Are You Convinced with the New Evidence?

[MJ-12]

vddvd

[Anonymous]

Personally, I don't trust either country, the U.S. or Iraq. It's obvious that someone is lying here. From what I have seen of Bush's actions, when he does something I feel good about (let me finish my sentence here), he later uses what he did to do something I really don't approve of. Saddam's just an evil man and that country needs some cleaning up. If we don't do it I don't know what country will. I think the German viewpoint on this is good but at the same time, it's probably what Saddam wants. There really is no good solution to this conflict from what I can see. I imagine that if Iraq is indeed harboring terrorists, which I have no doubt about, then they're probably lending the terrorists the weapons or making them hold them. It's hard to say. Like I said, I trust no one at this point. I think the problem is the same problem of WWII where we had a bad leader on our side and a bad leader on the other side. Bush and Saddam are both war mongerers and they'll each get what's coming to them- a big giant war. What I wonder is, what are the real reasons for this war? I can't see it just yet but I've read a couple of good theories. It sucks not being able to get information first-hand anymore. I think I'll just crawl into a cave and hibernate.

[PeacefulWarrior]

I guess whether you are or not you are for taking military action against Saddam, the war seems like it is going to happen...for better or for worst.

UNITED NATIONS, New York Secretary of State Colin Powell, offering a steady stream of raw intelligence that included intercepted telephone calls, satellite photographs, diagrams, and eyewitness accounts, accused Iraq on Wednesday of harboring and hiding weapons of mass destruction and said that allowing Baghdad's military capacity to evolve, even "for a few months," was no longer an option.
.
"Unless we act we are confronting an even more frightening future," Powell told a special meeting of the Security Council in a highly anticipated and strongly worded speech lasting slightly more than an hour. "Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing unless something stops him."
.
Powell delivered the White House's brief against Saddam's regime in lucid, incriminating tones, describing a country that houses large stocks of chemical and biological weapons that have been tested on human beings. He asserted that Baghdad maintains a small network of elusive mobile weapons labs transported by truck and rail, and possesses an active nuclear weapons program - much of which, Powell said, Baghdad has concealed from the UN weapons inspectors who have spent the last two and half months examining Iraqi arms programs.
.
Powell, who said that Iraq's sleight of hand violated the terms of Resolution 1441, the UN decree adopted last autumn that requires Baghdad to cooperate with weapons inspectors, also said that Iraq has aided terrorist groups, including key cells linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," Powell said. "Iraq has now placed itself in danger of serious consequences." Iraq gave no indication that it planned to change its attitude, which thus far has been to challenge White House criticisms and offer its own pugnacious responses. Baghdad's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Aldouri, attended the Security Council meeting and flatly contradicted even the weakest weapons charges leveled a by Powell and UN inspectors.
.
Aldouri accused Powell of fabricating the audiotapes presented here and said "we have no relationship with Al Qaeda." He criticized Powell's presentation as nothing more than an effort to "sell the idea of war" without "legal, moral, or political justification."
.
In Baghdad, an adviser to Saddam, Lieutenant General Amir al Saadi, disparaged Powell's presentation. "From what we have heard, any third-rate intelligence outfit could produce such recordings," he told reporters. "It is simply not true and not genuine. The reason is simple - because we have nothing to hide."
.
"This is simply manufactured evidence," he added.
.
Amid speculation that the Bush administration is prepared to launch a war against Iraq by the middle of next month, China, France and Russia reasserted their desire Wednesday to see weapons inspections continue and advocated efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully. Britain, which has allied itself with the U.S. in the debate and has sent troops to the Gulf, offered strong criticism of Iraq here Wednesday and supported Powell's contention that Iraq is not complying with weapons inspectors.
.
Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, who has not supported military action against Iraq, said on German television Wednesday that he believed Iraq could be brought into compliance if weapons inspectors are given more time to carry out their duties.
