CNN: No WMD's In Iraq

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
CNN: No WMD's In Iraq
62
Wed, 10-06-2004 - 7:32pm
Here's the orinial link: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector reported Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. He also concluded that Saddam Hussein's weapons capability weakened during a dozen years of U.N. sanctions before the U.S. invasion last year.

Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, according to the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group.

Duelfer's findings come less than four weeks before an election in which Bush's handling of Iraq has become the central issue. Democratic candidate John Kerry has seized on comments this week by the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, that the United States didn't have enough troops in Iraq to prevent a breakdown in security after Saddam was toppled.

The inspector's report could boost Kerry's contention that Bush rushed to war based on faulty intelligence and that sanctions and U.N. weapons inspectors should have been given more time.

Saddam a threat

But Duelfer also supports Bush's argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made clear to inspectors that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, the report said.

"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said in a campaign speech in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, defending the decision to invade. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

A top Democrat in Congress, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said Duelfer's findings undercut the two main arguments for war: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he would share them with terrorists like al-Qaeda.

"We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction," Levin said.

Traveling in Africa, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that the report shows that Saddam was "doing his best" to get around the United Nations' sanctions. For months, Blair has been trying to defend his justification for joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the face of heavy criticism from some in his own party.

Duelfer presented his findings in a report of more than 1,000 pages, and in appearances before Senate committees.

The report avoids direct comparisons with prewar claims by the Bush administration on Iraq's weapons systems. But Duelfer largely reinforces the conclusions of his predecessor, David Kay, who said in January, "We were almost all wrong" on Saddam's weapons programs. The White House did not endorse Kay's findings then, noting that Duelfer's team was continuing to search for weapons.

Duelfer found that Saddam, hoping to end U.N. sanctions, gradually began ending prohibited weapons programs starting in 1991. But as Iraq started receiving money through the U.N. oil-for-food program in the late 1990s, and as enforcement of the sanctions weakened, Saddam was able to take steps to rebuild his military, such as acquiring parts for missile systems.

However, the erosion of sanctions stopped after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Duelfer found, preventing Saddam from pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Duelfer's team found no written plans by Saddam's regime to pursue banned weapons if U.N. sanctions were lifted. Instead, the inspectors based their findings that Saddam hoped to reconstitute his programs on interviews with Saddam after his capture, as well as talks with other top Iraqi officials.

The inspectors found Saddam was particularly concerned about the threat posed by Iran, the country's enemy in a 1980-88 war. Saddam said he would meet Iran's threat by any means necessary, which Duelfer understood to mean weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam believed the use of chemical weapons against Iran prevented Iraq's defeat in that war. He also was prepared to use such weapons in 1991 if the U.S.-led coalition had tried to topple him in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Saddam "had the intent and capability" to build weapons of mass destruction, and that he was "a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."

But before the war, the Bush administration cast Saddam as an immediate threat, not a gathering threat who would begin pursuing weapons in the future.

For example, Bush said in October 2002 that "Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more." Bush also said then, "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said Wednesday that Duelfer's findings showed there is "no evidence whatsoever of the threats we were warned about." He spoke after Duelfer gave a closed-door briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said Duelfer showed Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction had degraded since 1998. But Roberts called the report inconclusive on what happened to weapons stockpiles Saddam is believed to have once possessed.

Interviews with Saddam left Duelfer's team with the impression that Saddam was more concerned about Iran and Israel as enemies than he was about the United States. Saddam appeared to hold out hope that U.S. leaders would ultimately recognize that it was in the country's interest to deal with Iraq as an important, secular, oil-rich Middle Eastern nation, the report found.

The Iraq Survey Group will continue operations and may prepare smaller reports on issues that remain unresolved, including whether weapons had been smuggled out of Iraq and about intelligence that Saddam had mobile biological weapons labs.

Pages

Avatar for tmcgoughy
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 11:12am
I have to wonder why this very important piece of information is being ignored when it has come up in just about every debate on this board.
The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.  -
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-05-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 1:42pm
I wonder too. Hm. *shrug*
Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 2:55pm
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1166282004

Saddam's duplicity exposed


WE HAVE known for some time that Saddam had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and, consequently, Iraqi WMD did not pose any immediate threat to anyone. As a causus belli - one which this newspaper accepted - Iraq’s WMD have long since been discredited. However, the final report of the 1,200-member Iraq Survey Group reveals substantial new evidence as regards Saddam Hussein’s intention to reacquire WMD as soon as he could bribe his way to having UN sanctions lifted - evidence that should give us all pause for thought. For it suggests that Saddam Hussein’s thirst for WMD had not been slaked.

