Here’s the pdf of the 92 page addenda, and the (HTML) Note for the Comprehensive Report with Addenda
Here’s the original report (HTML) Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD.
Wisdom in that^.
There’re people who’re deliberately trying to “mislead” in these issues because they benefit from others being misled. There’s no money in the truth of these things.
Well, i appreciate the info, but I wonder about the “Syrian Connection”. Under the Assad family, Syria has pretty well become a police state. hence, i would not expect that anybody (but a handful of people) in Syria would know anything about a WMD transfer from iraq. Face it, the Syrian desert is big…and the border with iraq is sparsely inhabited. is it possible that a lot of stuff is out htere, buried under the sand? I’m not defending Bush-but its clear that:
(1) Saddam spent a HUGE amount of money on chemical and biological weapons research
(2)Saddam tried to recruit scientists from Russia, and possibly pakistan
There is no way that he (Saddam) would dump all of this money into such programs, only to throw it all away! Recall the inicent with the late Dr. Gerald bull-Saddam kept trying to build a long-range gun, even after Bull was knocked off by parties unknown.
I don’t think Saddam was so foolish as to spend all of this money, without being sure that he would be able to restart his waepons programs.
Saddam had the same weakness shared by tyrants everywhere: everybody agrees with you, nobody tells you your full of shit. For instance: Stalin refused to believe Hitler would attack him, even though surrounded by people who knew better.
The Super Gun idea isn’t new, the Germans shelled Paris from miles away. Trouble is, they couldn’t shell anything specific in Paris. Maybe Saddam could have built his Jules Verne cannon, but all he would have is a weapon that would infuriate an enemy without effectively weakening his enemy’s ability to kick his sorry ass into next week. In strategic military parlance, this is called “fucking stupid.”
Sure it’s possible.
Bigfoot is possible, Nessie’s possible. If one’s content w/ the “absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence” level of proof, then anything goes.
Oh, quite - I did explicitly say that that site was stunningly one-sided.
I’ve spent a lot of money on lottery tickets. Still no winners though 
I tried to get jobs with some of the top research labs in the nation, possibly the world. Ended up working here though
I think you’re asking the wrong questions. As my pseudo-jokes above indicate, effort does not necessarially imply accomplishment(I was trying to be funny, odds are I failed miserably for a good number of readers of this thread). Plus our understanding of exactly what is being attempted is rather poor. The Duelfer report mentions training programs for Iraqi scientists. These programs were not shown to be exclusively for development of WMD, rather the evidence pointed towards them being much more basic and general education programs. Like courses in labratory science of the type necessary to produce medications and other pharmacuticals. A lot of the infrastructure investment was in water treatment plants, industrial chemical production facilities, and pharmacological(a specific note was made of a facility being rebuilt which produces acetimenaphen(Tylenol) in the Duelfer report).
Is it possible a lot of stuff was buried in the sand? Only if there was stuff to bury. The most comprehensive and thorough investigation yet done has concluded that there was no no evidence of there being things to bury. Places to bury them, yes. Things to bury? No.
Enjoy,
Steven
It was worse than one-sided. It did not even represent it’s own side truthfully. There is no reasonable way a person could say the Iraq/Al-Qaeda connection had “held up in court”. It had not been tested! It was presented in court, and then a default judgement awarded because OBL, Saddam, the Taliban, and the Iraqi Regime failed to show. A set of evidence could not be fairly said to have “held up” if it were not challenged.
A one-sided presentation means they present only the facts which back up their side. That site presented some flat-out lies. The evidence was NOT tested in a court of law. A trial where one side doesn’t show up is no trial at all and presenting it as if it settled any questions about the evidence is just flat wrong.
Getting back to the original question, is it your contention that Saddam provided aid to Al Qaeda? If so, what was the nature of this aid and what is your evidence?
Enjoy,
Steven
“Hassan? Yeah, Saddam here! Fine, fine…yeah, they’re all fine, boys are busy with thier rape rooms…yeah, kids these days, whaddaya gonna do?..Listen, reason I called, I got a couple hundred truckloads of stuff headed your way…what? oh, just vast stockpiles of nerve agents, poison gas, bioagents, you know, the usual…kinda like you to hide it under your bed for a while, till this all blows over, ya know?..Yeah, sure, if the Americans find out, they’ll be pissed, you bet, but I figure a Baathist stalwart like yourself…Hello?..Hassan?..Hello?..”