.
On Tuesday, Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector for biological and chemical weapons, said that the war clock with Iraq stands at "five minutes to midnight."
.
In presenting his speech, which was transmitted globally on live television, Powell was accompanied by the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte. Powell raised the curtain on his presentation by offering what he described as an intercepted telephone conversation between a colonel and a brigadier general in Iraq's elite Republican Guard last November that proved Iraq was playing cat and mouse with weapons inspectors.
.
In the conversation, the two officers banter about the pending arrival of Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector. "What do we say if one of them sees it?" one of the officers asks, referring to a "modified vehicle" from the Al-Kindi company, an Iraqi concern suspected of producing prohibited weapons. "We evacuated everything," the other officer replies. "We don't have anything left."
.
Another phone conversation, intercepted in January, just four days after inspectors discovered 12 empty chemical warheads, has an Iraqi officer from Republican Guard headquarters referring to "forbidden ammo" and telling a field officer about a visit by inspectors.
.
"We sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas," the officer at headquarters says. "Make sure there is nothing there." The senior officer then orders his underling to "destroy the message, because I don't want anyone to see this message." Powell accused Saddam himself of orchestrating the deception program through a high-level committee specifically established to spy on UN inspectors and prevent them from doing their jobs. Powell said the committee, headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan, includes one of Saddam's sons as well as Lieutenant Amir al Saadi, the primary point of contact for UN inspectors and the Iraqi government. Playing on continued concerns about the exact reach and movements of Al Qaeda operatives, Powell said that Baghdad's illicit weapons programs can be connected to terrorism and to terrorist organizations. "Iraq and terrorism goes back decades," he said.
.
The nexus with Al Qaeda, Powell said, originates with a branch headed by Abu Massab al Zaqawi, a senior associate of bin Laden. He said Zaqawi has a camp in the northeastern corner of Kurdish Iraq teaching terrorist operatives how to produce ricin and other extremely lethal chemicals. He said Zaqawi has received medical treatment in Baghdad and that there are also other Zaqawi brigades operating in Baghdad. "From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zaqawi can direct his terrorist network in the Middle East and beyond," Powell said. He also accused Zaqawi of providing money and weapons used in the killing of Lawrence Foley, an employee with the Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan last October. He noted that "Al Qaeda continues to have deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction" and that Qaeda operatives trained with chemical weapons in Iraq between 1997 and 2000.
.
Powell presented satellite photos of the Taji weapons facility, one of 65 such facilities in Iraq that he said houses chemical weapons. He said Taji is home to 15 active chemical munitions bunkers, and that soldiers relocated munitions just before weapons inspectors arrived, indicating that the Iraqis had advance knowledge of the inspectors' schedule. He added that the White House has observed "this type of housecleaning" at 30 military sites. He also said the Iraqis have limited access to their scientists, going so far as warning them that providing information was "punishable by death" and creating a false death certificate for one scientist who was then sent into hiding. Powell brandished a small tube, noting that less than a teaspoon of anthrax had killed two postal workers in 2001. He said Iraq declared it had 8,500 liters of anthrax in 1995, while weapons inspectors estimated that Iraq had 35,000 liters and that Iraq had not accounted for "even one teaspoonful" of anthrax since then. He said that Iraq has a total stockpile of 100 to 500 tons of chemical agents. He said Iraqi informants said Baghdad has 18 trucks that it uses as mobile biological weapons labs and played a taped communiqu?of a few weeks ago in which an Iraqi officer identified as Captain Ibrahim told a colonel to remove the expression "nerve agents" wherever "it comes up" in wireless instructions shared by the military. "This is evidence, not conjecture," Powell said. "Why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don't." He presents intelligence data to UN and says delay is not an option