In this regard, public divisions on the Iraq war have muddied the question of how the West should respond to the undoubted proliferation of WMD, and the new danger following 9/11 that they could fall into the hands of nihilistic Jihadists. The failure to find WMD in Iraq has been taken by some to mean that there is no new quality of threat from WMD following the September 2001 attacks. On the contrary, the relative success against the Jihadists will only make them more determined to seek these weapons.

On this issue, the ISG survey is interesting, for it does not give Saddam Hussein a clean bill of health. Saddam never made any pretence of abiding by international agreements on the development or use of WMD. True, by 1991, Iraq’s nuclear programme had been dismantled while Operation Desert Storm and UN inspections effectively destroyed Iraq’s chemical-weapon capabilities.

But the ISG report notes that Saddam was constantly seeking to evade sanctions with a view to eventually producing chemical and biological weapons in clandestine laboratories. In particular, the report exposes how the infamous UN oil-for-food programme became a vehicle for Saddam to bribe French and Russian officials to get sanctions lifted, after which he proposed to restart his WMD programme.

In other words, while it is justifiable to criticise regime change in Iraq, it is naive to do so without saying how the West should deal with rogue states such as Saddam’s, living outside international conventions on WMD.

President Bush maintains that the threat of Saddam passing WMD to terror groups was "a risk we could not afford to take". The ISG report confirms Saddam’s subversive intentions, but not his capability. However, there is a danger that with Mr Bush and Mr Blair having exaggerated the risk from Saddam - whether out of ignorance, excess moral fervour or downright political chicanery - the public will now be blind to the continuing dangers from terrorists with potential access to WMD. If so, it is a dangerous delusion.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=383792004

WMD report provides respite for coalition

BRIAN BRADY


IT WAS hardly a comprehensive endorsement of their stubborn insistence that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, but it was as positive as George Bush and Tony Blair have heard for several months.

When the last Iraqi weapons inspector, David Kay, quit three months ago, his parting shot, warning that coalition leaders were "almost all wrong" in their pre-war assessment that Iraq had WMD, was viewed as a devastating indictment of the decision to go to war in the first place.

So when his successor in charge of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Charles Duelfer, took his place before a Congressional hearing last week, they hoped for a little better. Duelfer delivered more than that.

The second interim report from the ISG, which remains a strictly confidential document, reads like a billet-doux, compared to the horror stories presented in the past by Kay and the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix.

"Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons," Duelfer said, in a declassified version of the report, obtained by Scotland on Sunday. "It had plans to expand and even build new facilities.

"There were plans under the direction of a leading nuclear scientist/WMD program manager to construct plants capable of making a variety of chemicals and producing a year’s supply of any chemical in a month. This was a crash program."

Duelfer also revealed that Saddam had used up to £500m a year from illicit arms sales to fund his Military Industrialised Commission weapons development programme, which appeared to be developing a nuclear capability, as well as a long-range missile system with the assistance of North Korea.

Chemical weapons, biological agents, production up until the very eve of the war itself, the hint of nuclear technology and the involvement of another pariah state: the ISG had done its work well. Where his predecessors brought negativity, Duelfer appears relentlessly upbeat. "It is hopeful," one restrained Foreign Office official said last night of the five-page summary, which breathed new life into the flagging campaign to prove Saddam’s guilt. "It looks better."

Duelfer’s first report is, indeed, an advance on its precedents, in substance as well as tone: his document is peppered with references to new information, new discoveries and progress on earlier revelations. But it is also liberally sprinkled with caveats and warnings as to the difficulties in turning up more evidence. Ultimately, it still fails to produce any tangible proof of the wide-scale WMD programmes the coalition assured the world lay within Saddam’s empire, and widely touted as the justification for the conflict.

