cyclosarin: stronger than sarin and more durable

[He219]

http://accuweather.ap.org/apdbs/Intl_Photos/views/micro/7352/7352814.jpghttp://accuweather.ap.org/apdbs/Intl_Photos/views/micro/7352/7352836.jpg

Poland: Troops beat terrorist to chemical munitions in Iraq (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-02-poland-iraq_x.htm)

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.

"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."

Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.

The warheads all contained cyclosarin, multinational force commander Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek said.

"Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable," Bieniek told Poland's TVN24 at the force's Camp Babylon headquarters.

The munitions were found in a bunker in the Polish sector, but Polish officials refused to be more specific.

In May, a ****y-trapped artillery shell apparently filled with the sarin nerve agent exploded alongside a Baghdad road but caused no serious injuries to the U.S. forces who discovered it. At the time, officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam Hussein's regime.

17 Grad rockets and mortar shells filled with GB-GF (http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2960437a12,00.html)

WARSAW: Artillery shells and warheads found by Polish troops in Iraq definitely contained the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin, Poland's military say.


"The results of hitherto analysis confirmed that chemical agent GB-GF, cyclosarin, was found in the shells," the Polish-led component of the multinational force in Iraq said in a statement.

"Beyond doubt these are shells from the 1980-1988 period, of the type used against Kurds and during the Iraq-Iran war."

Poland said on Thursday its soldiers found 17 Grad rockets and two mortar shells filled with chemicals in late June and that US experts had carried out tests on the weapons.

US officials confirmed late on Thursday that such shells were being tested but said further tests were continuing because initial findings could be misleading.

"Some of those warheads were old but it could not be ruled out some could still be used," Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told Poland's Zet radio on Friday.

Iraq said it produced cyclosarin munitions in the 1980s to fight Iran but was committed to destroying stocks and ceasing production by UN resolutions following the 1991 Gulf War.

US President George W Bush accused then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of failing to give up chemical and biological weapons and invaded Iraq last year to depose him. Since then, occupying forces have found small quantities of banned weaponry.

[Old300]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there are no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!

[Secret Squirrel]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there an no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!

Do you even know Bush's claims? :roll: Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

[Old300]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there an no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!

Do you even know Bush's claims? :roll: Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

Great point, SS. I have no idea what the President said - something about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction and limiting inspectors' access to suspected WMD sites off and on for 12 years, thus violating 16 UN Security Council resolutions and making a mockery of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire agreement. He might have mentioned Saddam's failure to account for several tons of chemical munitions and the programs and facilities that produced them, as per binding resolution after binding resolution after binding resolution after... Or something.

Anyway, like I said, liberals and lots of our moral superiors in the "International Community" have been saying for 15 months now that - obviously! - there were no WMD and our fictitious president started a fictitious war.

Brilliant! Couldn't agree more

[Fox2]

Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

"Found" and "purchased" are not mutually exclusive. ;)

[Secret Squirrel]

Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

"Found" and "purchased" are not mutually exclusive. ;)

Well if you find drugs on someone you can charge them. If you purchase drugs and plant it on them, you can still charge them, its just illegal. woot

[Fox2]

Well, it depends on how you define "found", I guess.

I can go out and buy a new car at a used car lot, and later on comment to someone else, "I found this car for a great price." :P

Semantics. I love 'em. p-)

[Secret Squirrel]

Well, it depends on how you define "found", I guess.

I can go out and buy a new car at a used car lot, and later on comment to someone else, "I found this car for a great price." :P

Semantics. I love 'em. p-)

like talking to a four year old. I'll spell it out for you; the news report takes on a different level of importance depending on if they were found by coalition forces in Iraq or if they were bought by coalition forces in Iraq. Better now?

[Herrmannek]

NOw AP and dpa state that US milittary says that shels found by Poles are rusted and not-usable, and almost no gas left in them..WTF?
In POlish
http://info.onet.pl/945176,11,item.html

[ArmedPacifist]

The weapons of mass desctruction (which many not even be capable of destruction, since the condition of the munitions has not been verified) were most likely purchased after the invasion of Iraq.

[He219]

the news report takes on a different level of importance depending on if they were found by coalition forces in Iraq or if they were bought by coalition forces in Iraq.

