***** CNN SHOW: CNN CROSSFIRE 19:00 January 16, 2003 Thursday Transcript # 011600CN.V20 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 4473 words HEADLINE: Was Today's Find in Iraq the Elusive "Smoking Gun?" GUESTS: Scott Ritter, Ken Adelman, Tony Coelho, Bill McCollum, Alex Castellanos, Chaka Fattah BYLINE: Paul Begala, Robert Novak
HIGHLIGHT: U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq reveal they have found a stash of warheads, but still many don't believe this is enough to constitute the elusive "smoking gun." Republicans and Democrats in the Senate reach an agreement on funding in the narrowly GOP controlled chamber. opened the boxes and found weapons Iraq had purchases in 1988. The boxes have been sealed since that time.
I believe what we have here is an accounting problem. But we have to investigate furthermore.
I think what this shows is that when Hans Blix says the Iraqis have to start being more proactively cooperative, this is why.
You can't have inspectors finding this. The Iraqis today should send military officers to every ammunition depot and open up every box to ensure this never again happens. They have to give a full accounting of their programs to the inspectors in accordance to the rule of law.
BEGALA: Well, I'm glad you raise that, Scott. Let me press that point. It is the Iraqi's obligation to disclose this. They didn't do that. Isn't that a material breach?
RITTER: Well, first of all, they did declare this. If you read the declaration, and I have, they did declare that this shipment of 122 millimeter artillery rockets was received. And you know, they gave the numbers of rockets received.
The problem comes as they said, "We can't account for them all. You blew up some of them during the war. You know, we buried some. Hundreds of thousands of them were turned over to inspectors and destroyed."
The Iraqis said, "We received them. This is how many received, but we can't tell you what happened to everything." So what we have here is an accounting problem, not a material breach. No American should be called to go to war and die because we found 11 unfilled chemical munitions.
BEGALA: Well, Scott, let me ask you when they should be? Guys like you, guys like me, said for example, through this long process, President Bush had to go to the Congress. Well, he did. Then we said he had to go the U.N. Well, he did. Then we said he had to let the weapons inspectors in, and he did. And you've got to give them a chance. And they've done so.
And what point, what level of breach will it take for Scott Ritter to support war to change the regime in Baghdad?
RITTER: I think you're going to have to find a viable active weapons of mass destruction program.
You know, empty warheads are meaningless unless you have the agent to put inside them. If you find evidence that Iraq is attempting to procure or attempting to manufacture or in fact has manufactured and is hiding active chemical agent, now we've got a problem.
If more than 10 years after the international community has banned these weapons, these chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and we find evidence that Iraq has continued to pursue these programs, we have a right to presume ill intent on the part of the Saddam Hussein and hold them into account.
But right now we have an accounting problem. Inspectors are there. They're receiving the full cooperation of the Iraq government. You know, they went into this facility. All doors were open. The Iraqis have cooperated throughout this process. This is not a casus belli.
NOVAK: In that connection, Scott Ritter, I'd like you to listen to something that President Bush just said about the inspection process.
Let's listen to the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BUSH: So far the evidence hasn't been very good that he is disarming. And time is running out. At some point in time the United State's patience will run out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOVAK: Is what the president is saying that unless the Iraqis say, "OK, we can confess," that the bombs will start falling on Baghdad? Is that how you interpret that?
RITTER: Well, it appears the Bush administration won't accept, you know, any response from the Iraqi government that doesn't include an absolute confession of guilt that they have these weapons and here they are leading them to them.
I'm not giving the Iraqis a clean bill of health. They're going to have to earn it. But I'll tell you what. We need to let the inspectors do their job. It may take six months. It may take a year.
It will be a frustrating process. But at the end of the day, if the inspectors find nothing -- and today they proved they are viable -- if they find nothing, we may have to accept the fact that there may not be anything in Iraq to find. And the president shouldn't be rushing off to war.
I would ask the president to start practicing writing letters to the families of service members who will die in this conflict and make sure he can write a darn good letter that explains why they have an empty seat at Thanksgiving, why there's an empty stocking at Christmas.