Well, it’s been said that Saddam wasn’t exactly crying tears (crocodile or otherwise) over the 9/11 attacks…
Not specifically, no. Saddam was known for his terrorist links - rewarding the families of suicide bombers, harbouring (then killing) Abu Nidal, etc as demonstrated in my other earlier cites.
Please don’t forget, ignore or overlook the MEK. They’re the ones who put the Kurds into the graves that’re are fashionablly outrageous at the moment, nearly fifteen years too late.
Ok, I read the conversation thusly.
Assertion from the book, paraphrased by ralph123c “Saddam Hussein maintained close ties with Al Queda, OBL, and other terrorist goups (including Abdul Nidal). He furnished financial aid, weapons, and training facilities.”
To which Quartz replied “This is well known.”
Using the standard rules of English usage we can expand the above statements for clarity, just as they were shrunk for convenience.
Assertion from the book, paraphrased by ralph123c “Saddam Hussein maintained close ties with Al Queda, OBL, and other terrorist goups (including Abdul Nidal). He furnished financial aid, weapons, and training facilities [to Al Qaeda, OBL, and other terrorist groups(including Abu Nidal)].”
To which Quartz replied “This [The fact that Saddam Hussein maintained close ties with Al Qaeda, OBL, and other terrorist groups(including Abu Nidal) and furnished financial aid, weapons, and training facilites to Al Qaeda, OBL, and other terrorist groups(including Abu Nidal) ] is well known.”
Now after a couple back and forths,Quartz, are you now saying that you only intended to support the part of the statement which did not include Al Qaeda and OBL? That your position is more accurately expressed thusly “This [The fact that Saddam Hussein maintained close ties with terrorist groups(including Abu Nidal) and furnished financial aid, weapons, and training facilites to other, non-Al Qaeda, terrorist groups(including Abu Nidal, but excluding OBL) ] is well known.”
Is this a fair statement of your position? I’m going to question this part next and I don’t want to waste time writing about things that no one cares about anyway. I don’t believe in talking past people, I’d rather we all be on the same page.
Enjoy,
Steven
The Saudi royal family has been accused of supporting the families of suicide bombers as well. Does this justify regime change?
This says that Saudis have given the families of suicide bombers approximately $4 billion. Cite. Do you have any idea how much Saddam gave?
Approx $12,000 per family
Yes - my error - I missed the word ‘close’ and focussed on the latter part of the sentence. He harboured Abu Nidal for many years, for example, and Allied soldiers uncovered terrorist training facilities.
Ah. So the Saudis have apparently given 1,000 times that Saddam did… but that’s not a problem?
According to that article, there is no comment about exactly how much goes to the martyrs’ families except for
Of course, you’ve noted that Memri appears to be Jewish-run and therefore not necessarily unbiased.
I don’t get it. Are you trying to argue that Saudi Arabia is NOT a source of funding for the families of suicide bombers? Or that the threshold for outrage is somewhat more than the dollar amount that Saudis have donated to each family of suicide bombers?
If not, my question still stands: why does support of the families of Palestinian terrorists justify invasion on one hand (Iraq), and an invitiation to Bush’s ranch on the other? (Saudi)
Abu Nidal was a retired sick 65 year old man (he was born in 1937). He and his organisation had not been active for years before his death, and in fact according to the US State Department his group “has not attacked Western targets since the late 1980s” . He was in Iraq under house arrest by Saddam, and was subsequently murdered by Saddam when, faced with US invasion, his presence became an embarrassment. Given his past no one need mourn the villain, and he surely had it coming, but somehow I’m rather unimpressed with this as evidence as contemporary support of terrorism.
“Rewarding the families of suicide bombers” is one way of putting it. Another way of describing it is to call it charity for the homeless, and the choice of one term or another simply depends on which side your on. It is Israeli policy to destroy the home of a suicide bomber thus flinging his family out on the street. This is most likely a foolish tactic, and its very unpopular in the arab world, hence Saudi support, telethons etc. Anyway other then a piss-poor rationale for a half-baked invasion its difficult to see why Saddam providing such money is more dastardly then other arab nations openly canvassing for much larger sums of money for the same people in telethons.