Perhaps it would be better if they purchased them from sources that found them in a bunker within the Polish sector of Iraq ...

:P

[Fox2]

like talking to a four year old. I'll spell it out for you; the news report takes on a different level of importance depending on if they were found by coalition forces in Iraq or if they were bought by coalition forces in Iraq. Better now?

Hey, no need for hostility there. Can't engage in discussion without getting your panties in a twist? What is wrong with this forum these days? Jesuchristo.

What you can't seem to comprehend is that the media can say "found" and it does not necessarily mean something different than "purchased". Because in some circumstances they can be used synonymously.

My point is the two separate articles are not in contradiction, as you initially tried to point out.

Now please, stop with the unwarranted insults, alright? ;)

I hope in the future you and I can disagree without the discussion degrading to childish mud-slinging. ;)

[Old300]

like talking to a four year old. I'll spell it out for you; the news report takes on a different level of importance depending on if they were found by coalition forces in Iraq or if they were bought by coalition forces in Iraq. Better now?

Hey, no need for hostility there. Can't engage in discussion without getting your panties in a twist? What is wrong with this forum these days? Jesuchristo.

What you can't seem to comprehend is that the media can say "found" and it does not necessarily mean something different than "purchased". Because in some circumstances they can be used synonymously.

My point is the two separate articles are not in contradiction, as you initially tried to point out.

Now please, stop with the unwarranted insults, alright? ;)

I would hope just because we disagree, it doesn't have to be an unpleasant discussion.

I don't know about that, Fox2. The more I think about it the more I think our dear old VP was onto something when he told Senator Leahy to engage in an anatomically difficult activity with himself the other day on the senate floor. Sometimes you read so much bull**** from people who'd be thrilled to death if your country were attacked again, that it's good to just say, "You know what? I'm tired of arguing with you. You're either with us or against us..." Personally, I'm tired of the "Why can't we all just get along" school of debating about this war. Secret Squirrel and the other Useful Idiots on this forum either get it, or they don't.

[perdurabo]

Lets say taht WSI "obtained" data on them and then we "found" them ok? ;)

[He219]

The statement said an Iraqi civilian had led the soldiers to the rockets in the town of Hilla, 62 miles south of Baghdad on June 16.

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20040702/t/r996565860.jpghttp://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20040702/t/r178272839.jpg


"The intelligence we received suggested that these missiles had probably been hidden from United Nations inspectors," General Marek Dukaczewski said.

"We bought all the shells available ... Terrorists are seeking these missiles on the black market, offering a price of around $5,000 per warhead," Dukaczewski said, adding that Poland had no evidence that any chemical weapons fell into such hands.

Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said the discovery of the rockets showed Saddam had failed to account for banned munitions held by Iraq.

"Our predictions and reports that Saddam Hussein did not come clean with a large sum of weapons, artillery shells and of weapons of mass destruction were proven true"


In Baghdad, the U.S. military issued a statement saying that two 122 mm rockets found by Polish forces had tested positive for sarin gas and confirmed that they were left over from the Iran-Iraq war.

"Due to the deteriorated state of the rounds and small quantity of remaining agent, these rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against Coalition Forces", the statement said.

Edit: Photos added ..

[Secret Squirrel]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there an no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!

Do you even know Bush's claims? :roll: Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

Great point, SS. I have no idea what the President said - something about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction and limiting inspectors' access to suspected WMD sites off and on for 12 years, thus violating 16 UN Security Council resolutions and making a mockery of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire agreement. He might have mentioned Saddam's failure to account for several tons of chemical munitions and the programs and facilities that produced them, as per binding resolution after binding resolution after binding resolution after... Or something.

Anyway, like I said, liberals and lots of our moral superiors in the "International Community" have been saying for 15 months now that - obviously! - there were no WMD and our fictitious president started a fictitious war.

Brilliant! Couldn't agree more

Lets see, the entire reason for Bush's pre-emptive war was "self defense". Gregory Thielman
"I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers. The principal reasons that Americans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the intelligence showed."

And what were some of these wonderful sources of intelligence? An exhiled Iraqi who has since been discredited by the Bush administration for apparently leaking military secrets (God only knows who was the moron who thought it would be a good idea to share this kind of information with the "informant"). Oh and dont forget about the forged Uranian from Niger document. Oh but the WMDs were there in Iraq, they just happened to be shipped out of the country right? rofl Or how about when Bush claimed that the International Atomic Energy Agency report that indicated that Iraq could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons, which the good people at IAEA promptly reported that the report did not exist.

