restart Iraq's nuclear weapons program once sanctions were lifted.

Also discovered were reams of evidence of Iraqi attempts to illicitly acquire banned technologies with WMD applications from abroad. Kay found thousands upon thousands of WMD-related documents and collected compelling testimony that scientists and officials were ordered by Saddam to conceal banned WMD work from U.N. inspectors.

He inspected dozens of suspected WMD facilities that had been clearly and deliberately sanitized by agents of the former regime, and he made numerous other relevant finds in the banned missile, chemical and biological arenas that are still being evaluated.

Why, then, did much of the media reporting make it appear that nothing of any consequence was found in Iraq? Perhaps it is because saying so makes a more sensational story than the factual reality. But saying it is so doesn't make it so.

The facts in Kay's report speak volumes about Saddam's capabilities and intent. When combined with the Halabja massacre and Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s, a very clear picture emerges of a criminal despot bent on acquiring and using weapons banned by the United Nations.

Those who are desperately seeking to find an issue on which the president might be vulnerable remind me of sharks that smell blood in the water. The scent of blood drives sharks into a feeding frenzy in which they bite and tear at everything, including inedible objects.

In the ongoing political frenzy, critics trying to sink their teeth into juicy headlines are thrashing from issue to issue, becoming less and less concerned whether their charges are true, as long as they push their message and get their sound bites on the network news. This approach only succeeds in muddying the waters and trivializing the hard, cold facts: Saddam's torture chambers, rape squads, mass grave sites, gassings of women and children, unprovoked regional wars and illegal weapons programs.

Having served on both the House and Senate intelligence committees, I know firsthand that bipartisanship is much more in the national interest than distortions and mudslinging are. I also happen to know that the American people are smarter than certain political partisans, pundits and some media outlets may believe.

__________________

bluelight

"The facts in Kay's report speak volumes about Saddam's capabilities and intent. When combined with the Halabja massacre and Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s, a very clear picture emerges of a criminal despot bent on acquiring and using weapons banned by the United Nations."




Yep and the fact that Usa continued the support for Saddam after Halabja up until the Kuwait war also speaks volumes.

The fact that your senate said that the government must end contacts with Iraq after Halabja and that your goverment at the time ignored this and continued the support ......speaks volumes....

Definatley



Bluelight

ZzzombieBunny

Lack of evidence or not.

Its a sad day when a democratic goverment ignores to wait for the support of the UN for attacking Iraq... and takes matters into own hands. Attacking Iraq and removing the Saddam state doesnt just affect America and Iraq, its a world event and as such its a loss for democrazy when its done in the fashion as it was...

I feel like Bush screwd democrazy over... and for that alone I dont like him and ill feel allot safer when hes out of office.

Although im rather satisfied that Bush demanded that the US pay some 85 billion for building up the Iraq and Afghanistan economy, even with the senate wanting the money being considered a "loan".