It better be a good letter. And I'll tell you what, 11 empty chemical warheads simply isn't going to hack it to the family of those Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen who are out there defending our country right now.... *****
***** Fox News Network SHOW: FOX ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (22:00) January 16, 2003 Thursday Transcript # 011601cb.260 SECTION: News; International LENGTH: 3163 words HEADLINE: Warheads Found in Iraq; Analysis nterviews With Former Inspectors Scott Ritter, Tim Trevan GUESTS: Scott Ritter, Tim Trevan BYLINE: Greta Van Susteren, Greg Palkot, Tom McInerney
...RITTER:...I do want to say one thing, though, real quick, because I think the general and Tim has misled the public. General, you know darn well that when you buy artillery shells -- and a 122-millimeter rocket is an artillery shell -- if you want to fill it with white phosphorous, you don't ship white phosphorous. You buy an empty shell, and then you fill it at a plant. I've been to the plants. These -- these are dual-use material that can be used for...
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, let me let the general answer that...
(CROSSTALK)
RITTER: Tim, you know that...
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, hold on one second!
(CROSSTALK)
VAN SUSTEREN: Scott, I'll come back to you.
RITTER: ... and these new bunkers are used to store materials...
VAN SUSTEREN: Scott...
RITTER: ... that were scattered...
RITTER: I've inspected the Ukadir (ph) ammunition dump many, many times in my seven years as an inspector. It was bombed extensively during Operation Desert Storm. And there are tens of thousands of munitions scattered all over the place. The new bunkers built by Iraq were built to take these munitions, which are dangerous exposed and to collect them. The box that these warheads are in was acquired by Iraq in 1986. The inspectors themselves acknowledge the box was sealed, hadn't been opened before. So I don't think it's -- you know, that the Iraqis were trying to put this in a new bunker to hide it from inspectors. This is merely an accounting problem, and Tim should know that. He was an inspector.... *****
***** The Washington Post January 19, 2003, Sunday, Final Edition SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B03 LENGTH: 1625 words HEADLINE: It Was Never About A Smoking Gun BYLINE: David Kay
...I am no apologist for the Iraqis, but not only are those warheads irrelevant to the larger argument, they could well be remnants that were overlooked, found as they were in a 25 square mile site that has a huge number of conventional warheads and rockets on it, rockets used principally in the Iran/Iraq war. The discovery was small -- the kind of thing inspectors often find -- and there's not much to be made of the warheads unless the testing shows they were once filled with VX gas....
David Kay is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. In 1991, he served as chief nuclear weapons inspector of UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq. *****
***** The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT) January 18, 2003, Saturday SECTION: WIRE; Pg. A04 LENGTH: 1164 words HEADLINE: Bush, inspectors at odds over Iraq BYLINE: By Elisabeth Bumiller with Elaine Sciolino
...At the United Nations, officials said the subject of the empty warheads was not even brought up in a closed meeting of the Security Council. "I have only thing to say -- empty," a French diplomat said.
U.N. officials also said it appeared that Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for the inspection teams in Baghdad, had not fully anticipated the furor caused by his announcement about the warheads, in large part because 11 were empty. Inspectors continued tests Friday on chemical samples they took from the warheads and provided no information on the 12th.... *****
***** Warheads are proof, says US as war nears By Toby Harnden in Washington and Benedict Brogan (Filed: 18/01/2003)
...To the dismay of senior Bush administration officials, Mr Blix appeared relaxed about Thursday's find of 12 empty chemical warheads south of Baghdad.
He said it was "no big deal" and he was not sure if the items had been included in Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration last month.
"This discovery is interesting and obviously the warheads have to be destroyed," said Mr Blix. "But it's not something that's so important because we're talking about empty warheads."
In the clearest indication yet that Mr Bush will soon act over Iraq, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung: "We believe that at the end of the month, it will be convincingly proven that Iraq is not co-operating."
Mr Blix is due to report to the UN Security Council on Jan 27 and Mr Bush will give his State of the Union address the next day.
Mr Powell's comment was a strong sign that American-led military action is likely to take place within weeks....
<http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/18/wirq18.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/01/18/ixnewstop.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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