Bush
'Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,' Too bad this contradicts NIE's report eh?

And what about the plants and tractor trailors that were producting these tons of WMDs? Where have they gone? oh yea, they were dual purpose right? They COULD be used to make these chemicals. Ut-oh, better ban guns because they COULD be used to commit crimes.

You're blind faith in Bush is distrubing to say the least.

[He219]

Friday, June 11, 2004
World Tribune

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings (http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2004-435.pdf) that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that "the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," Middle East Newsline reported.

"It's being exported," Perricos said after the briefing. "It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal."

"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey

The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads.

"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax."

The UNMOVIC report said Iraqi missiles were dismantled and exported to such countries as Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, one of at least 12, was discovered in a junk yard, replete with UN tags. In Jordan, UN inspectors found 20 SA-2 engines as well as components for solid-fuel for missiles.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," Buchanan said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors."

UN inspectors have assessed that the SA-2 and the short-range Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile were shipped abroad by agents of the Saddam regime. Buchanan said UNMOVIC plans to inspect other sites, including in Turkey.

In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.

[Old300]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there an no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!

Do you even know Bush's claims? :roll: Interesting how the first article says they bought and the second article says they were found. Still, interesting articles He219.

Great point, SS. I have no idea what the President said - something about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction and limiting inspectors' access to suspected WMD sites off and on for 12 years, thus violating 16 UN Security Council resolutions and making a mockery of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire agreement. He might have mentioned Saddam's failure to account for several tons of chemical munitions and the programs and facilities that produced them, as per binding resolution after binding resolution after binding resolution after... Or something.

Anyway, like I said, liberals and lots of our moral superiors in the "International Community" have been saying for 15 months now that - obviously! - there were no WMD and our fictitious president started a fictitious war.

Brilliant! Couldn't agree more

Lets see, the entire reason for Bush's pre-emptive war was "self defense". Gregory Thielman
"I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers. The principal reasons that Americans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the intelligence showed."

And what were some of these wonderful sources of intelligence? An exhiled Iraqi who has since been discredited by the Bush administration for apparently leaking military secrets (God only knows who was the moron who thought it would be a good idea to share this kind of information with the "informant"). Oh and dont forget about the forged Uranian from Niger document. Oh but the WMDs were there in Iraq, they just happened to be shipped out of the country right? rofl Or how about when Bush claimed that the International Atomic Energy Agency report that indicated that Iraq could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons, which the good people at IAEA promptly reported that the report did not exist.

Bush
'Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,' Too bad this contradicts NIE's report eh?

And what about the plants and tractor trailors that were producting these tons of WMDs? Where have they gone? oh yea, they were dual purpose right? They COULD be used to make these chemicals. Ut-oh, better ban guns because they COULD be used to commit crimes.

You're blind faith in Bush is distrubing to say the least.

Who the hell is Gregory Thielman and why is his analysis of the war more relevant than the FACT that we've found WMD in Iraq every week for a couple of months now?

[Black Dots]

Who the hell is Gregory Thielman and why is his analysis of the war more relevant than the FACT that we've found WMD in Iraq every week for a couple of months now?

Given the shelf-life of the chemicals in question and the dates they were made, it seems that the chemicals found are not operations-grade. Every report I've read about these warheads says the chemicals were so old, they had deteriorated to the point of being unusable. The only indication I’ve heard regarding this is when two soldiers were slightly injured after sarin exposure following a warhead’s explosion. And this:

"The [chemical] rockets [discovered by Polish troops] dated back to the 1980s, and U.S. officials said the nerve agent was so deteriorated that it would cause little or no harm in an attack."

"Neither incident has been used by coalition officials as proof of a large chemical weapons arsenal in Iraq, or proof that Saddam Hussein's regime had an active program in place to produce them. "

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/07/02/world/iraq_chem

It also seems the administration isn't too concerned about these shells, otherwise they'd be holding hourly press conferences on the lab work being done on each one and saying, "See? We told you so!"