UNITED NATIONS, New York Secretary of State Colin Powell, offering a steady stream of raw intelligence that included intercepted telephone calls, satellite photographs, diagrams, and eyewitness accounts, accused Iraq on Wednesday of harboring and hiding weapons of mass destruction and said that allowing Baghdad's military capacity to evolve, even "for a few months," was no longer an option.
.
"Unless we act we are confronting an even more frightening future," Powell told a special meeting of the Security Council in a highly anticipated and strongly worded speech lasting slightly more than an hour. "Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing unless something stops him."
.
Powell delivered the White House's brief against Saddam's regime in lucid, incriminating tones, describing a country that houses large stocks of chemical and biological weapons that have been tested on human beings. He asserted that Baghdad maintains a small network of elusive mobile weapons labs transported by truck and rail, and possesses an active nuclear weapons program - much of which, Powell said, Baghdad has concealed from the UN weapons inspectors who have spent the last two and half months examining Iraqi arms programs.
.
Powell, who said that Iraq's sleight of hand violated the terms of Resolution 1441, the UN decree adopted last autumn that requires Baghdad to cooperate with weapons inspectors, also said that Iraq has aided terrorist groups, including key cells linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," Powell said. "Iraq has now placed itself in danger of serious consequences." Iraq gave no indication that it planned to change its attitude, which thus far has been to challenge White House criticisms and offer its own pugnacious responses. Baghdad's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Aldouri, attended the Security Council meeting and flatly contradicted even the weakest weapons charges leveled a by Powell and UN inspectors.
.
Aldouri accused Powell of fabricating the audiotapes presented here and said "we have no relationship with Al Qaeda." He criticized Powell's presentation as nothing more than an effort to "sell the idea of war" without "legal, moral, or political justification."
.
In Baghdad, an adviser to Saddam, Lieutenant General Amir al Saadi, disparaged Powell's presentation. "From what we have heard, any third-rate intelligence outfit could produce such recordings," he told reporters. "It is simply not true and not genuine. The reason is simple - because we have nothing to hide."
.
"This is simply manufactured evidence," he added.
.
Amid speculation that the Bush administration is prepared to launch a war against Iraq by the middle of next month, China, France and Russia reasserted their desire Wednesday to see weapons inspections continue and advocated efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully. Britain, which has allied itself with the U.S. in the debate and has sent troops to the Gulf, offered strong criticism of Iraq here Wednesday and supported Powell's contention that Iraq is not complying with weapons inspectors.
.
Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, who has not supported military action against Iraq, said on German television Wednesday that he believed Iraq could be brought into compliance if weapons inspectors are given more time to carry out their duties.
.
On Tuesday, Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector for biological and chemical weapons, said that the war clock with Iraq stands at "five minutes to midnight."
.
In presenting his speech, which was transmitted globally on live television, Powell was accompanied by the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte. Powell raised the curtain on his presentation by offering what he described as an intercepted telephone conversation between a colonel and a brigadier general in Iraq's elite Republican Guard last November that proved Iraq was playing cat and mouse with weapons inspectors.
.
In the conversation, the two officers banter about the pending arrival of Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector. "What do we say if one of them sees it?" one of the officers asks, referring to a "modified vehicle" from the Al-Kindi company, an Iraqi concern suspected of producing prohibited weapons. "We evacuated everything," the other officer replies. "We don't have anything left."
.
Another phone conversation, intercepted in January, just four days after inspectors discovered 12 empty chemical warheads, has an Iraqi officer from Republican Guard headquarters referring to "forbidden ammo" and telling a field officer about a visit by inspectors.
.
"We sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas," the officer at headquarters says. "Make sure there is nothing there." The senior officer then orders his underling to "destroy the message, because I don't want anyone to see this message." Powell accused Saddam himself of orchestrating the deception program through a high-level committee specifically established to spy on UN inspectors and prevent them from doing their jobs. Powell said the committee, headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan, includes one of Saddam's sons as well as Lieutenant Amir al Saadi, the primary point of contact for UN inspectors and the Iraqi government. Playing on continued concerns about the exact reach and movements of Al Qaeda operatives, Powell said that Baghdad's illicit weapons programs can be connected to terrorism and to terrorist organizations. "Iraq and terrorism goes back decades," he said.
.
The nexus with Al Qaeda, Powell said, originates with a branch headed by Abu Massab al Zaqawi, a senior associate of bin Laden. He said Zaqawi has a camp in the northeastern corner of Kurdish Iraq teaching terrorist operatives how to produce ricin and other extremely lethal chemicals. He said Zaqawi has received medical treatment in Baghdad and that there are also other Zaqawi brigades operating in Baghdad. "From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zaqawi can direct his terrorist network in the Middle East and beyond," Powell said. He also accused Zaqawi of providing money and weapons used in the killing of Lawrence Foley, an employee with the Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan last October. He noted that "Al Qaeda continues to have deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction" and that Qaeda operatives trained with chemical weapons in Iraq between 1997 and 2000.
.
Powell presented satellite photos of the Taji weapons facility, one of 65 such facilities in Iraq that he said houses chemical weapons. He said Taji is home to 15 active chemical munitions bunkers, and that soldiers relocated munitions just before weapons inspectors arrived, indicating that the Iraqis had advance knowledge of the inspectors' schedule. He added that the White House has observed "this type of housecleaning" at 30 military sites. He also said the Iraqis have limited access to their scientists, going so far as warning them that providing information was "punishable by death" and creating a false death certificate for one scientist who was then sent into hiding. Powell brandished a small tube, noting that less than a teaspoon of anthrax had killed two postal workers in 2001. He said Iraq declared it had 8,500 liters of anthrax in 1995, while weapons inspectors estimated that Iraq had 35,000 liters and that Iraq had not accounted for "even one teaspoonful" of anthrax since then. He said that Iraq has a total stockpile of 100 to 500 tons of chemical agents. He said Iraqi informants said Baghdad has 18 trucks that it uses as mobile biological weapons labs and played a taped communiqu?of a few weeks ago in which an Iraqi officer identified as Captain Ibrahim told a colonel to remove the expression "nerve agents" wherever "it comes up" in wireless instructions shared by the military. "This is evidence, not conjecture," Powell said. "Why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don't." He presents intelligence data to UN and says delay is not an option

