Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 11, 2003, 8:12 am

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... May10.html

BAGHDAD -- The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.

Army Col. Richard McPhee, who will close down the task force next month, said he took seriously U.S. intelligence warnings on the eve of war that Hussein had given "release authority" to subordinates in command of chemical weapons. "We didn't have all these people in [protective] suits" for nothing, he said. But if Iraq thought of using such weapons, "there had to have been something to use. And we haven't found it. . . . Books will be written on that in the intelligence community for a long time."

Army Col. Robert Smith, who leads the site assessment teams from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said task force leaders no longer "think we're going to find chemical rounds sitting next to a gun." He added, "That's what we came here for, but we're past that."

Motivated and accomplished in their fields, task force members found themselves lacking vital tools. They consistently found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, looted and burned, or both. Leaders and members of five of the task force's eight teams, and some senior officers guiding them, said the weapons hunters were going through the motions now to "check the blocks" on a prewar list.

U.S. Central Command began the war with a list of 19 top weapons sites. Only two remain to be searched. Another list enumerated 68 top "non-WMD sites," without known links to special weapons but judged to have the potential to offer clues. Of those, the tally at midweek showed 45 surveyed without success.

Task Force 75's experience, and its impending dissolution after seven weeks in action, square poorly with assertions in Washington that the search has barely begun.

In his declaration of victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, President Bush said, "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated." Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that U.S. forces had surveyed only 70 of the roughly 600 potential weapons facilities on the "integrated master site list" prepared by U.S. intelligence agencies before the war.

But here on the front lines of the search, the focus is on a smaller number of high-priority sites, and the results are uniformly disappointing, participants said.

"Why are we doing any planned targets?" Army Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales, leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, said in disgust to a colleague during last Sunday's nightly report of weapons sites and survey results. "Answer me that. We know they're empty."

Survey teams have combed laboratories and munitions plants, bunkers and distilleries, bakeries and vaccine factories, file cabinets and holes in the ground where tipsters advised them to dig. Most of the assignments came with classified "target folders" describing U.S. intelligence leads. Others, known as the "ad hocs," came to the task force's attention by way of plausible human sources on the ground.

The hunt will continue under a new Iraq Survey Group, which the Bush administration has said is a larger team. But the organizers are drawing down their weapons staffs for lack of work, and adding expertise for other missions.

Interviews and documents describing the transition from Task Force 75 to the new group show that site survey teams, the advance scouts of the arms search, will reduce from six to two their complement of experts in missile technology and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. A little-known nuclear special operations group from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, called the Direct Support Team, has already sent home a third of its original complement, and plans to cut the remaining team by half.

"We thought we would be much more gainfully employed, or intensively employed, than we were," said Navy Cmdr. David Beckett, who directs special nuclear programs for the team.

State-of-the-art biological and chemical labs, shrunk to fit standard cargo containers, came equipped with enough supplies to run thousands of tests using DNA fingerprinting and mass spectrometry. They have been called upon no more than a few dozen times, none with a confirmed hit. The labs' director, who asked not to be identified, said some of his scientists were also going home.

Even the sharpest skeptics do not rule out that the hunt may eventually find evidence of banned weapons. The most significant unknown is what U.S. interrogators are learning from senior Iraqi scientists, military industrial managers and Iraqi government leaders now in custody. If the nonconventional arms exist, some of them ought to know. Publicly, the Bush administration has declined to discuss what the captured Iraqis are saying. In private, U.S. officials provide conflicting reports, with some hinting at important disclosures. Cambone also said U.S. forces have seized "troves of documents" and are "surveying them, triaging them" for clues.

At former presidential palaces in the Baghdad area, where Task Force 75 will soon hand control to the Iraq Survey Group, leaders and team members refer to the covert operators as "secret squirrels." If they are making important progress, it has not led to "actionable" targets, according to McPhee and other task force members.

McPhee, an artillery brigade commander from Oklahoma who was assigned to the task force five months ago, reflected on the weapons hunt as the sun set outside his improvised sleeping quarters, a cot and mosquito net set down in the wreckage of a marble palace annex. He smoked a cigar, but without the peace of mind he said the evening ritual usually brings.

"My unit has not found chemical weapons," he said. "That's a fact. And I'm 47 years old, having a birthday in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces on a lake in the middle of Baghdad. It's surreal. The whole thing is surreal.

"Am I convinced that what we did in this fight was viable? I tell you from the bottom of my heart: We stopped Saddam Hussein in his WMD programs," he said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "Do I know where they are? I wish I did . . . but we will find them. Or not. I don't know. I'm being honest here."

So sad.

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » May 11, 2003, 8:28 am

No need to be. They'll "find" something soon enough.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » May 11, 2003, 12:16 pm

No they won't.

Forthe · Post by **Forthe** » May 12, 2003, 3:48 pm

For those here that stated that they believed that the Bush administration had access to intelligence they were not privy to and accepted this path with no real proof....try to learn from this crap. The use of the word intelligence in discussing the Iraq invasion is an oxymoron.

