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HOPE Speaker Rombom Charged with Witness Tampering
An anonymous reader writes "Steven Rombom -- a.k.a. "Steven Rambam" -- the licensed private investigator who was arrested Saturday by FBI agents minutes before his talk on privacy at the Hope Number Six hacker convention in New York -- is being charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a money laundering case the government is pursuing against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney, according to Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog. The government alleges that Santoro hired Rombom to locate a government confidential informant whom Santoro accuses of entrapment, and that Rombom visited the informant's in-laws under the guise of an FBI agent and tried to convince them tha their son-in-law was a danger to their daughter and grandkids."
FTFA: Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
(emphasis added)
This does not state that WMDS were found, just that they are 'assessed to exist'. It does not state the 'degraded' state of the nerve agent would be usefull, but beats around the bush by 'it could be still be bad: the report does not say either way.
The actual release Fox based their article on is only 6 sentences long, and does not prove there ARE WMD's... just that there were WMD's prior to the first gulf war, which we knew... Were these usable weapons? probably not. Heck they might have been the ones that were destroyed, but for the sake of the article were 'found'.
Once again, Fox has streched the truth toward justifying the governments mandate.
I dont trust Fox as far as I can throw it.
why did Saddam lie about them and hide them [WMD's] in the 1st place?
He probably didnt even know about them (that particular bunch). A few years ago they were cleaning out an old army supply camp and found 4 pristine 'indian' motorcycles circa WWII. They were lost off the inventory year ago, but were still being stored. If asked, the government would have put their hand on their heart and said 'we have no Indian motorcycles in our inventory', and these would have been found.... and that is with the latest in S.A.P technology....
Oh and hey, thanks for the 'off-topic modifier' whoever you are.... I await another...
1) Iraq DID have WMDs. See FoxNews.
The article you link mentions that Saddam had small caches of chemical weapons, probably ones that we gave him, left over from before the Gulf War (i.e. at least 12 years old when Gulf War II began). Bush alleged that they were manufacturing and stockpiling WMDs, and that he was looking to sell them to Al Qaeda terrorist; there is still no evidence for either allegation. As another poster mentioned, Saddam may not have known where all the WMDs were or even that they existed, but I won't give him the benefit of the doubt.
2) If the invasion of Iraq for really for the oil, then why is it over $75/barrel?
The war started for a number of reasons. The WMDs were either a lie or a mistake, or some combination. The stronger reasons were oil, Saddam being evil, some amount of a personal grudge, some amount of support for Israel against a dangerous SCUD-weilding neighbor, and possibly some amount of 1984-style "war is peace" politicking.
It failed on almost all counts. We didn't find the WMDs (at least, not any new ones). The insurgency targets oil rigs and convoys, making oil production very expensive. Saddam is out of power and will be on trial for the rest of his life, but Iraq is still a chaotic hellhole. Israel is under a greater threat now, because they can't play Iraq and Iran against each other (in particular, we'll have a harder time stopping Iran from getting nukes).
The "war is peace" politicking worked, though.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Does this story have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with me, "rights", or "online"?
Is this story EVEN REMOTELY "news for nerds"?
Is this REALLY "stuff that matters"?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.