UNITED NATIONS, New York Secretary of State Colin Powell, offering a steady stream of raw intelligence that included intercepted telephone calls, satellite photographs, diagrams, and eyewitness accounts, accused Iraq on Wednesday of harboring and hiding weapons of mass destruction and said that allowing Baghdad's military capacity to evolve, even "for a few months," was no longer an option.
.
"Unless we act we are confronting an even more frightening future," Powell told a special meeting of the Security Council in a highly anticipated and strongly worded speech lasting slightly more than an hour. "Saddam Hussein will stop at nothing unless something stops him."
.
Powell delivered the White House's brief against Saddam's regime in lucid, incriminating tones, describing a country that houses large stocks of chemical and biological weapons that have been tested on human beings. He asserted that Baghdad maintains a small network of elusive mobile weapons labs transported by truck and rail, and possesses an active nuclear weapons program - much of which, Powell said, Baghdad has concealed from the UN weapons inspectors who have spent the last two and half months examining Iraqi arms programs.
.
Powell, who said that Iraq's sleight of hand violated the terms of Resolution 1441, the UN decree adopted last autumn that requires Baghdad to cooperate with weapons inspectors, also said that Iraq has aided terrorist groups, including key cells linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," Powell said. "Iraq has now placed itself in danger of serious consequences." Iraq gave no indication that it planned to change its attitude, which thus far has been to challenge White House criticisms and offer its own pugnacious responses. Baghdad's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Aldouri, attended the Security Council meeting and flatly contradicted even the weakest weapons charges leveled a by Powell and UN inspectors.
.
Aldouri accused Powell of fabricating the audiotapes presented here and said "we have no relationship with Al Qaeda." He criticized Powell's presentation as nothing more than an effort to "sell the idea of war" without "legal, moral, or political justification."
.
In Baghdad, an adviser to Saddam, Lieutenant General Amir al Saadi, disparaged Powell's presentation. "From what we have heard, any third-rate intelligence outfit could produce such recordings," he told reporters. "It is simply not true and not genuine. The reason is simple - because we have nothing to hide."
.
"This is simply manufactured evidence," he added.
.
Amid speculation that the Bush administration is prepared to launch a war against Iraq by the middle of next month, China, France and Russia reasserted their desire Wednesday to see weapons inspections continue and advocated efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully. Britain, which has allied itself with the U.S. in the debate and has sent troops to the Gulf, offered strong criticism of Iraq here Wednesday and supported Powell's contention that Iraq is not complying with weapons inspectors.
.
Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, who has not supported military action against Iraq, said on German television Wednesday that he believed Iraq could be brought into compliance if weapons inspectors are given more time to carry out their duties.
.
On Tuesday, Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector for biological and chemical weapons, said that the war clock with Iraq stands at "five minutes to midnight."
.
In presenting his speech, which was transmitted globally on live television, Powell was accompanied by the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte. Powell raised the curtain on his presentation by offering what he described as an intercepted telephone conversation between a colonel and a brigadier general in Iraq's elite Republican Guard last November that proved Iraq was playing cat and mouse with weapons inspectors.
.
