"WHERE is it written that the weapons were discovered and destroyed?"

you had a brain fart--I said the weapons in question represent 1/10 of 1% of the weapons we already discovered and destroyed. But if Lurch had his way, all those weapons would still be under the control of Saddam.

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"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
Winston Churchill

"I'll believe it when I see it,..."

I doubt it.

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"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
Winston Churchill

catzmeow,
I've discovered over the past couple of days, that you are not in any position to criticize anyone for not reading something closely enough. I've caught you misunderstanding your own links in a major way on a couple of occasions this week.

There is indeed a reference to "stickers" in the Boston Globe article that PI posted on page one of this thread:

But it is you, catzmeow, that leaps to the conclusion that "stickers"="seals". It is you that did not read that closely.

But I figure that your latching on to the stickers/seals thing was a pretty silly attempt to disrupt the meat of the debate on a pointless tangent. So I looked it up at the source, so we can put it to rest.


Seals are, in fact:

Quote:

4.2. SEALS Seals, sometimes referred to as tamper indicating devices, are used to secure materials, documents or any other important items in a tamper-proof containment. The purpose of the seals is to provide evidence of any unauthorized attempt to gain access to the secured material. The seals also provide a means of uniquely identifying the secured containers. Depending on the type of application, several seals are in use by Operations Divisions as shown in Table IX. It must, however, be pointed out that the seals do not provide any kind of physical protection, nor were they designed to provide such protection. 4.2.2. In situ verifiable seals In situ verifiable seals are a kind of seal that is uniquely identifiable and verifiable in the field. They fall into the three main categories of fibre optic, ultrasonic and electronic seals. FBOS. In the Fibre Optic General Purpose Seal the seal wire as used in CAPS is replaced by a multi-strand plastic fibre optic loop with its ends enclosed in a seal in such a way that a unique random pattern of fibres is formed. This can be verified by shining a light into the ends of the loop and observing the magnified pattern of the fibre ends either photographically or by means of a digital recording of the image pattern.The COBRA Seal System II (FBOS) employs this technology. Immediately after it is installed, the seal is inserted into a verification assembly that records a reference image of the seal signature pattern. The verifier consists of a verifier head, a still video camera and a liquid crystal display monitor. The verifier head holds the body of a COBRA seal while an image of the seal signature is recorded by the video camera.The image can then be printed and compared with the reference image of the same seal.

I got that info from the IAEA web site.
http://www.iaea.or.at/index.html
Pretty cool, high-tech stuff.

That said, as the above blurb points out, It must, however, be pointed out that the seals do not provide any kind of physical protection, nor were they designed to provide such protection.

But anyone here that is attached to the notion that all the IAEA does in the non-proliferation fight is to run around putting stickers on stuff, really should spend a little time poking around their website. They do so much more.

And though major media wire service stories can tend to get a little repetitive with key phrases and catchwords, the fact that we've seen the word "seal" repeatedly in the last few days does not mean we all magically have a true understanding of what those IAEA folk do and have done for us and global security. They are NOT our enemy and we owe them a little respect.

Seals are one aspect of an inspection and safeguards program. And as long as an inspections process is being pursued correctly, seals are an effective aspect.

However, if an inspections process is disrupted and interrupted, by something like, say..... an invasion..... then something must immediately fill that void.

The IAEA warned us, repeatedly, before and after the invasion. We knew about Al Qaqaa, what a significant site it was. If we were prepared to stop the inspections and tell the inspectors to leave and refuse to let them come back in --- then we also should have been prepared to fully take over their work in safeguarding dangerous materials and facilities.

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Yo, how can I get me one o' them White House press pass thingies?!

there still exists NO evidence that the explosives in question were removed post US occupation of Iraq. Consequently to charge the Bush administration with responsibility for their lose, void of any proof or evidence, is bottom of the bait bucket scum, which is typical of demo's and the mainstream press.

