The UN has said that Saddam shipped components for his WMD propgramme abroad both during and after the Iraq war. Here is the story that you won’t read anywhere in the British press:

‘The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003. The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam's missile and WMD program. The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared. UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that “the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap,” Middle East Newsline reported. “It's being exported,” Perricos said after the briefing. “It's being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal…He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destinations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters – the latter required for the production of chemical and biological warheads. “It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for,2 Ewen Buchanan, Perricos's spokesman, said. “You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax.” ’

But of course, everyone knows that the claim that Saddam had WMD before the war is a lie, don’t they.

Posted by melanie at June 14, 2004