ISGQ-2003-M0004666 page 13
After admitting to gassing the Iranians, Saddam says that Iraq can't meet the UN requirement to account for all chemical weapons because they used some and lied about it, therefor, they couldn't account for the missing weapons:
"So in all your programs (evidence-RR) that you present in Chemical (UN chemical inspection team-RR) there still will be a gap, and whenever he (Rolf Ekeus-UN inspector-RR) wants to raise it.....between the imported data (declaration of how much chemical precursors Iraq imported-RR) and the weapons produced and the destroyed, there is going to be a gap a number of weapons used in Iran you guys didn't cover."
Saddam was trapped in a web of his own deceit. Iraq could never account for the weapons to end the inspections and American belief that he had WMD because we knew they were missing some and Iraq couldn't say why. Poetic justice anyone? I think I hear the ghosts of Halabja cheering as I type.
Update: 5 Apr, 2006
I found this UN press release from 27 Jan, 2003
"I would now like to turn to the so-called “Air Force document” that I have discussed with the Council before. This document was originally found by an UNSCOM inspector in a safe in Iraqi Air Force Headquarters in 1998 and taken from her by Iraqi minders. It gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs, by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War. I am encouraged by the fact that Iraq has now provided this document to UNMOVIC.
The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."
It would seem that after this taped meeting, the Iraqi regime decided to account for these weapons after all as a last minute attempt to avoid war.
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