CNN: No WMD's In Iraq
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| Wed, 10-06-2004 - 7:32pm |
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.

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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. >
So now it leads to another controversy, Bush is going after muslim countries (or so it seems). Now we should be worried. Now muslims feel they have a reason to truly hate the Americans and destroy it and terrorize with justification. I do not know about you, but I am not ready to go thru another 9-11 again.
Am I being overdramatic? Maybe, but think what provoked 9-11. Now they have justification that is proven worldwide......
US report on Iraqi weapons deepens Arab hostility towards America: analysts
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&e=14&u=/afp/20041007/pl_afp/iraq_us_weapons_arab_041007180020
CAIRO (AFP) - A report by the chief United States weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites) that the regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was not actively pursing weapons of mass destruction has only helped deepen Arab hostility towards Washington.
Analysts and observers here said Thursday the report compiled by Charles Duelfer, the special CIA (news - web sites) adviser proved the extent to which the United States was prepared to go in harassing Arab countries.
"All Arab and Muslim peoples are convinced that (US President George W.) Bush is persecuting Muslims and Arabs and is targeting only the Arab world," said Makram Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the semi-official Al-Mussawar magazine.
The report also reinforces the feeling among many Arabs and Muslims that the "Americans can never be impartial, they can never be honest partners in the peace process or any political process for that matter," Ahmed added.
And this, he said, "increases tensions and hatred. The whole Arab world hates America and the Bush administration."
Mohammed al-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and a former Washington correspondent for the Al-Ahram daily, argued that Bush had a preordained plan to invade Iraq.
"Bush's main priority, even during his election campaign, was to invade Iraq, whether or not it possessed weapons of mass destruction," said Said, adding that the issue of the weapons was simply "a tactic or excuse."
Said said he found it even more disturbing that "the Americans do not have any regret for what they did to the Iraqi people as a result of their mistakes."
Duelfer's report highlighted a series of miscalculations on the part of the administration, particularly those on which the invasion was based, Ahmed noted.
These, he said, included false declarations by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's alleged relations with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
"Al-Qaeda came after the American invasion," claimed Said.
He added that, contrary to claims in Washington, the deposed Iraqi leader was probably the most reliable bulwark against Al-Qaeda infiltration into Iraq.
He also hailed the Duelfer report for finally answering lingering questions concerning Iraq's alleged weapons programs, but attacked it for not going far enough in declaring that the Bush administration knew the truth all along.
In this regard, the Duelfer report commits the same error as previous ones: "concealing this point," Said alleged.
It found no evidence that Iraq had either weapons stockpiles or active programs by the time US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003.
Among the key findings, no evidence was found that Iraq attempted to restart its nuclear program after 1991, and its ability to reconstitute it progressively decayed after that date.
The investigators also judged that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its chemical stockpile in 1991, and they found no credible indications that it resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.
In contrast, they found that Iraq attempted to preserve its biological warfare programs through 1995, but was believed to have abandoned it late that year for fear discovery would undercut its efforts to get sanctions lifted.
Duelfer judged that Iraq could have resumed production of biological weapons within a few weeks to a few months of a decision to do so, but his people discovered no indications that the regime was pursuing such a course.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/08sanctions.html?oref=login&th
October 8, 2004
THE SANCTIONS
U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Enriched with billions of dollars raised by exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American arms inspector for Iraq has found.
The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released Wednesday.
But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons - working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.
"Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem," the report says. "Indeed, Iraq was designing missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be readily available."
The report suggests that Mr. Hussein was justified when, speaking at a gathering of leaders of the Iraqi armed forces in January 2000, he boasted that despite efforts by the United States and the United Nations to isolate Iraq, he would still be able to buy just about whatever he wanted. "We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself," Mr. Hussein said in the speech, a remark that is quoted on the cover of the chapter in Mr. Duelfer's report that details the ineffectiveness of the embargo.
The report is replete with names, dates and documents detailing negotiations over arms purchases and technical advice, which continued until just days before the United States-led invasion in March 2003. An Iraqi memo from 2000 tells military officials in Baghdad that the deputy general manager of the French company Sofema, a military-component marketer, will be bringing a company catalog so that they can "discuss your needs with him."
President Bush, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, said the report demonstrated that Iraq was determined to illegally rebuild its military. "Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the United Nations oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," he said.
While the scope of the inquiry did not extend beyond Iraq, the report raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of sanctions, a tool the United States has frequently used as a foreign policy tool short of military action. Offered lucrative contracts by Mr. Hussein, both arms suppliers and government officials seem not to have hesitated to ignore United Nations trade restrictions, going so far as to disguise tank engines as agricultural parts.
What actions, if any, the United States will take toward sanctions violators is unclear, as are the implications for current United States standoffs with nations like Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons programs. But sanctions remain one of the few options in many complex international disputes.
