http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/009035.html


Vials: A total of 97 vials-including those with labels consistent with
the al Hakam cover stories of single-cell protein and biopesticides,
as well as strains that could be used to produce BW agents-were
recovered from a scientist's residence.


Storage room in basement of Revolutionary Command Council
Headquarters. Burned frames of PC workstations visible on shelves. All
rooms sharing walls with this storage room were untouched from fire or
battle damage.



We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and
significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United
Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery
of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through
the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning
information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence
of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have
been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these
concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi
Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring
and suitable for continuing CBW research.

A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW
agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections
were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's
home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean
Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin
were not declared to the UN.

Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have
been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and
electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility
and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out
to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful
only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was
maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi
scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges
up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by
the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to
threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo,
and Abu Dhabi.

Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North
Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles
--probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and
other prohibited military equipment.
In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have
been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer
evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies
suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence
- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of
all traces of use - are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.
For example,

On 10 July 2003 an ISG team exploited the Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC) Headquarters in Baghdad. The basement of the main
building contained an archive of documents situated on well-organized
rows of metal shelving. The basement suffered no fire damage despite
the total destruction of the upper floors from coalition air strikes.
Upon arrival the exploitation team encountered small piles of ash
where individual documents or binders of documents were intentionally
destroyed. Computer hard drives had been deliberately destroyed.
Computers would have had financial value to a random looter; their
destruction, rather than removal for resale or reuse, indicates a
targeted effort to prevent Coalition forces from gaining access to
their contents.

All IIS laboratories visited by IIS exploitation teams have been
clearly sanitized, including removal of much equipment, shredding and
burning of documents, and even the removal of nameplates from office
doors.

Although much of the deliberate destruction and sanitization of
documents and records probably occurred during the height of OIF
combat operations, indications of significant continuing destruction
efforts have been found after the end of major combat operations,
including entry in May 2003 of the locked gated vaults of the Ba'ath
party intelligence building in Baghdad and highly selective
destruction of computer hard drives and data storage equipment along
with the burning of a small number of specific binders that appear to
have contained financial and intelligence records, and in July 2003 a
site exploitation team at the Abu Ghurayb Prison found one pile of the
smoldering ashes from documents that was still warm to the touch.



In other news



http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/009033.html


There were 50 specific Iraq-al Qaeda links acknowledged by the CIA
before the war


A LEADING DEMOCRAT on the Senate Intelligence Committee has reiterated
his support for the war in Iraq and encouraged the Bush administration
to be more aggressive in its preemptive measures to protect Americans.
Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana and a leader of moderates in the
Senate, responded to questions last week on the war in Iraq and a memo
detailing links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden sent to the
committee in late October by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J.
Feith and later excerpted in these pages.

"Even if there's only a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein and
Osama bin Laden would cooperate, the question is whether that's an
acceptable level of risk," Bayh told me. "My answer to that would be
an unequivocal 'no.' We need to be much more pro-active on eliminating
threats before they're imminent."

Asked about the growing evidence of a relationship between Iraq and al
Qaeda, Bayh said: "The relationship seemed to have its roots in mutual
exploitation. Saddam Hussein used terrorism for his own ends, and
Osama bin Laden used a nation-state for the things that only a
nation-state can provide. Some of the intelligence is strong, and some
of it is murky. But that's the nature of intelligence on a
relationship like this--lots of it is going to be speculation and
conjecture. Following 9/11, we await certainty at our peril."

* * *

Bayh declined to speak about any of the 50 specific Iraq-al Qaeda
links cited in the Feith memo, and said the intelligence community
reported before the war that intelligence on the links to "9/11 and al
Qaeda" was the weakest part of the justification for war in Iraq.

"Look, there were multiple reasons to remove Saddam Hussein, not the
least of which was his butchering of his own people--that's the kind
of thing that most progressives used to care about. We were going to
have to deal with him militarily at some time in the future. The
possibility--even if people thought it unlikely--that he would use
weapons of mass death or provide them to terrorists was just too great
a risk."

Still, Bayh rejects the conventional wisdom that cooperation between
Hussein and bin Laden was implausible because of religious and
ideological differences. "They were certainly moving toward the
philosophy that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Both were
hostile to us, and while they historically had reasons not to like
each other, that historical skepticism is overridden by the enmity and
mutual hostility toward us. These are not illogical ties from their
perspective."



Iraqi colonel tells of Saddam's plan to deploy battlefield WMD


http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/009039.html

Saddam Hussein deployed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to
the US-led war on Iraq which could be used on the battlefield in less
than 45 minutes, an Iraqi officer told a British Sunday newspaper. The
informant, identified as Lieutenant Colonel al-Dabbagh, said he
believed he was the source of a controversial claim in a British
government dossier on Iraq which claimed some of Saddam's weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) could be deployed within 45 minutes




Basically this goes to show the nay sayers, that it takes time. Too
many were so quick to pounce on George Bush. Due primarily to hatred
and not common sense.

It takes time, we have the bad guys on the run and we are finding the
weapons.

http://www.command-post.org/2_archives/009035.html