U.N. Inspector: Little New in U.S. Probe for Iraq Arms

[durutti]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62518-2003Dec13?language=printer

The United Nations's top weapons inspector says most of the weapons-related equipment and research that has been publicly documented by the U.S.-led inspection team in Iraq was known to the United Nations before the U.S. invasion.

Demetrius Perricos, acting chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said in an interview and in a report to the U.N. Security Council that the only significant new information made public by the U.S. search team was that Iraq had paid North Korea $10 million for medium-range missile technology, which apparently was never delivered.

Perricos's assessments were his first public comments on the U.S.-sponsored search for weapons of mass destruction since he took over as acting chairman from Hans Blix, who retired in June. Perricos cautioned that his assessments were preliminary and made without access to classified working documents compiled by the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. government team led by David Kay that is searching Iraq for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Still, the assessment shows that, even after Kay disclosed his preliminary findings, U.N. weapons inspectors remain skeptical of the Bush administration's prewar statements that Saddam Hussein had seriously breached U.N. resolutions barring chemical and biological weapons, and that such Iraqi weapons programs posed an imminent threat.

[Zero Gravitas]

1. Saddam Will tell Where WMDs Are. Bush* Will Be Vindicated

Not.

[underpants]

2. I've always been "skeptical" myself

That is diplomatic speak for a LIE adn since W (no matter what he claimed in the press conference today) doesn't "do" diplomacy so I will call it what it is, a lie.