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"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
Winston Churchill

"there still exists NO evidence that the explosives in question were removed post US occupation of Iraq"

There is evidence and admission that the weapons were moved BEFORE invasion... ask the Russkies!

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I was banned from godlike productions(over 400 times)... and loved it.

"I haven't made you angry, have I?" -Malcolm Reynolds

Once againly you are willfully being disingenuous. While that was a very enlightening discussion of the mechanics of the "Seals", you've missed the forest for the trees. My point to PI, which remains valid, was the without the presence of PERMANENT armed guards (not present at that location) or some other method of security that could not easily be breeched (and the seals, while containing fibers to show tampering, are a form of STICKER THAT PROVIDES NO SECURITY, WHATSOEVER), Saddam could access those weapons, at his leisure WHEN HE CHOSE TO DO SO.

Now, by doing so, during an inspection process, the world would have known he was violating the treaty, and he preferred less obvious ways of doing so (moving items around, pretending they'd been destroyed, pretending they'd been "lost").

But, those items were NEVER SECURED in a fashion that would have stopped Hussein for 5 minutes from accessing them if he'd decided he was ready to attack (and bear the ramifications of that decision).

And, I doubt those "seals" stopped Hussein for 5 minutes when he ultimately decided to move these armaments between March 4, when the IAEA voluntarily departed because combat operations were going to commence) and the day the U.S. forces set foot on Al Qaa Qa and reported possible WMDs to the embedded reporters.

And remember, THIS IS THE SAME IAEA THAT ALLOWED HUSSEIN TO GET ACCESS TO NUCLEAR MATERIALS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs...d-11-26-02.htm

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

This thread stands as testimony that I did, in fact, substantiate my claim that Al QaaQa was an old story.

Catz

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

It's patently obvious you don't know the meaning of the term.

Untrue. The only thing standing between Hussein and those explosives were seals that could be breached EASILY within a matter of moments. That is the antithesis of "secure."

No, dear, they didn't. Because the boxes would have amounted to approximately 40 semi-sized truckloads of explosives, and they would have been identified by IAEA stickers, which, btw, the soldiers were explicitly looking for.

The boxes you're talking about were not the explosives in question. They were other items.

Catz

[/quote]

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

No need to yell. You're only telling me something that I already said above. Yes, the seals were for verification purposes, not for physical protection. They were part of a larger inspections process.

They were used to monitor materials that were not banned, but needed to be watched and regulated. Such as those dual-use conventional explosives. As long as the inspection process was working, the seals were an effective part of it. Saddam never was able to reconstitute his WMD stockpiles or programs after all. Remember?

Iraq was a sovereign nation. We did not have the right, as much as we would have liked to, to just haul off all of their conventional weapons and dual-use materials or to post a permanent foreign troop presence. But the IAEA did monitor Iraq, and kept Saddams ambitions pretty darn squelched.

Now, whether or not a person supports the invasion should not matter in this case.
The fact is:
> There was an inspections process in place.
> The US chose to interrupt that process.
> The US subsequently had a responsibilty to "fill the void".

As you loudly assert, the seal "PROVIDES NO SECURITY, WHATSOEVER", and "without the presence of PERMANENT armed guards" those materials could be removed.

So, you actually prove my point exactly. When we invaded and interrupted the inspections process, we should have put something else in its place. Like armed guards.



Your "facts" are plain wrong.

The IAEA departed on March 18th, the day before the invasion started.

US forces did not "report possible WMDs (you mean the missing explosives?) to the embedded reporters" at Al Qaqaa on April 3rd OR on April 10th.

And you assert quite definitively that Saddam did move the explosives and did so between specific dates. How do you "know" that? Are you privy to some insider Pentagon info that the rest of us aren't?

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Yo, how can I get me one o' them White House press pass thingies?!

And I squashed that claim over in my missing explosives thread.

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Yo, how can I get me one o' them White House press pass thingies?!