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Prohibition
 
Michael Ubaldi, September 8, 2004.
 

I found this in the newsfeed on a financial website, from CNN no less:

Iraq has exported about 130,000 tons of scrap metal to Jordanian trading companies following the U.S.-led invasion, including SA-2 missile engines and equipment that could have been used to make banned weapons, according to U.N. weapons inspectors.

...Among the items discovered at the Jordanian scrap yards were 20 SA-2 missile engines, a solid propellant mixing vessel tagged by UNMOVIC during its 2002-2003 inspection activities in Iraq, parts of an SA-2 air frame and booster and four chemical-related vessels tagged as dual-use items — for legitimate civilian or illicit military use.


We already know of the incriminating finds made by CIA weapons hunters David Kay and Charles Duelfer, acceptance of which is usually contingent upon one's political leanings. But the other stuff? Between Saddam's highly suspected export to Syria and his junkyard back door, one is reminded of barrels of alcohol smashed and emptied and scattered before G-Men arrived to raid a warehouse eighty-some years ago — the trick of course, was to restart production as soon as the heat was off, a trick Saddam would use with the news from his Franco-Russo allies that, like in 1998, no army would be coming to take him.