US aggression against Syria is Iraq Redux on Sterioids, Obama head-long down the slippery slope of war without end
President Bush said: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production.”
After the war, the White House said the African uranium claim was false and shouldn’t have been in the president’s address. But at the time, it was part of a campaign that painted the intelligence as irrefutable.
“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” said Vice President Dick Cheney.
Powell said: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
It was solid intelligence, Powell said, that proved Saddam had amassed chemical and biological weapons: “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent.”
He also said that part of the stockpile was clearly in these bunkers: “The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. How do I know that, how can I say that? Let me give you a closer look.”
Up close, Powell said you could see a truck for cleaning up chemical spills, a signature for a chemical bunker: “It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.”
But Thielmann disagreed with Powell’s statement: “My understanding is that these particular vehicles were simply fire trucks. You cannot really describe as being a unique signature.” ….more
Alarm over Syria’s secretive chemical weapons
4 December, 2012 – Agence France Presse – The Daily Star
WASHINGTON: Activity around Syria’s chemical weapons is ringing alarm bells in Washington and other world capitals, but secrecy surrounding the stockpile makes it difficult to gauge its nature and size.
US President Barack Obama on Monday warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “there will be consequences” if he unleashed those weapons in the civil war wracking his country.
A US official told AFP that Syria had begun mixing chemicals that could be used to make sarin, a deadly nerve agent, while CNN reported Damascus could deploy the gas in a limited artillery attack on advancing rebels.
Experts, though, are unable to define the extent of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, emphasising that little public information exists. Syria is one of the few countries that has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Damascus has however signed the Geneva protocol, which bars the first use of chemical and biological weapons, though it does not make stipulations about production, storage and transfer.
“We are closely following information about Syria… but we can’t say more without sending inspectors on the ground,” Michael Luhan, a spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told AFP.
Intelligence services also have little to say on the subject.
“Syria’s well-established chemical warfare program includes a stockpile of nerve agent, which can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles,” Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lieutenant General Ronald Lee Burgess said in March 2011 testimony before a Senate panel.
“Syria continues to seek chemical warfare-related precursors and expertise from foreign sources.”
Syria is stockpiling “hundreds of tons” of various chemical agents, according to Leonard Spector of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
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