US removes 8,000 pages from Iraq dossier

[nextbillgates]

That's over 2/3rds of the dossier! :eek:

http://www.sundayherald.com/30195

THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.

<snip>

Although Powell called the Iraqi dossier a 'catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions', the non-permanent members of the security council will have no way of testing the US claims for themselves. This will be crucial if the US and the UK go back to the security council seeking explicit authorisation for war on Iraq if breaches of resolution 1441 are confirmed when the weapons inspectors -- this weekend investigating 10 sites in Iraq, including an oil refinery south of Baghdad -- deliver their report to the UN next month.

A UN source in New York said: 'The questions being asked are valid. What did the US take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed to be checking against the dossier's content, how can any future claim be verified. In effect the US is saying trust us, and there are many who just will not.'

Current and former UN diplomats are said to be livid at what some have called the 'theft' of the Iraqi document by the US. Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant general secretary of the UN and the UN's humanitarian co- ordinator in Iraq until 2000, said: 'This is an outrageous attempt by the US to mislead.'

Although the five permanent members of the security council -- the US, the UK, France, China and Russia -- have had access to the complete version, there was agreement that the US be allowed to edit the dossier on the ground that its contents were 'risky' in terms of security on weapons proliferation.

[rhink]

So? we edited it to prevent some of these countries from using that documentation to produce weapons of their own. And all of the permanent members have full, unedited copies, and can verify for themselves.

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by rhink
So? we edited it to prevent some of these countries from using that documentation to produce weapons of their own. And all of the permanent members have full, unedited copies, and can verify for themselves.

The non-permanent members's votes are needed as well as the permanent members. How are they going to know for sure that Iraq has violated the resolution if they only have access to a very limited portion of the dossier?

[incandescent]

its my limited understanding that the pertinant information, iraq having weapons was left in and the how and in what way were left out. of course, this is just what i heard from a fellow employee at work so I can stand corrected.

[EG]

Originally posted by nextbillgates
That's over 2/3rds of the dossier! :eek:


LOL....


I believe that if you read the article that five other nations have complete copies of the dossier. Those other five nations allowed the dossier to be edited not just the US

I think the writer shows his bias....lol

[napnip]

One statement was "THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages..."

Another was "What did the US take out?"

If we don't know what was taken out, then how do we know it was crucial?

Contradiction, anyone?

[PaleDuke]

Originally posted by napnip

If we don't know what was taken out, then how do we know it was crucial?

Contradiction, anyone?


How do we know it wasn't ?

[opus512]

Originally posted by napnip
One statement was "THE United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages..."

Another was "What did the US take out?"

If we don't know what was taken out, then how do we know it was crucial?

Contradiction, anyone?

We, as in the US, knows exactly what was taken out. Not nobody's like you or me, but the people that count,the important one's, keeping it all safe for the rest of us, "they" know.

Anyway, I imagine it was the 8,000 or so pages written in Arabic that included anything new.

Also, as Eghad said, the other four permenant members have the same full copy, if they want to leak it out, they can, and probably will. Freakin' Chinese and French probably sold it off to every Abdulah and his cousin Bubbalah by now.