In the conversation, the two officers banter about the pending arrival of Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector. "What do we say if one of them sees it?" one of the officers asks, referring to a "modified vehicle" from the Al-Kindi company, an Iraqi concern suspected of producing prohibited weapons. "We evacuated everything," the other officer replies. "We don't have anything left."
.
Another phone conversation, intercepted in January, just four days after inspectors discovered 12 empty chemical warheads, has an Iraqi officer from Republican Guard headquarters referring to "forbidden ammo" and telling a field officer about a visit by inspectors.
.
"We sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas," the officer at headquarters says. "Make sure there is nothing there." The senior officer then orders his underling to "destroy the message, because I don't want anyone to see this message." Powell accused Saddam himself of orchestrating the deception program through a high-level committee specifically established to spy on UN inspectors and prevent them from doing their jobs. Powell said the committee, headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yasin Ramadan, includes one of Saddam's sons as well as Lieutenant Amir al Saadi, the primary point of contact for UN inspectors and the Iraqi government. Playing on continued concerns about the exact reach and movements of Al Qaeda operatives, Powell said that Baghdad's illicit weapons programs can be connected to terrorism and to terrorist organizations. "Iraq and terrorism goes back decades," he said.
.
The nexus with Al Qaeda, Powell said, originates with a branch headed by Abu Massab al Zaqawi, a senior associate of bin Laden. He said Zaqawi has a camp in the northeastern corner of Kurdish Iraq teaching terrorist operatives how to produce ricin and other extremely lethal chemicals. He said Zaqawi has received medical treatment in Baghdad and that there are also other Zaqawi brigades operating in Baghdad. "From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zaqawi can direct his terrorist network in the Middle East and beyond," Powell said. He also accused Zaqawi of providing money and weapons used in the killing of Lawrence Foley, an employee with the Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan last October. He noted that "Al Qaeda continues to have deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction" and that Qaeda operatives trained with chemical weapons in Iraq between 1997 and 2000.
.
Powell presented satellite photos of the Taji weapons facility, one of 65 such facilities in Iraq that he said houses chemical weapons. He said Taji is home to 15 active chemical munitions bunkers, and that soldiers relocated munitions just before weapons inspectors arrived, indicating that the Iraqis had advance knowledge of the inspectors' schedule. He added that the White House has observed "this type of housecleaning" at 30 military sites. He also said the Iraqis have limited access to their scientists, going so far as warning them that providing information was "punishable by death" and creating a false death certificate for one scientist who was then sent into hiding. Powell brandished a small tube, noting that less than a teaspoon of anthrax had killed two postal workers in 2001. He said Iraq declared it had 8,500 liters of anthrax in 1995, while weapons inspectors estimated that Iraq had 35,000 liters and that Iraq had not accounted for "even one teaspoonful" of anthrax since then. He said that Iraq has a total stockpile of 100 to 500 tons of chemical agents. He said Iraqi informants said Baghdad has 18 trucks that it uses as mobile biological weapons labs and played a taped communiqu?of a few weeks ago in which an Iraqi officer identified as Captain Ibrahim told a colonel to remove the expression "nerve agents" wherever "it comes up" in wireless instructions shared by the military. "This is evidence, not conjecture," Powell said. "Why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt? I don't."