It's not just illegitmate equipment. It's also the facilities required to produce both the weapons (i.e. weaponize the material) and the delivery systems for them- if any.
"Illegitimate equipment" covers WMD and the facilities meant to produce or enrich prohibited chemicals and cultures.
My original point still stands: it's taken years in some areas (South Africa comes to mind) to locate facilities that could technically be considered the continent's largest man-made eye-sores. And we're talking about a country nearly as large - with eight years rather than two.
Axis Kast wrote:
"Illegitimate equipment" covers WMD and the facilities meant to produce or enrich prohibited chemicals and cultures.
My original point still stands: it's taken years in some areas (South Africa comes to mind) to locate facilities that could technically be considered the continent's largest man-made eye-sores. And we're talking about a country nearly as large - with eight years rather than two.
Except that Iraq has been under constant observation for 12 years rather than two, and the best the intelligence agencies could come up with was forged Nigerian documents that any competent person in the field could've identified as amateurish fakes immediately. Did they even have people on the ground in South Africa at the time?
6 months would be a reasonable time to expect findings, I think.
Except that Iraq has been under constant observation for 12 years rather than two, and the best the intelligence agencies could come up with was forged Nigerian documents that any competent person in the field could've identified as amateurish fakes immediately. Did they even have people on the ground in South Africa at the time.
General “observation” by informants and satellite is one thing; ambitious efforts headed by military forces on the ground quite another.
Were there people on the ground in South Africa? Absolutely. American personnel were all over the Apartheid nation – along with their British counterparts – throughout the Cold War, primarily in an effort to blunt Cuban-backed Angloan Communism and establish ties to the resident white supremacist government. Did these people actively seek a nuclear program? Probably not. But does that explain why it took constant satellite coverage by the USSR – supporting Cuba with word of SADF troop movements – about twenty-four months to find a massive operation like that necessitating two boreholes? Certainly not. And who’s to say that Saddam didn’t copy their “deep desert” tactics either?