Blind faith is dumb.
----------------------

The failure to find these weapons isn't just proof that the US was wrong but also that Iraq did comply with the UN. I believe they will be forced to "find" something if they don't find something. It is starting to look a bit silly a month later and still nothing found, another month and the WMD claims will inspire chuckles.

Dregor Thule · Post by **Dregor Thule** » May 12, 2003, 4:37 pm

Good thing they didn't wait for Blix to find em!

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 12, 2003, 4:38 pm

I might chuckle were it not for the enormous loss of life and property over what were obviously false claims to begin with (which are obviously being substantiated now). Fortunately the chickenhawks in this forum and all others as well as their rightie talking head heroes were able to desperately latch their feeble brains onto "regime change" at the 11th hour, when even their limited mental capacities were able to grasp the fact that Iraq had no massive stockpiles of banned weapons but still wanted to kick muslim ass anyway.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » May 12, 2003, 4:50 pm

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » May 12, 2003, 4:56 pm

The failure to find these weapons isn't just proof that the US was wrong but also that Iraq did comply with the UN.

Actually it doesn't prove that Iraq was in compliance with the UN. It is a strong indication of possible compliance but not proof. Saddam was playing a lot of games with the inspection teams, far too many to just accept that he was totally innocent, IMO. There MAY be weapons out there, that remain undiscovered, but this does prove that the US intelligence that this invasion was based on, wasn't as good or complete as the story they tried to sell to the rest of us.

Metanis · Post by **Metanis** » May 12, 2003, 5:10 pm

kyoukan wrote:I might chuckle were it not for the enormous loss of life and property over what were obviously false claims to begin with (which are obviously being substantiated now). Fortunately the chickenhawks in this forum and all others as well as their rightie talking head heroes were able to desperately latch their feeble brains onto "regime change" at the 11th hour, when even their limited mental capacities were able to grasp the fact that Iraq had no massive stockpiles of banned weapons but still wanted to kick muslim ass anyway.

Some of these weapons existed at some point in time. I would still like to see them accounted for. Even if they were destroyed then there should be some paper and eyewitnesses. You may be entirely right that the weapons didn't exist any longer when we invaded. If so then Saddam paid a hefty price for a lack of basic record-keeping and is a bigger dickhead than I originally thought.

Look at the bright side Kooky, the invasion of Iraq will keep you fueled up with Hate for a long time to come! (I can help too.)

Forthe · Post by **Forthe** » May 12, 2003, 5:24 pm

Wulfran wrote:
The failure to find these weapons isn't just proof that the US was wrong but also that Iraq did comply with the UN.
Actually it doesn't prove that Iraq was in compliance with the UN. It is a strong indication of possible compliance but not proof. Saddam was playing a lot of games with the inspection teams, far too many to just accept that he was totally innocent, IMO. There MAY be weapons out there, that remain undiscovered, but this does prove that the US intelligence that this invasion was based on, wasn't as good or complete as the story they tried to sell to the rest of us.

Agreed.

In fact I personally believed he had them. I just didn't think military action was justified without real proof. Even if they had been found after the fact I would disagree with the irresponsibility of invading without that definite proof. Too many lives are lost for us to be wrong IMHO.

Acies · Post by **Acies** » May 12, 2003, 6:58 pm

Sad to say Forthe, lives do not appear to be a high priority for the United States of America.

miir · Post by **miir** » May 12, 2003, 6:59 pm

Kilmoll wrote:All of you whining fucksticks have bitched and moaned about how wrong the U.S. is and that there are absolutely no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq. If they use ANYTHING from those categories, no matter how small, it completely and utterly proves that the U.S. was correct and that all you pussies should shut the fuck up.

Fallanthas wrote:The UN passed a resolution banning Iraq from possesing such weapons. Iraq defied them for over a decade. They are once again showing that they flat out lied to the diplomatic community of the entire fucking world.

Brotha wrote:we will find huge stores of them when we capture Iraq anyways

Sirton wrote:They have em...youll see em when we reach the special republican guard line inside the republican guard line...

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » May 12, 2003, 8:45 pm

Don't forget that Sirton got his info straight from the White House!

Xzion · Post by **Xzion** » May 12, 2003, 9:09 pm

who gives a fuck if saddam did have any WOMDs, im sure he did up until the point of the invasion, yet if he did, he would not be able to use them or sell them without shit backfireing at him and a justified invasion taking place...and someone like saddam is out for himself, opposed to say osama and al quaeda...

Salis · Post by **Salis** » May 13, 2003, 12:39 am

Man it's pretty fucking sad to see the backpedalling that goes on around here (and in the world in general) over things like this. Just goes to prove that if you leave shit long enough (3 months) people will stop giving a rat's ass what it was really all about.

For those of you who argued the invasion was a good idea because of WMD's, please chalk this up on the board entitled 'governments are lying, manipulating sacks of shit, don't let them murder thousands of people until you're sure.' Most of us with a clue have a pretty big list on that one, and we stick to the title...

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » May 13, 2003, 10:46 am

Miir,

I believe the quote you pulled from me was during the discussion over Iraq owning missiles with too much range and lying their asses off, both verbally and on paper about them.