The ISG has 1,400 staff in the field in Iraq, almost 70 from the UK, and a huge budget. It has worked around the clock for almost a year to uncover the truth about Iraq’s alleged arsenal. Duelfer confirmed that his staff had visited thousands of sites, spoken to hundreds of experts and turned up millions of pages of official documents. Yet they have still produced nothing that could charitably be described as a WMD.

Moreover, opponents of the war maintain that Duelfer’s full findings are even less conclusive - and, in fact, even cast doubt on the basic claim that Saddam had WMD in the first place.

Democrat senator Carl Levin has now challenged the CIA, which controls the survey group, to declassify the entire report, claiming it gives a misleading impression of the view on the ground in Iraq.

"Mr Duelfer’s statement is written to express the author’s ‘suspicions’ as to Iraq’s activities relating to possible weapons of mass destruction programmes or activities while leaving out information in the classified report which points away from his suspicions," said Levin, who is the Democrats’ most senior defence spokesman.

It is a troubling accusation, which neither Duelfer nor the CIA has yet confronted, but it illustrates the climate of scepticism surrounding the ISG’s work. The lack of trust is also felt in Iraq, as well as in Washington and London. Duelfer, who has spent the last six weeks in Baghdad, complained that many former officials of the Saddam regime refused to speak.

"On one hand, there is a fear of prosecution or arrest. On the other, there is a fear former regime supporters will exact retribution," he reported. Then, in an almost plaintive remark which exposed the true difficulty of his task, he added: "The people we need to speak to have spent their entire professional lives being trained not to speak about WMD."

Saddam Hussein has been defeated militarily and he lies in captivity, but he remains a powerful opponent of Bush and Blair as they continue the fight to win the post-conflict argument.

Duelfer appears a willing helper, but he may yet fall victim to the circumstances that demoralised his predecessors. His strategy for succeeding where they failed, however, owes more to psychology than practical action in the deserts of Iraq.


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-07-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 2:58pm
Unfortunately, this is not news. It's OLDS.

Everyone knew this before the war started, it was only through Bush/Cheney's highly misleading (I'll spare Bush lovers the LIE word) campaign to drum up support for their war and use the fear of the 9/11 attacks to carry their plan out.

Bush lovers can spin this any way they like, but they cannot ignore the facts:

France was right. The UN was right and now US intelligence is right.

Iraq possessed no WMD's

Avatar for schifferle
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 3:07pm
<< But Duelfer also supports Bush's argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made clear to inspectors that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, the report said. >>

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-07-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 3:16pm
If this post is an attempt to justify the war in Iraq based on WMD's, it like McClellan's statement today, falls woefully short.

There is no amount of spin or partisan blubber that is going to make this UNITED STATES report say anything other than it did: No WMD, No immediate threat, The UN was right not to authorize war, France was correct in its assertion to veto.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 10:35pm


I think the lack of response is due to the fact that this comes as no surprise to anyone. Most of us have already accepted the fact that the intelligence was flawed. The main debate now really seems to center around, a) did the adminsitration know it was flawed, b) even if there were no WMD's are we better off from a national security point of view without Saddam in power, and c)regardless of how or why we got into Iraq, what are we going to do about it now?

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 10:42pm
Just in case no one reads down far enough to get to the important parts:


"Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons," Duelfer said, in a declassified version of the report, obtained by Scotland on Sunday. "It had plans to expand and even build new facilities.

"There were plans under the direction of a leading nuclear scientist/WMD program manager to construct plants capable of making a variety of chemicals and producing a year’s supply of any chemical in a month. This was a crash program."

Duelfer also revealed that Saddam had used up to £500m a year from illicit arms sales to fund his Military Industrialised Commission weapons development programme, which appeared to be developing a nuclear capability, as well as a long-range missile system with the assistance of North Korea.>

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 10:46pm


Unfortunately France's veto would have had nothing to do with WMDs or the lack thereof-France had already conceded Saddam had them. Their veto, as it turns out, had to do with not wanting the world to discover the billions it was making selling arms to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions and profiting from helping Saddam skim money for the oil for food program. The report today basically implies that Saddam was bribing the French to get them to oppose us and to help get the sanctions lifted. So the statement that "France was correct" is laughable.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Thu, 10-07-2004 - 11:01pm


Actually I take that back. The French were correct-correct in their assumption that the invasion of Iraq was going to make them look really, really bad.

Pages