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Wednesday, October 09, 2002 - 09:56 AM Permanent link for parapundit:  iraq DoD briefing
parapundit: iraq DoD briefing

Parapundit has this post containing excerpts from a DoD briefing on Iraq's deception campaign.   Many / most of the examples cited actually stretch back into the late 90's under the Clinton regime.   Parapundit has pretty extensive quotes from the original briefing;  I'm lifting just a small subset of them here.

First, if there's one game the Iraqi's are actually reasonably good at, it's working the nuances of world debate to their continued advantage.   They've been doing it for 10 yrs:

Iraq's D&D strategy has three key objectives. The first objective, quite simply, is to blur the truth about Iraqi compliance with the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, the U.N. resolutions and this all in order to undermine the credibility of UNSCOM findings and the recommendations to the Security Council and erode support for continued inspections.

I can't emphasize sufficiently the importance of this first goal. Although some of their efforts seem crude to us, their D&D measures have prevented UNSCOM and Western intelligence from producing the kinds of smoking guns and smoking-gun photographs, for example, and other forms of juridical evidence demanded by those who are skeptical of Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions and continued existence of illicit WMD programs.

As Bush stated in his address the other night -- "I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.":

...Pretty blatant technique here: Fraudulent declarations to the U.N. U.N. Security Council resolution 687 and related resolutions 707, 715 and 1051 stipulate that Iraq must provide full, final and complete disclosure of all aspects of its nuclear, chemical, biological and long-range-missile weapons programs. Prior to 1998, Iraq made seven so-called full and final disclosures to the U.N. Iraq modified each full and final disclosure to the U.N. several times to accommodate data uncovered by inspectors [emphasis mine -- VV], and then they provided new information and explanations only when confronted with direct evidence.

Remember the semi-famous "baby milk factory" incident during the Gulf war?

...Cover stories. We've seen these quite frequently. These are two images of a BW facility at Abu Ghurayb (sp) bombed during Desert Storm. You're probably familiar with this story. Let me draw your attention to some of the unique features of this baby-milk plant. First of all, it's secured by a double chain-link fence, and there are guard posts covering the road access.

Please note the two dates on the images. First, September 1990; and then January 1991. Again, what's different about the two images? The baby-milk plant has been camouflaged. It's been given military camouflage covering. After the coalition struck this facility, Iraq claimed that it was an infant-formula factory; that is, a non-military target.


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