UN overpays Gulf War victims $5 billion

[Tehvisseeus]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ompensation_dc

[-Davo]

idiots!

they're as bad as centerlink here, centerlink are basically the dole. They always over pay you like a dollar a pay, then when they find out, they send you a bloody bill, wtf, your fault, not mine, deal with it.

[YogsVR4]

No wonder things were fucked up. Its the UN. Fuck up is what they do best.

[TRD2000]

cause otherwise things have gone so smoothly... oust sadam to cheers of welcoming joy, go home with oil as thanks...

[taranaki]

Originally Posted by YogsVR4

No wonder things were fucked up. Its the UN. Fuck up is what they do best.

Hans Blix didn't fuck up.

[YogsVR4]

Originally Posted by taranaki

Hans Blix didn't fuck up.

Incorrect - is is a fuck up.

[Andydg]

OMG the U.N. is pointless all they do is fuck shit up.

[Flatrater]

A little quote from Hans from his report to the UN on January 2003 .
" On 7th of December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of Resolution 1441, and within the time stipulated by the Security Council. In the fields of missiles and biotechnology, the declaration contains a good deal of new material and information covering the period from 1998 and onward. "

And another
" The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at the storage depot, 170 kilometers southwest of Baghdad, was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved here in the past few years at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. The investigation of these rockets is still proceeding. "

" I turn to biological weapons. I mention 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 liters 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 over the declared destruction date. It might still exist. "

" As I reported to the council on the 19th of December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kilos, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as reported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As a part of its 7 December 2002 declaration Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate, as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.
In the letter of 24th of January this year to the president of the Security Council, Iraq's foreign minister stated that, I quote, "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 liters of concentrated anthrax. "

" Iraq has also declared the recent import of chemicals used in propellants, test instrumentation and guidance and control system. These items may well be for proscribed purposes; that is yet to be determined.
What is clear is that they were illegally brought into Iraq; that is, Iraq or some company in Iraq circumvented the restrictions imposed by various resolutions. "

"In response to a recent UNMOVIC request for a number of specific documents, the only new documents Iraq provided was a ledger of 1,093 pages which Iraq stated included all imports from 1983 to 1990 by the Technical and Scientific Importation Division, the importing authority for the biological weapons programs. Potentially, it might help to clear some open issues.
The recent inspection find in the private home of a scientist of a box of some 3,000 pages of documents, much of it relating to the lacing enrichment of uranium, support a concern that has long existed that documents might be distributed to the homes of private individuals. This interpretation is refuted by the Iraqi side which claims that research staff sometimes may bring papers from their work places.
On our side, we cannot help but think that the case might not be isolated and that such placements of documents is deliberate to make discovery difficult and to seek to shield documents by placing them in private homes. "

[Flatrater]

If you want to read Hans whole speech it is here http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/Bx27.htm

Hans gave this speech after 911 and not too long before the US went into Iraq, but then Hans turns around ands stated Iraq has no WMD.

Now 3 short months later Hans had this to say.

" But he said he knew at the time "there were people within the Bush administration who were sceptical and who were working on engineering regime change". By the start of March the hawks in both Washington and London were getting impatient, he added.
Blix said that he thought the US might initially have believed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction - although its "fabrication" of evidence raised doubts about even that - but that Washington was now less convinced by its own claims.
"I think the Americans started the war thinking there were some. I think they now believe less in that possibility.
But I don't know - you ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they did to try and demonstrate that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons, like the fake contract with Niger," he explained.
That was a reference to US allegations - later denied - that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the west African state of Niger.
"I'm very curious to see if they do find any (weapons)," he said.
Blix said the war, which on Wednesday entered its 21st day, was "a very high price to pay in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of weapons proliferation could have been contained by UN inspections. "

[TRD2000]

And You Were Quoting Him Because???? Usually A Quote Is Used To Help Strengthen An Argument, So What's Your Point?

You're Not Trying To Say Again That Iraq Has Wmd Are You? How Long Will People Cling To That?

[Flatrater]

Originally Posted by TRD2000

And You Were Quoting Him Because???? Usually A Quote Is Used To Help Strengthen An Argument, So What's Your Point?

You're Not Trying To Say Again That Iraq Has Wmd Are You? How Long Will People Cling To That?

Just showing how Hans had no clue what he was doing! I am saying the Iraq HAD WMD!

First Hans states that Iraq has banned weapons that are unaccounted for then later on he states Iraq has none. Now reading Han's report on Jan 2003 I would feel the intell that Iraq Had WMD could be true. If the US used Han's Jan 2003 report and invaded Iraq he would be the one who gave the bad intell to everyone! You can blame Bush on believing the bad intell but you have to agree Hans is the one passing the bad intell then.

[Rbraczyk]

You can never overpay a victim.

[Andydg]

Originally Posted by Rbraczyk

You can never overpay a victim.

I 2nd that.

[YogsVR4]

Originally Posted by Rbraczyk

You can never overpay a victim.

It wasn't the victims who got the money. It was the contractors.

[T4 Primera]

Originally Posted by Flatrater

Just showing how Hans had no clue what he was doing! I am saying the Iraq HAD WMD!

First Hans states that Iraq has banned weapons that are unaccounted for then later on he states Iraq has none. Now reading Han's report on Jan 2003 I would feel the intell that Iraq Had WMD could be true. If the US used Han's Jan 2003 report and invaded Iraq he would be the one who gave the bad intell to everyone! You can blame Bush on believing the bad intell but you have to agree Hans is the one passing the bad intell then.

How can you assume that Hans Blix did not know what he was doing when only five Governments privvy to the full 12000 page report. By the time it was circulated at the UN, fully 2/3rds of the report had been omitted.

Only the five permanent member states of the security council had access to all 12000 pages of the report. Of those five, only one member state decided that war was a good idea.

http://lists.stir.ac.uk/pipermail/me...ry/000028.html

>From Mr Llew Smith, MP for Blaenau Gwent (Labour)

Sir,

Professor Ken Coates asks (letter, February 13th) who authorised the
deletion of 8,000 pages of Iraq's original declaration to the United
Nations last December, prior to its distribution to non-permanent UN
Security Council members.

I asked the Foreign Secretary about this removal of information in a
written question, to which I received the following reply from junior
Foreign Office Minister, Denis MacShane:

The President of the UN Security Council decided that the Iraqi Declaration should first be given to [permanent] members of the Security Council with the expertise to assess the risks of
proliferation.

UNMOVIC and the IAEA will judge what material needs to be excised before it distributes the declaration to all Security
Council members (Hansard, December 17, 2002, col.764W).

While I can accept the sensitivity of some of the details in the Iraqi
declaration, which could contain information on how to make certain weapons
of mass destruction, I do not accept that the diplomatic delegations of
member states of the United Nations Security Council would be unable to
keep confidential information that should remain so.

I prefer the suggestion made at the time (report, December 12) that the
Iraqi declaration named US and UK suppliers to Iraq's military programme
that our Governments did not want made public, as it would show direct
complicity in building up Saddam's weapons arsenal.

Yours sincerely,
LLEW SMITH
House of Commons
February 13.