FLBear5630 said:
Bear8084 said:
https://apnews.com/article/syria-ghouta-chemical-attack-sarin-f3477f4a212a88e671634c10b9e17037
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/21/syria-sarin-chemical-weapons-justice/
Except they did.
How can you say that? Mattis said there is no proof? Yet, you know?
I have no idea. If you can't prove ****, you can't say it happened.
Anyone on this site there? Seriously, I know Troops and Engineers in Iraq and Kuwait that had alarms go off. Engineers destroyed Chem Weapons in Desert Storm. Anyone on this site have a personal experience?
reading the intelligence reports following Gulf War I..... There were, literally, high speed chases in Baghdad, where UN inspectors (with Iraqi escorts) chased vehicles which had left compounds being inspected.
There was a clear analytical consensus of intel agencies all over the world at that time that Iraq had not only Chem/Bio weapons but the capability to manufacture their own. Literally no one questioned that. The evidence was overwhelming. Incontrovertible. Pictures of such being used IN Iraq on Kurdish civilians. Testing of the dead civilians, etc....
Where did it all go?
With such analysis confirmed in such hard ways, intel agencies cannot change the analytical conclusions until they have comparably hard evidence of sale, use, destruction, etc.... That created the context for the subsequent WMD intelligence. When you see them buying yellowcake, you know they already have a WMD program. You know they are getting technical help from elsewhere. So it elevates presumptions, to the point that it almost requires them.
One of my bird hunting buddies was THE analyst on such things at the time, the guy who blew the lid on A.Q. Khan and the Paki bomb. We discuss this all the time, as I was in the building at the same time (even though we didn't know one another at the time). He made news opposing Bush admin conclusions on Iraqi nuclear programs (to the point it ended his career). Even he does not question that Iraq did in fact have Chem/Bio capability.