From: Gene McAloon 

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 09:16:07 +0200, Phil Payne
 wrote:

>http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_1.html
>
>"The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of
>mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles
>before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.
>
>The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the
>Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of
>Saddam's missile and WMD program."

Surely you are aware the that World Tribune is an offshoot of the
Washington Times, itself a far-right rag about as reliable as the National
Enquirer?

The story is a good example of how these far-right kooks operate. It is a
mishmash of old stuff about dual-use components the Bush people like to
pass off
as proof that Saddam had WMD. The kind of thing you see G. Brit parroting.
The other part of the story concerns the vast amount of looting that
followed the war and is still ongoing. Much of the looting involves scrap
metal from destroyed missile sites and so on, destroyed either by Saddam or
the coalition forces. That scrap metal is being shipped out of the country
in massive amounts at very cheap prices. Some of that scrap can be
identified as dual-use material because it supposedly contains UN
inspection tags from earlier inspection regimes.

That scrap movement is conflated by World Tribune to imply a connection with the
alleged claim that Saddam transferred his WMD to Syria, Jordan and so on
before the war. Pure junk. I am not a little surprised that you would be
taken in by this obvious junk. It is even more blatantly idiotic than the
claims made by Bush in the run-up to the war.

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