My rep (Jim Inhofe R-OK) maintains WMD's were found in Iraq

OKDem08

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Tue Oct-04-05 05:58 PM
Original message

My rep (Jim Inhofe R-OK) maintains WMD's were found in Iraq

October 3, 2005

Dear (me):
Thank you for contacting my office regarding the war with
Iraq. As your voice in Washington, D.C., as well as a member of
the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), your views are
important to me.

As you know, I firmly believe that weapons of mass
destruction existed in Iraq, and the evidence points to this
argument. For instance, most recently, vials believed to be sarin
gas were found around a Falluja mosque. U.S. officials also
concluded in late May 2004 that an artillery shell used in a bomb
in Baghdad - which was found May 15th, 2004 and later exploded
- contained sarin, a potential lethal toxin. Additionally, U.N. arms
inspectors in Iraq found 11 empty chemical warheads and one
warhead in January 2003. I believe these findings can lead one to
logically conclude that Saddam Hussein did possess WMD.

Moreover, some senior officials, including Secretary of
State Colin Powell and newly resigned CIA Director George Tenet
- in a speech given at Georgetown University, February 5, 2004 -
have cited information from the Iraq Survey Group's interim report
to assert that WMD programs were present in pre-war Iraq and that
U.S. pre-war intelligence was not necessarily off the mark.

A late October 2003 press report quoted General James
Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, as
expressing his own view that Iraq might have moved some WMD
materiel to Syria prior to the March 2003 start of the war.

In regard to nuclear weapons, in late June 2003, an Iraqi
nuclear scientist approached U.S. personnel in Iraq and presented
them with parts of a nuclear centrifuge from Iraq's past nuclear
program. The scientist said he was ordered in 1991 to bury the
parts in his personal garden and that Iraq had planned to
reconstitute its nuclear program if international inspections ended.
According to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Iraq sought to preserve
some technological capability from its pre-1991 nuclear program
and retained the intention to resume a nuclear weapons program.

In the end, containing Saddam did not work. The oil-for-
food program proved unsuccessful and riddled with problems as
evidenced by the current investigation. The costly no-fly zone was
also ineffective and very dangerous; our troops were being shot at
daily.

Finally, it is important to note that Saddam Hussein was a
gross violator of human rights. The president stated on numerous
occasions that Saddam was a great threat to our peace and security,
as well as the world's. For instance, Bush argued during a
September 2002 address at the United Nations' General Assembly
that, "The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion:
Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To
suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this
regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of
the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not
take."

Specific allegations of atrocities by the former regime are
being researched by the ISG and non-governmental organizations
such as the Iraq Free Prisoners Association. These include the use
of chemical weapons - a mix of mustard gas and such nerve agents
as sarin and tabun - against Kurdish civilians at Halabja on March
16, 1988, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds; the forced relocation of
Kurds in the "Anfal" campaign in February 1988, in which an
estimated 50,000 to 182,000 Kurds died; the use of chemical
weapons against Iran during the Iran- Iraq war; and war crimes
against Kuwait, including oil field fires, and coalition forces.

While I understand this is a controversial issue, and we
must be diligent in searching for these weapons, I believe the
evidence leads one to conclude that Saddam possessed WMD.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact my office. I take
this issue very seriously. Please do not hesitate to write me again
should you have further concerns.