Kin of apostates

Usage examples of defectors.

The evidence we have from defectors and expatriates also supports this supposition.

Today, we have information from key defectors and a consensus among knowledgeable experts that the Iraqis are hard at work on such a program and that they have all the know-how and the technology to do it.

Visitors to Iraq, relatives of those still in the country, and defectors fleeing Iraq all consistently report that many in the army remain deeply disaffected.

Since then, defectors have revealed that Saddam had concealed quite a bit more than even the inspectors realized and that soon after ousting them he resumed his WMD programs to regain and surpass the capabilities he had amassed before the Gulf War.

Based on accounts from Iraqi defectors and POWs, the distribution among these three problems appears about even, but it is difficult to say.

Some Iraqi defectors have claimed that Baghdad is operating terrorist training camps for this very purpose.

Consequently, defectors report that Saddam has taken the entire Iraqi program on the road.

Between his own behavior and the statements of Iraqi defectors, it is clear that Saddam sees nuclear weapons as being in a category by themselves and that if he has a nuclear weapon the world will have to treat him differently.

The only way we found out about it was from defectors such as Hussein Kamel and Khidhir Hamza.

As Operation Desert Storm rolled on, the United States began to get more and more Iraqi defectors crossing the line and describing how unhappy the other troops in their divisions were.

In early February 1991, I tried to write a piece suggesting that Iraqi morale might be starting to erode across the board, but General Colin Powell himself shot it down with the angry rebuke that we should never write intelligence based on defector reporting because defectors can never be trusted.

In fact, the defectors were accurately reporting the state of Iraqi morale, and we had enough corroborating evidence from other sources to at least speculate.

While it is prudent to take the claims of Iraqi defectors with more than a few grains of salt, given the frequency, consistency, and persistence of these reports, it is more likely that they will be proven at least partially correct than that they will be proven completely wrong.

Iraqis as far along on their nuclear program as the former inspectors and knowledgeable defectors believe them to be, a window is open now that will close in the near future.

Dressed in hospital robes, the two alleged defectors were seated on separate cots in the room behind the window, quietly conversing in what Showolter assumed was their own language.