"They're often better than nothing," said Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is writing a book on the United Nations.
The illicit trade accelerated as the years passed and the threats of possible military action by the United States increased, with the number of deals among the top suppliers climbing from about 5 transactions in 1998 to more than 15 in 2000 and more than 35 in 2002, the report says.
North Korea and Belarus made perhaps the most aggressive effort to sell advanced military equipment to Iraq, the report says, delivering items that included radar technology that was ultimately used against American attack planes.
President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus was involved in the deals, the report says, noting that he "was anxious that illicit trade should continue on a regular basis and requested that a firm called Belarus Afta be established in Baghdad as a clearinghouse for illicit military trade."
A spokesman from the Belarus Embassy in Washington said that any items sold to Iraq complied with United Nations' rules. "We have always maintained and we continue to maintain that all these accusations are preposterous," said the spokesman, Valentin Rybakov.
Among European allies, France's military industry had extensive contacts with Iraqi officials. The report describes, for example, repeated trips by an executive from the French company Lura, which sold Iraq a tank carrier.
Other private companies from Jordan, China, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Taiwan, Italy and Turkey offered or sold items that supported Iraq's conventional arms programs or could have been used by Mr. Hussein to make weapons of mass destruction, the report says.
No American individuals or companies were named in the report as supplying Iraq with military goods or other prohibited items. But a number of United States companies and at least two American citizens are listed as having received oil vouchers that permitted them to profit from the oil-for-food program.
Unlike hundreds of voucher recipients from other countries, the American recipients are not named in the report but only listed as "United States company" or "United States person," an omission that a government official said was required by American privacy laws.
In January, an Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, ran a list of 270 recipients of oil vouchers that appears to closely parallel the list in the Duelfer report. That list included two Americans, Shaker al-Khafaji and Samir Vincent, neither of whom could be reached for comment on Thursday.
Iraq went to great lengths to build a missile system with a range longer than the limits imposed by the United Nations, a major technological challenge that required the import of an array of banned parts. Companies from China and Russia sold, or negotiated to sell, missile guidance systems, the report says. A Polish company supplied a propulsion system. An Indian company built and sold Iraq a missile-fuel processing plant.
In some cases, governments moved to stop the illicit trade. In 2002, for example, Indian authorities arrested executives at NEC Engineering, which the report says imported solid propellant ingredients for Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles.
The report describes in detail the extraordinary measures taken to move illicit goods into Iraq and to cover the tracks of violators. Iraqi diplomats smuggled radar-jamming devices in diplomatic pouches. An airline created by Iraq and Belarus used four Boeing 747's to move goods from Minsk, the Belarussian capital, to Baghdad "under cover of humanitarian aid missions."
"During the sanction years, traders used a pool of private dhows, barges, and tankers to smuggle oil out and commodities into and out of Iraq's southern ports with relative ease," the report says.
The report also cites evidence that the Jordanian government closely monitored illegal shipments and canceled an inspection arrangement with Lloyd's Register Group of London, an independent monitor of trade, to make smuggling easier.
It's not selective reading schifferle.
"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."
My question is knowing the snail's pace at which Saddam was making any progress on this objective, how long would it have taken him to "expand and build" these new facilities?
"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."
I'm glad that you qualified that response with "most" since I have seen plenty of posts touting Saddam's
Unfortunately France's veto would have had nothing to do with WMDs or the lack thereof-France had already conceded Saddam had them.
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Just a second: You're saying you READ FRANCES statement to the UN? There was no such statement by france that suggested Iraq had WMD. France like most of the civlized world was adamant about letting the inspections finish, which of course would have showed: No WMD.
No, you didn't read France's statement about it, you're just blowing hot air about a topic that's irrelevant.
Nick of Time
Thursday, October 07, 2004
By John Gibson
For months I've been saying, Oh geez, Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction? Well, then we got there just in time.
It makes sense to me. Based on the notion he would love to have WMD, he wanted to get WMD, he tried to get WMD, he wanted to hide WMD from us and he wanted to use WMD on us, then we got there just in the nick of time if we didn't find any actual stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
I thought it was one big phew! And an illustration of the rule, I'd rather be lucky than good.
Well, silly me.
The Bush opponents are making a huge noise about no WMD proves we did the wrong thing: There never should have been a war since there was no reason for war.
Well, Mr. Duelfer's report makes a few important points:
No. 1: Saddam was bribing the United Nations Security Council members with a billion dollars.
No. 2: Saddam wanted the sanctions lifted and was close to getting it done.
No. 3: When those sanctions were lifted, he was going to get WMD again.
No. 4: I guess, the simple point that diplomacy is tough — shall we say, impossible — when the other side is buying off the United Nations.
So once again, after you get past the headline, No WMD and we have no idea why Saddam wanted the world to think he did have WMD, then you get into areas where the threat is laid out in a real way which justifies action against Saddam Hussein.