Again, if anyone can link me to info regarding the potency or operational status of these warheads, I'd appreciate it (not sarcasm, an honest request)

[Mark Sman]

It doesn't matter how much of what is found.

Facts have a way of not changing some people's minds.

The only way some folks are going to admit Iraq was in violation of UN resolutions is if UNMOVIC comes back and finds fully operational nuclear ICBM silos.

[ArmedPacifist]

If Iraq is in violation of UN policy, then so is the United States for GIVING them the ****ing weapons.

What was that law about supplying or harbouring rouge states again? ....Yeah that's what I thought....

Why can't you get that through your heads? This stuff was MADE in the USA.


Seriously, some of the more blindly patriotic on this board have more in common with terrorist mindsets then they would like to believe.

There are NO WMD's in Iraq......get over it ladies

[He219]

Sure, 'Made in the USA' stamped all over - that wich doesn't exist - prepackaged and ready for deployment.

Do you need to be reminded of how cultures can be obtained for peaceful purposes worldwide? Developing Weapons Grade Materials is a totally different matter ...

[Secret Squirrel]

[quote] The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasnt Iraq invaded around mid March 2003, and according to Bush, major combat ended May 1st 2003? So according to the above, a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad had dissappeared sometime between May 2003 and Feb. 2004 while coalition forces occupied that area? Does that seem slightly curious to anyone else?

THIS JUST IN DEPT.
FIT TO PRINT?
Issue of 2003-09-08
Posted 2003-09-01
Aficionados of the Drudge Report may have noticed several striking headlines recently linking to stories from the World Tribune, an enterprise with a title as grand and ambitious as it is unfamiliar. One such story last week began, “U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have finally been located.” The apparent scoop—of stop-the-presses significance—was unsigned, and billed as a “special to World Tribune.com.” The Times, the Journal, and the Washington Post, meanwhile, not only got beat but failed even to acknowledge the news in the days that followed. What gives?

Not everyone ignored it: Rush Limbaugh, for instance. “There’s a piece in the World Tribune today—one of the papers in the United Kingdom—exactly as theorized on this program early on,” he said on his radio show. “It’s unconfirmed, but it’s a story that many of the weapons of mass destruction are at present buried in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.” Fox News, catering to a similar demographic, enlisted a military analyst that evening to discuss potential ramifications—military intervention in Lebanon?—on “The O’Reilly Factor.” According to the story, the weapons were probably delivered to the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold, in a caravan of tractor-trailers that was spotted leaving Iraq in January, two months before the war began, as part of a multimillion- dollar storage deal between Saddam Hussein and the Syrian government.

In fact, the World Tribune is not published in the United Kingdom, nor is it, to be precise, a newspaper. It is a Web site produced, more or less as a hobby, in Falls Church, Virginia, and is dedicated to the notion, as its mission statement explains, that “there is a market for news of the world and not just news of the weird.” (Nonetheless, the site includes a prominent feature, Cosmic Tribune, with an extraterrestrial focus, and it links to a Mafia journal called Gang Land News.) Its editor and publisher, Robert Morton, is an assistant managing editor at the Washington Times and a former “corporate editor” for News World Communications, the Times’ owner and the publishing arm of the Unification Church, led by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. (Morton and his wife, Choon Boon, are themselves followers of the Reverend Moon.) Among the World Tribune’s other recent half-ignored scoops are that Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for last month’s blackout and that a North Korean defector stressed, during a meeting in July with White House officials, the need for a preëmptive military strike against Kim Jong Il.

Morton said last week via e-mail that he founded the site as an experiment, back in 1998, while serving as a media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank. “I didn’t expect World Tribune.com to last for more than a few months,” Morton wrote, but now, despite having no dedicated staff (“Everyone involved with World Tribune.com has a day job”), the site receives more than a million page views per month. And, unlike the Washington Times, which has lost at least a billion dollars in its twenty-one-year existence, World Tribune.com, in concert with the subscription-driven weekly intelligence briefing Geostrategy-Direct.com (a partner site), has paid for itself.

