Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
I keep reading your posts, and not responding, mostly out of confusion over where you're drawing the link between what El Baradei reported, and pronouncements by the Iraqis. Are you saying he's just someone's conduit?
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Yes.
If I understand it correctly, the IAEA has not been inside Iraq since shortly before the invasion because the U.S. Administration has not allowed them back in to inspect their previously secured sites (this may have changed recently).
The interim Iraqi government, however, is still responsible for reporting to the IAEA on the various WMD or "dual-use" programs and items under the IAEA monitoring regime. (Just because the government changed doesn't mean the monitoring stops.)
The report of the missing 350+ tons of high explosives (dual-use HX or whatever-X) -- previously under IAEA "seal" (i.e. labeled and subject to inspection) -- came to the IAEA in a letter from the interim Iraqi government, and (I understand) contained the characterizations I cited regarding the circumstances of its loss.
So, the IAEA reports this to the U.N. Security Council -- "Hey, XYZ has gone missing since the invasion."
That's part of why I find the allegation that the IAEA just made this up to be remarkable.
S_A_M
P.S. Some unsourced reports also say that the U.S. government has been presuring the Iraqis not to report the loss, and the IAEa not to pass the report along, "yet."
[eta: Here's a link:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...ves/index.html
This article has all kinds of intersting stuff, including some deatiled Pentagon denials that it was around when we looked, but here's the directly responsive part:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it had been told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX and RDX disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
"In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of planning, Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after Saddam's regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to 'the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security.'" ]
So, the IAEA made this up?