Believe me, I would love to be proved compeltely wrong on the issue of WMD's. I think it's only right to take quotes in context, however.

Acies, that is probably the stupidest statement I have ever seen you make.

Krimson Klaw · Post by **Krimson Klaw** » May 13, 2003, 1:17 pm

I never knew if he had them just prior to being invaded or not, I just wanted proof of them before we attacked...which I never got, nor will get. I have to admit I had confidence in our intelligence system that was claiming many things before we attacked, but I still had a *show me something concrete* attitude. At this point, that confidence has pretty much withered away as I stand here with an empty hand that once awaited intelligence that I was not privy to at the time prior to an invasion.

They asked for trust on this issue, then forced us to trust in them as we invaded, then I find out the trust was a blank check. As a conservative I feel betrayed, as I do not buy into the regime change at the last second propoganda. Yes they needed a regime change, but the entire focus of building the coillition of the willing was because he would not get rid of his WoMD. That's the key point that is being buried here.

Atokal · Post by **Atokal** » May 13, 2003, 3:01 pm

TEH MIGHT OF THE JUST WHITE IS RIGHT!111!!
Yes Kyoukan this was all about erasing those damn towel headed sand niggers.

Christ you are a degenerate.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 13, 2003, 4:54 pm

Degenerate? I see that word of the day calender isn't working out too great for you.

Cartalas · Post by **Cartalas** » May 13, 2003, 7:32 pm

kyoukan wrote:Degenerate? I see that word of the day calender isn't working out too great for you.

Well he got his point across, Loud and clear!

Fizzlewhip · Post by **Fizzlewhip** » May 13, 2003, 7:56 pm

I must be dense

Degenerate
n.
A depraved, corrupt, or vicious person.
A person lacking or having progressively lost normative biological or psychological characteristics.

Seems to me he used the word in the correct sense. Perhaps your calendar is off?

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 13, 2003, 8:33 pm

I'm acting depraved and visciously by defending Iraqi's right to continue to breathe?

Fizzlewhip · Post by **Fizzlewhip** » May 13, 2003, 8:49 pm

I didn't say that. I am saying he used the word correctly.

Personally, your opinion is just as valid as anyone elses. As it has been said before, how would the average American feel if some other country invaded America to instigate a regime change.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » May 13, 2003, 8:58 pm

About half would probably cheer them on their way to the White House!

Anyway, with every day that goes by more and more people will yell about any WMDs that might be found being planted. Why? Because in advance Bush/Powell/Rumsfeld made it very clear they had hard evidence of there being tons of WMDs and they KNEW were. Since they haven't found anything yet, they obviously didn't know now, did they?

How do YOU like being lied to?

Acies · Post by **Acies** » May 13, 2003, 9:58 pm

Fallanthas wrote:Miir,

I believe the quote you pulled from me was during the discussion over Iraq owning missiles with too much range and lying their asses off, both verbally and on paper about them.

Believe me, I would love to be proved compeltely wrong on the issue of WMD's. I think it's only right to take quotes in context, however.

Acies, that is probably the stupidest statement I have ever seen you make.

Excuse me,
Lives do not appear to be a priority for the current United States of America's Administration.

Atokal · Post by **Atokal** » May 13, 2003, 11:51 pm

Acies wrote:
Fallanthas wrote:Miir,

I believe the quote you pulled from me was during the discussion over Iraq owning missiles with too much range and lying their asses off, both verbally and on paper about them.

Believe me, I would love to be proved compeltely wrong on the issue of WMD's. I think it's only right to take quotes in context, however.

Acies, that is probably the stupidest statement I have ever seen you make.
Excuse me,
Lives do not appear to be a priority for the current United States of America's Administration.

Yeah thats correct, that atomic weapon they detonated in Iraq was INCREDIBLE fuck using the expensive targetted weapons when we can GREASE THOSE FUCKERS FROM ORBIT ... FUCKIN A DUDE!!!111!!!

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » May 14, 2003, 1:22 am

Excuse me,
Lives do not appear to be a priority for the current United States of America's Administration.

Thats wrong too. They care about American lives, and American access to resources. Do they care too much relative to other lives and interests is the issue.

Salis · Post by **Salis** » May 14, 2003, 5:33 am

Atokal wrote:
Acies wrote:
Fallanthas wrote:Miir,

I believe the quote you pulled from me was during the discussion over Iraq owning missiles with too much range and lying their asses off, both verbally and on paper about them.

Believe me, I would love to be proved compeltely wrong on the issue of WMD's. I think it's only right to take quotes in context, however.

Acies, that is probably the stupidest statement I have ever seen you make.
Excuse me,
Lives do not appear to be a priority for the current United States of America's Administration.
Yeah thats correct, that atomic weapon they detonated in Iraq was INCREDIBLE fuck using the expensive targetted weapons when we can GREASE THOSE FUCKERS FROM ORBIT ... FUCKIN A DUDE!!!111!!!

Oh they used the nice bombs, that's ok then.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » May 14, 2003, 9:16 am

Oh they used the nice bombs, that's ok then.

Yes, our bombs were filled with smiles, sunshine, and rainbows. Don't try to suggest otherwise.