The secret of its success seems to involve well-placed informants (“Over the years I have developed an informal, international network of sources and writers I can trust,” Morton said) and an emphasis on immediacy. Although Morton said, “We emphasize newspaper standards to counter the half-baked, unfiltered content on some online sites,” World Tribune.com more fairly qualifies as something between a newspaper and a rumor-mongering blog. Call it “blews.” In this sense, it is part of a loose network of mostly conservative sites—WorldNetDaily, Dr. Koontz’s National Security Message Board, debka File (produced by a pair of Jerusalem-based journalists thought to have moles in Israeli intelligence)—whose dispatches sometimes serve as the journalistic equivalent of trial balloons: a story may not be based on knowable facts, but it nevertheless may occasionally turn out to be right. (Much of the time, of course, it more closely resembles a Bat Boy update in the Weekly World News.)

Take the Lebanon story. National- security buffs may have recalled hearing similar reports as far back as late December (beginning with an accusation from Ariel Sharon), and cropping up again in the spring (via debka). The story never quite stuck, however, and as of the end of last week no major newspaper had seen fit to tell it. Bill Gertz, the Washington Times’ best-known reporter, is a columnist and contributing editor for Geostrategy-Direct.com and a member of the World Tribune advisory board. A few days after the Tribune’s Lebanon lead, Gertz allowed that he, too, had been hearing the reports for months but hadn’t written anything about it for the paper. “I’ve never been able to nail it down myself,” he said. He would presumably have encountered similar difficulties with the story, available at Cosmic Tribune, of the increase in observed U.F.O. activity as Mars neared.

http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?030908ta_talk_mcgrath

[Mark Sman]

Talk about blind. You think the Sarin was made in the US.

Ummmmmmmm, no.

[He219]

Did you bother to read the 17th QR MNMOVIC report (http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2004-435.pdf) before posting?

;)


A scam and a sham (http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040701-085559-3349r.htm)

The debate pendulum in Washington at times swings by the winds of politics, not, as it should, by evidence. Consider the quandary over President Bush's assertion in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched uranium, "yellow cake," illicitly from Niger. Yellow cake is required in a nuclear development program. When it was discovered last summer that some of the documents the administration had used as evidence were forgeries, the pendulum quickly swung to the opposite extreme. Never mind that British intelligence insisted, and still does, that Iraq was doing precisely what Mr. Bush had said it was. As far as Washington was concerned, the case was closed: Iraq never tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger.

As reported Monday in the Financial Times, however, senior European intelligence officials now say, "Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the U.S.-led invasion" in 2003. This isn't exactly news. A 2002 British dossier on Iraq's weapons programs asserted the same thing, while providing evidence that an inquiring Iraqi official had visited Niger in 1999. In a follow-up story, the Financial Times reports, "three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq." The other countries were North Korea, Iran, Libya and China.

The newspaper reports the forged documents erroneously used by the Bush administration might in fact have been a "scam" to cover the real evidence that negotiations had taken place. If this is true, we must concede that it worked. Not long after the administration backed down from the State of the Union claim, Democrats were in full cry for an investigation, all but convinced that the administration had deliberately lied about uranium sales to Iraq. Sen. Ted Kennedy took a lead role in the condemnation, saying, "It's bad enough that such a glaring blunder became part of the president's case for war. It's far worse if the case for war was made by deliberate deception." John Kerry chimed in: "The Bush administration doesn't get honesty points for belatedly admitting what has been apparent to the world for some time — that emphatic statements made on Iraq were inaccurate." Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe huffed, too: "This may be the first time in recent memory that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union Address."

Critics of the Bush administration have been so eager to discredit every argument used to justify war in Iraq that when evidence does come along proving the administration's case, it has to be ignored. It's not clear how such kindergarten logic enhances national security. Mr. Kerry was right about one thing: Mr. Bush didn't win any points for being forthright about his mistake. We would add as well that he won't win any points for being right all along.

[droopy]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there are no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!
Oh and couldn`t BUSH plant those there call the media and say OH LOOK WHAT I FOUND....

[Herrmannek]

But that's not possible. As we all know, there are no WMD and, of course, Bush LIED!
Oh and couldn`t BUSH plant those there call the media and say OH LOOK WHAT I FOUND....

He Planted it to POles giving nothing in excchange? :cantbeli:

[He219]

I suppose President Bush also coerced Poland's admittance into the EU for support in Iraq ...

;)

[MEGR]

Y plant some old shells.. Bush shoulda planted the whole shabang.. Nukes, Ebola, every thing you can imagine pretending it was dug up by soldiers.