>Hello chris
>
>reality check:
>
>1) How amusing to see the revisionist history about what Blix thought or said! Now he apparently *supported* the contention that there were WMD. The 9,212,343 redneck messages attacking him and/or his French stooge masters (look up Blix on google) for daring not to describe the acres of WMD bristling under his nose, must have been thinking of a different Hans Blix.

What reality are you living in? I cannot give a better source than Blix himself:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm

Here are just a few of the highlights:

VX

Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few tonnes and that the quality was poor and the product unstable. Consequently, it was said, that the agent was never weaponised. Iraq said that the small quantity of agent remaining after the Gulf War was unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.

UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.

There are also indications that the agent was weaponised. In addition, there are questions to be answered concerning the fate of the VX precursor chemicals, which Iraq states were lost during bombing in the Gulf War or were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.

Mustard Gas

I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.

Anthrax

I have mentioned the issue of anthrax to the Council on previous occasions and I come back to it as it is an important one.

Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.

In the letter of 24 January to the President of the Council, Iraq’s Foreign Minister stated that “all imported quantities of growth media were declared”. This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax.

>2) In WWII they didn't need large numbers of troops scratching in the dirt to find evidence to support war.

All Neville Chamberlain needed to avoid a war was Hitler's word.

>3) The US is currently losing at least 5 troops per week in Iraq. For what? The Iraqis aren't thanking you, and you've already stated there is no business advantage for the US.

Actually, many Iraqi's are thanking us. Or maybe you think they enjoyed being tortured under Saddam.

>The whole exercise should be handed over to the UN as soon as possible so we have somebody to blame when it turns to custard.

We could do that, but it would take over a year of meetings at the U.N. before they drafted a document titled:

Yeah, We Should Probably Do Something

Then the French would argue for another 6 months about using the word probably.