Breaking News: WMD's Found In Iraq

[Kriegz]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document.

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.

"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.

Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.

"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.

"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified documents from Iraq," Barnes said.

The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.

At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.

Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.

"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.

As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.

FOX News' Jim Angle and Sharon Kehnemui Liss contributed to this report.

Still not nukes but... IN YOUR FACE HATERS

[jhath]

yea... this kind of stuff has been out for a long time... but the liberal media has always covered it up to make Bush look bad... i mean thats just soooooo out of character for them :)

[DJEagles]

Everyone knows that Hussien was using chemical weapons on his own people...what's the news story in that?

[krawhitham]

Umm this is coming from two Republicans.

and if it is true, not like this is the 1st time we have heard they found WMD, only later to find the truth

"The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s"

"500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent"

so this **** was burried and degraded what else was iraq suppose to do with it. It is not like they were making anything new

[Fastflink2009]

and that article is from fox news, who back all of bush's outrageous claims and actions

[krawhitham]

and that article is from fox news, who back all of bush's outrageous claims and actions

Good point

I went to

cnn.com

msnbc.com

cbsnews.com

abcnews.com

and saw nothing about 500 pounds of WMDs

What I did find was

at CNN : Earth hottest in 400 years

MSNBC : Earth hottest in 400 years

abcnews : Earth hottest in 400 years

cbsnews : Earth hottest in 2000 years

What ******* report did CBS get

[bluenotebacker]

yea... this kind of stuff has been out for a long time... but the liberal media has always covered it up to make Bush look bad... i mean thats just soooooo out of character for them

Bush doesn't need the liberal media to make him look bad. He does a fine job of that all on his own.

[UncleMo]

I hate them all equally.

The only news I trust is. Nevermind I don't trust the news.

TT, This stuff was found and I felt the same way. Even if it is true, which is most likely is, haters will still disregard it.

[Hory]

It's not on any channel apart from Fox News

BECAUSE IT IS NOT NEWS.

According to the Iraq Survey Group's own report on Iraqi WMD from 2004.

While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991.

ISG assesses that Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along frequently and rapidly shifting battlefronts.

[Thome25]

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

OK they found WMD in 2003 and we are just hearing about it now? This Bush administartion is so crooked that I would be surprised if they set this up just too bolster his approval rating. I think the Republicans will do anything too keep the White House, but It's not gonna happen.

[Fastflink2009]

Bush doesn't need the liberal media to make him look bad. He does a fine job of that all on his own.

ZIIIING!!!!!!!

[PinkFloyd2003]

Whether it was an ongoing program or not, the fact that he has them is proof that he lied about disposing of all of his weapons. If youre a world leader and the UN says have you disposed of all your weapons, you say yes, and it turns out you were wrong, that isn't "just a mistake." You need to be a little more careful than that. Plus accusing someone of being a republican actually doens't mean they're wrong either. Personally I don't take one side over another (i.e. Partisanship) and I think it's kind of ridiculous to do that anyways because you might not see the whole picture. I mean I watch O'Riley Factor AND the Daily Show! But I'm sick of people blaming Fox News for how Conservative they are. Most of the people there may (and probably are) Conservative but that doesn't automatically falsify news reports.

[pfalvey]

Whether it was an ongoing program or not, the fact that he has them is proof that he lied about disposing of all of his weapons. If youre a world leader and the UN says have you disposed of all your weapons, you say yes, and it turns out you were wrong, that isn't "just a mistake." You need to be a little more careful than that. Plus accusing someone of being a republican actually doens't mean they're wrong either. Personally I don't take one side over another (i.e. Partisanship) and I think it's kind of ridiculous to do that anyways because you might not see the whole picture. I mean I watch O'Riley Factor AND the Daily Show! But I'm sick of people blaming Fox News for how Conservative they are. Most of the people there may (and probably are) Conservative but that doesn't automatically falsify news reports.

Up until FOX News, the mainstream media (CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN) was liberal and since they had a virtual monopoly on the news nobody noticed, until FOX and the internet came along.

[UncleMo]

Hory was right, this isn't news as I've heard this in the past, maybe the PROOF was just released.

[PinkFloyd2003]

Up until FOX News, the mainstream media (CBS/NBC/ABC/CNN) was liberal and since they had a virtual monopoly on the news nobody noticed, until FOX and the internet came along.

EXACTLY! When a new news program's politcal views aren't identical to the traditional networks' views, people start freaking out!

[ixcuincle]

Don't forget all the previous studies that found that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction in the 2001-2003 era.

I for one don't believe Iraq had WMD's. We were constantly told about what a threat Saddam was , how he had "WMD's" , then we go ahead and invade and didn't find any of them. After this , multiple studies were produced that showed Iraq never had WMD's after 2001...However this does not change my opinion of the war. I still think we are in Iraq for the right reasons : to assist them in democracy , but the whole WMD ordeal was complete nonsense and in my opinion Bush should have apologized for misleading the country for so long instead of just sweeping the embarassment under the rug and changing the motive of the war to "assisting Iraqis in making a democracy"

[PinkFloyd2003]

Don't forget all the previous studies that found that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction in the 2001-2003 era.

I for one don't believe Iraq had WMD's. We were constantly told about what a threat Saddam was , how he had "WMD's" , then we go ahead and invade and didn't find any of them. After this , multiple studies were produced that showed Iraq never had WMD's after 2001...However this does not change my opinion of the war. I still think we are in Iraq for the right reasons to assist them in democracy , but the whole WMD ordeal was complete nonsense and in my opinion Bush should have apologized for misleading the country for so long instead of just sweeping the embarassment under the rug and changing the motive of the war to "assisting Iraqis in making a democracy"

I couldn't agree with you more. While I still feel the gas may still have posed a threat on a local scale, it was in no way a direct threat to the US.

Another thing to note is that if the US pulls out of Iraq to early before they can get their feet off the ground, Iran could potentially take it under its wing instead which is what we're trying to prevent at all costs. The one thing that annoys me the most is the fact that we invaded Iraq based on intelligence reports that discussed the possibility of a weapons program, we talked to Iran who definitely has a Nuclear program, and we're really just ignoring North Korea whose pretty much bragging about their Missile that they're all too excited to use. Does that seem backwards to anyone else?!

[tywiggins]

EXACTLY! When a new news program's politcal views aren't identical to the traditional networks' views, people start freaking out!

What I really hate about Fox News is when they say it's "fair and balanced"

That is such BS.

[PinkFloyd2003]

What I really hate about Fox News is when they say it's "fair and balanced"

That is such BS.

I think it's more funny than anything else. I mean like I said, agree with him or not, I love watching O'Riley. Do I agree with alot of things he says? Sure I do! Do I disagree with things he says? You bet. The point is there is a lot of disagreement witihin Fox News itself like when O'Riley disagrees with Neil Cavuto, I love that!

The bottom line is to think that any News program is ALWAYS right down the line is obvious BS. The fact is that without advertising the programs won't exist. If you **** off the companies paying for your show... you no longer have a show. That's always been the problem with the way TV works. There's always going to be a (sometimes not so) hidden agenda with News programs, for example the BBC News has been very anti-American lately. Ironically Trey Parker and Matt Stone got it right in South Park and Team America when they discuss the benefit of having "softy liberals" and "always looking for a fight conservatives." The challenge is being smart enough to know when things are too left or too right.