<nettime> The Scuds

["brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr" <brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr>]

This article brings back to mind an old comment: What about the Scuds?

And what about all the vaporware between military intelligence and the
common kind?

Maybe the question of North Korea’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons,
or Iran’s or Syria’s, is worth a lot more scrutiny, after the apparently
total groundlessness of the claims made by the US and British intelligence
services in the case of Iraq’s weaponry.

If anyone has hacked into Jane's, send us the full article by this
Standish guy, will 'ya?

 - Brian


BBC NEWS
Can we trust the intelligence services?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/2971907.stm

[snip]

Not only have no mass weapons systems been found (one has to add a "yet"
here), but there were major flaws in the documents which will put in doubt
any assessment of programmes elsewhere - in North Korea, Iran and Syria,
for example. Although many intelligence professionals prefer to keep any
review of what went wrong (and right) private and in-house, some
professionals are speaking out. One of the fiercest critics is Alex
Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest. He said: "The bottom line
is that the intelligence services have not covered themselves with glory."
Where are the weapons?

Dr Blix mentioned technical flaws in the dossiers, especially a failure
(in this case it was a failure by the British) to realise that documents
alleging an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger were forgeries. There
has also been the non-appearance of 1.4 tons of VX nerve agent, 20,000
chemical capable artillery shells, 25,000 litres of anthrax, 12-20 Scud
missiles, mobile biological warfare laboratories and chemical and
biological weapons "deployable within 45 minutes", all of which Iraq was
alleged to have had. [snip]



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