If our friends the French, the Russians and the Chinese — U.N. Security Council members with a veto — weren't taking billions of dollars in bribes, maybe we could have counted on diplomacy and the rule of international law.
But since they were all corrupt and greedy thieves, we couldn't count on diplomacy and the rule of international law.
I ask again: What is the logic behind the argument that Saddam posed no danger and we should have left him on his throne?
That's My Word.
Why we fight -- and why we need to be clear about it
Jonah Goldberg
October 8, 2004
"By one count, President Bush offered 23 different rationales for this war," John Kerry scoffed last month. Considering that the Kerry campaign claims their man has voted 600 times to cut taxes, there's good reason to doubt the challenger's counting skills. But there's no denying that the Bush administration has offered several different rationales to bolster its case for the Iraq war.
Oh, wait, it can be denied. In fact, it's being denied zealously now that the Iraqi Survey Group has concluded in its final report that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction when we invaded. The president's critics now insist that Bush made only one case for war.
To his critics, it seems, Bush's error is that he offered too many reasons to go to war, except when he offered too few. When the news is that no WMDs have been found, WMDs become Bush's only reason to go to war. Back when the WMD angle had yet to be verified, the problem was that Bush offered too many rationales. Which is it?
Now, receiving as much mail as I do from Bush-haters - rational and irrational - let me anticipate an objection: Bush has offered these various rationales for the war only after it became clear that we weren't going to find WMDs. Every time I write a column about how a democratizing and prospering Iraq is essential for victory in the war on terror, I get a dozen e-mails from anti-Bush readers saying, "If only Bush had made that argument before the war, instead of hinging it all on WMDs, I would believe that he cares about democracy now."
But this is nonsense wrapped in myth inside propaganda. The notion that the invasion of Iraq was justified - and justifiable - solely on the WMD threat is a canard. It's true, the administration did emphasize the WMD issue. But it's also true that the press consistently demanded "one reason" - in Tim Russert's words - to go to war. The WMD case was simply the most compelling one to make. Every allied intelligence agency - including France's and Germany's - was convinced Saddam had WMDs. As were all of the various competing agencies in our own defense-intelligence complex.
When Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair in May 2003 that the administration settled on the WMD issue for bureaucratic reasons, opponents of the war cynically distorted the interview to make it sound like the administration wasn't convinced about the WMD threat. What Wolfowitz was actually saying, very clearly, was that the WMD threat was the most palpable threat - the one that all the professionals could agree on it.
But that doesn't mean that Bush didn't offer numerous other rationales before and after the war. In major speeches he touted the importance of democratizing the Middle East. Administration officials pointed out that Saddam was the only world leader to applaud 9/11, and that he was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel. They argued that removing Saddam would have a positive impact on the peace process. President Bush made a masterful case to the United Nations that, in the post-9/11 world, the world body could not afford to let a dictator - one who had gassed his own people and invaded a neighbor - flout its countless resolutions with impunity.
These rationales don't add up to 23, but who cares if they do? What important decisions have you ever made in your life that have depended on a single variable. We don't buy cars for a single reason. (Oh, it's blue! I'll take it!) Why should we launch a preemptive war for a single reason?
Of course Bush has emphasized other rationales now that we know there were no WMDs. What else is he going to do? Should he say, "Oops," and leave Iraq to disintegrate into civil war, which will plunge the region into chaos? Or should he emphasize the other - completely legitimate and consistent - rationales for this war? If we had found WMDs, Bush would still be fighting to democratize Iraq. That we haven't found them makes that task all the more important.
The fact is that all wars have complex and changing justifications. The bloodiest war in our nation's history was begun as an effort to preserve the American union. The motives behind the Civil War are endlessly debated, but this much is beyond dispute: As the war dragged on - and as a chorus of naysayers bitterly denounced Lincoln's determination - the president resolved to make freedom and individual rights central struggles of the conflict.
Those who scold President Bush for breaking "the rules" - for changing the way he makes his case for a just war - must also explain how Lincoln was wrong. They must explain how the Cold War, begun as an exercise in Realpolitik, did a disservice to those whom it eventually freed from tyranny. I, for one, will be delighted if one day we can see the Iraq war in this grand American tradition of "changing rationales" after the fighting began.
Reagan was a lot of things to a lot of people, but no one accused his administration of incompetence. When Reagen stood and spoke, he projected command not bush's unique blend of stuttering the same phrases over and over.
Of course, seeing the ardent Bush lovers shifting positions, taking so many different sides and angles about why Bush's war is justified, it just rings baseless and hallow compared to the 10's of millions around the world who knew what the WMD report was going to say 20 months ago.
As for lincoln, well a lot has changed even in the last few years from when The GOP stood for:
The party of tolerance, The party of strong national defense, the party of less government in peoples lives and the party of FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Well, you reap what you sew Bush lovers. Enjoy.
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