Quote Originally Posted by Lyle
....Iraq kept UN inspectors from their job of making sure Iraq had no WMD's and if they had nothing to hide then they should have played ball.
The American conservative version of history strikes again.

It's understandable though :

President Bush: "Saddam Hussein said, I'm not going to expose my weapons, I'm not going to get rid of my -- I'm not going to allow inspectors in, he said." February 26th, 2004.

President Bush: "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power..." July 14th, 2003.



Here's what actually happened :

The United States administration has dismissed as a stunt Iraq's offer to admit CIA agents to assist United Nations arms inspectors.

On Sunday, Iraq said it was ready to answer any questions raised by the US and UK governments on its weapons declaration to the UN.

An adviser to the Iraqi leader, General Amir al-Saadi, said all available information had been provided. He invited CIA personnel to direct arms inspectors to any suspect sites.

Iraq insists it has nothing to hide.

"After 24 days of inspections covering practically all the sites [...] the lies and baseless allegations have been uncovered," General al-Saadi said.

He said Washington and London had convinced the "IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] and the whole world to believe they have iron-clad evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and promised to provide the evidence".

Referring to UK and US allegations that the Iraqi declaration omitted to account for banned materials, General al-Saadi described them as "a hodgepodge of half-truths, naive short-sighted allegations and lies", and "rehashed allegations" from the time of Unscom - the previous UN monitoring mission.

On Sunday, UN weapons inspectors in Iraq continued their search for prohibited weapons programmes.

They visited six sites, including the al-Battani company - a space research centre near Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the US is continuing its massive military build-up in the region in anticipation of a possible strike against Iraq.

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is due to present a full report on the work of his teams to the UN by 27 January.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/2600207.stm