unable to delete a publication

I have an errant publication I want to remove from my SQL instance but when I try to I get a message to the effect that the publication does not exist, the distributor in not set up correctly, or it can not find some procedure (but in typical SQL exception reporting never says what procedure it can not find).

I've tried several things.

attempt to delete using the object explore delete menu option:

   this process errors out with the following error --

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
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Could not delete publication 'Freescale merge publication v031414'.

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=10.50.1600.1&EvtSrc=Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UI.VSIntegration.ObjectExplorer.Replication.ReplicationMenuItem&EvtID=CantDeletePublication&LinkId=20476

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

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Could not find stored procedure ''. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 2812)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&ProdVer=10.50.4000&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=2812&LinkId=20476

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BUTTONS:

OK
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The t-sql attempt: executing the following

se [FREESCALE]
EXEC sp_changedbowner 'sa'
exec sp_removedbreplication N'Freescale merge publication v031414'
exec sp_droppublication @publication = N'Freescale merge publication v031414'
GO

results in this error:

attempting to remove it using the following:

sp_replicationdboption'FREESCALE','publish','false'

results in the following error:

Looking at the properties of the distributor gives no clue to what's wrong.

I've tried to drop the subscribers but with similar results. using the delete from the object explorer menu gives the error about not finding some unspecified stored procedure, using the script:

EXEC sp_dropsubscription @publication = N'Freescale merge publication v031414', @article = N'all',
 @subscriber = N'db-j.freescale',
  @ignore_distributor = ignore_distributor

and results in this error:

Developer Frog Haven Enterprises