Wednesday, June 21, 2006

HUNDREDS OF WMD FOUND IN IRAQ SINCE 2004

Republicans Senator Rick Santorum and Congressman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee held a news conference today reporting that about 500 weapons munitions have been found in Iraq since May 2004.

A declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit reports:

Subject: Iraqi Chemical Munitions

Purpose: This summary provides an unclassified overview of chemical munitions recovered in Iraq since May 2004.

Key Points:

–Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agents.

–Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist. **(in addition to the 500 already found)

Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market . Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.

–The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.

–The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.

–It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

As of right now, many major networks are not covering the story. Check out CNN.com. Liberal guests on Fox News fully discounted the news as meaningless.

“This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Rick Santorum said: “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.”

Remember what the Dems said about WMD and Saddam as late recently as 2003.

When my husband was in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, soldiers found munitions buried in the backyards of a couple high ranking Baathist officials. I recall seeing the reports on CNN and other places, but not much came of the reports. Back in June 2005 I wrote that the United Nations reported 109 sites in Iraq had missing WMD:

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

Liberals will argue that these are pre-Gulf War WMD, but are they not the very ones Saddam told the U.N. he destroyed yet we all knew he had, based on various intelligence? Liberals will also say they WMD are useless and ineffectual, but how then does the classified report say that they could be sold on the black market or that they could be “used” outside of Iraq? And why would Iraqi groups and insurgents try to obtain the WMD that were unusable?

Could it be that Pres. George W. Bush is owed a huge apology? Al Sharpton said on Fox’s Bill O’Reilly tonight that if WMD were ever found in Iraq that he would apologize to the President on the O’Reilly Factor. I’ve got the DVD-R on record…

HOUSE GOP ON THE ROAD TO KILLING THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL

The prayers of many Americans that the Senate Immigration Reform Bill will be killed by Republicans in House of Representatives may be answered in the next few days — perhaps hours.

Amid growing opposition to the Senate immigration plan by GOP conservatives and moderates, CNN reported Tuesday night that a move by the House of Representatives could prevent immigration legislation from passing Congress this year. The House Republican leadership says they will begin a fresh series of hearings on immigration next month.

The hearings will be held in Washington and across the country “so we understand what the American people are saying,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois.

The push for the hearings is led by Hastert, an aide to the GOP leadership told CNN. The hearings on Capitol Hill will occur in July, the aide said, but most of those outside of Washington will be held in August.

Another House Republican aide told CNN that the hearings were meant to “increase the negatives [of the Senate bill] while accentuating the positives of the House bill.”

In May the Senate passed immigration legislation that appeared weak on border security, but would create a program permitting illegal immigrants who had resided in the United States for five years or more to “earn” their citizenship after paying a fine and back taxes, learning English and holding a job for six years.

But conservatives began digging deeper into the bill and discovered a grab-bag full of goodies for people viewed by many as lawbreakers. The Senate bill also would allow illegal immigrants who have resided in the United States from two to five years to apply for a guest worker program.

A House Republican staffer, however, told CNN that said the hearings would effectively be “a final nail in the coffin” of the Senate’s legalization program.

“If it weren’t already in the the ground, it’s going there,” the House aide said.

President Bush supports the Senate’s “comprehensive” approach to immigration reform. Many conservative Republicans, especially those in the House, said the Senate’s approach amounted to “amnesty” and vociferously oppose any legalization program before border security has been strengthened.

Democrats are attempting to make this a Bush defeat, but most Americans understand that the Democrat Party by and large favors amnesty and, as one GOP staffer said, “pays lip service to those wishing tough border security.”

Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert says that the “top thing needed is to secure the borders and we need to have the law enforcement to go along with that.

Immigration is the most important issue for the Republicans and conservatives, a House Republican aide said, and will drive conservatives to the polls — unlike the recent Senate debate on gay marriage or the upcoming vote on an amendment to ban flag burning.

As evidence, House Republicans point to the victory by Rep. Brian Bilbray in a special election in California earlier this month. Bilbray ran against the approach favored by President Bush and the Senate and argued that the borders must be secured first. His opponent lost the election partly because she was recorded telling illegal aliens they didn’t need “papers” to vote.

Read more by this author on our site here. (Scroll down)

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.