Report: Iraq exported missile components (as scrap, says UNMOVIC)

[Barrett808]

Report: Iraq exported missile components
U.N. monitors scrap metal shipments
Wednesday, September 8, 2004 Posted: 0807 GMT (1607 HKT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Iraq has exported about 130,000 tons of scrap metal to Jordanian trading companies following the U.S.-led invasion, including SA-2 missile engines and equipment that could have been used to make banned weapons, according to U.N. weapons inspectors.

In a report to be presented Wednesday to the U.N. Security Council, the arms experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said they are continuing to monitor scrap yards in Jordan and other countries.

The inspectors, who left Iraq before the fighting began in March 2003, said they are concerned that several sites in Iraq, where weapons of mass destruction could have been produced, have been plundered. Using satellite imagery, they also have determined that some sites were razed.

The Bush administration argued that Iraq was able to produce weapons of mass destruction -- or already had -- in justifying the war.

"The systematic removal of items subject to monitoring impacts the Commission's ability to maintain an accurate and up to date assessment of Iraq's capabilities," the report says.

"The fate of the equipment and materials is unknown (except for those which have been identified in scrap yards outside of Iraq)."

(more)

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/08/weapons.report/

[JHB]

1. Remember, Kiddies...

...the uncontrolled sale of weapons components without monitoring to ensure they are rendered useless makes the world safer.

(/sarcasm)

[Career Prole]

2. I thought this story looked familiar...why is this coming up again?

Did a google and the NYT reported this back in June.

"June 9, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-un-weapons.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Engines for long-range missiles have turned up in Jordan from unguarded sites in Iraq that were once monitored for materials that could produce banned weapons, U.N. inspectors said on Wednesday.

In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, Demetrius Perricos, the acting director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, warned that too many pieces of equipment were leaving Iraq, some as scrap.
``We found a few more engines and a few other items in Jordan,'' Perricos told Reuters. ``It is getting bad. Too many things are coming out.''

UNMOVIC, using photographs and serial numbers, previously reported discovering SA-2 engines among scrap in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. They were used in Iraq's Al Samoud 2 banned missile program.
The motors found in Jordan were also SA-2 engines ``and that is why we were interested,'' Perricos said.

U.N. inspectors left Iraq shortly before the war in March 2003 and have not been allowed to return since. The United States has sent its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction. The fate of the search teams is not known under the new Iraqi interim government that takes office on June 30.

Perricos briefed the Security Council on his recent report that showed satellite pictures of the engines discovered in the Netherlands and a site in Iraq stripped of its equipment, possibly by looters.
The site, called the Shumokh stores, northwest of Baghdad, had contained equipment that could be used for chemical and biological weapons and was once monitored by UNMOVIC."
http://nucnews.net/nucnews/2004nn/0406nn/040609nn.htm

This story died almost as soon as it was born back then, because it points unerringly to bushco's failure to provide any security post-invasion. Half the country was dismantled and sold as scrap...they had to eat somehow, for pete's sake. Why would CNN dig it out again?
Repuke "news" tip, maybe? :shrug:

[iam]

3. just great

this lying moron starts a war and creates the very conditions that were the justification for going to war in the first place.