Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq.
Posted on 09/17/2004 7:42:33 AM PDT by OESY
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - A new report on Iraq's illicit weapons program is expected to conclude that Saddam Hussein's government had a clear intent to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted, government officials said Thursday. But, like earlier reports, it finds no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year, the officials said.
The most specific evidence of an illicit weapons program, the officials said, has been uncovered in clandestine labs operated by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which could have produced small quantities of lethal chemical and biological agents, though probably for use in assassinations, not to inflict mass casualties.
A draft report of nearly 1,500 pages that is circulating within the government essentially reaffirms the findings of an interim review completed 11 months ago, the officials said. But they said it added considerable detail, particularly on the question of Iraq's intention to produce weapons if United Nations penalties were weakened or lifted, a judgment they said was based on documents signed by senior leaders and the debriefings of former Iraqi scientists and top officials, as well as other records.
The officials said the report would portray a more complicated and detailed picture, based on a far more extensive examination of suspected Iraqi weapons sites and records, as well as the debriefings. They said new information in the draft report based on on-site inspections of clandestine labs described the possibility that they were intended to provide small quantities of poisons.
A final version of the report, by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq, is expected to be made public within the next several weeks.
In its current form, the report reaffirms previous interim findings that there is no evidence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the American invasion in March 2003, the officials said. Prewar intelligence estimates that said Iraq actually possessed chemical and biological arsenals and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program were cited by the Bush administration as the major rationale for war.
With the presidential election campaign in its final weeks, Republicans and Democrats are likely to seize on separate aspects of the report in an effort to score political points.
President Bush, who has said Iraq posed a threat to the world whether or not it possessed illicit weapons, will probably draw attention to the conclusion that Mr. Hussein sought to acquire illicit weapons. His political opponent, Senator John Kerry, who has accused Mr. Bush of misleading the country into war, will probably highlight the conclusion that Iraq had not begun a large-scale production program.
The separate disclosure on Wednesday that a classified National Intelligence Estimate completed in July portrayed a gloomier prognosis for Iraq than Mr. Bush has acknowledged was already fueling fresh debate about Iraq on the campaign trail.
The report on Iraq's weapons is the result of some 15 months of work by the Iraq Survey Group, a military and intelligence team of more than 1,200 people that has inspected scores of sites, interviewed hundreds of former Iraqi scientists and officials and reviewed thousands of documents to try to reach a final judgment.
As described by the government officials, the findings of Mr. Duelfer's report, in its current draft, are broadly consistent with the interim judgments, including the report issued in October 2003 by David A. Kay, the first top American inspector. When he stepped down in January, Mr. Kay said that "we were all wrong, probably" about whether Iraq had stockpiles of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. But he also said there was evidence that Iraq was developing "test amounts" of chemical weapons and researching how to produce ricin for use in weapons, and that it had made little progress toward restarting its nuclear program.
In trying to untangle the mystery of why no illicit weapons have been found in Iraq, Mr. Duelfer's report is expected to look more closely at the issue of Iraq's intentions. The document will stop short of offering a final judgment about Iraq's weapons program, the officials said, and will not completely close the door on some possibilities, including the still unsubstantiated theory that illicit weapons may have been moved to other countries.
It will say that a vast cache of additional documents, including a recent find of 10,000 boxes, still needs to be translated and studied before any definitive conclusions can be reached about Iraq's capabilities and intentions. The Iraq Survey Group will continue its work, the officials said, and may issue additional reports.
Meetings are scheduled next week to discuss what portions of the new report should be made public. A meeting led by Mr. Duelfer early this month in London presented versions of the draft to about two dozen British, Australian and American experts, the officials said. The final draft of the report remains to be completed, they added.
Some contents of the documents were described by government officials from several agencies who have seen all or part of the draft or been briefed on it. The officials spoke on condition that they not be identified by name, agency or, in some cases, by nationality, because the document remains classified and because its contents remain in draft form. The officials included some who said Iraq posed a threat that justified the American invasion, and some who said it did not.
On nuclear weapons, earlier American reports have described no evidence that Iraq had begun an active effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program that it was forced to abandon after the Persian Gulf war of 1991. The officials who described the draft report declined to provide details about its findings on nuclear issues.
Mr. Duelfer is still in Baghdad, and through a spokesman, he declined a request to be interviewed. In an interview late last month with The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Duelfer declined to discuss any findings in detail, but said his report would document the evidence collected to date and attempt to explain "the evolution and decision process" regarding Iraq's illicit weapons program through 2003. Mr. Duelfer said in that interview that questions involving Iraq's pursuit of so-called weapons of mass destruction "deserve something more than just a simple-minded archaeological exam of the W.M.D. program."
On Thursday, an intelligence official said the internal review under way was intended "to make as much of the document available to the public as possible, consistent with intelligence sources and methods." The official added, "That does take time."
Mr. Kay's report last October cited "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service" that contained material suitable for research into chemical and biological weapons. Mr. Duelfer's report, based on inspections of clandestine labs, will say the Iraqis were capable of using the labs to produce small quantities of lethal agents or to conduct very primitive research as a very early step toward broader weapons production.
Mr. Duelfer, who took over as the chief weapons inspector in January, said in testimony to Congress in March that Iraq did have dual-use facilities that could have produced biological or chemical weapons on short notice. He also noted that Iraq was working until March 2003 to build new facilities for the production of chemicals.
But officials who have seen Mr. Duelfer's report say it describes no conclusive evidence that any effort was under way to use these facilities for weapons production.
Mr. Bush, who warned before the war that Iraq's illicit weapons posed an urgent threat to the United States, now generally describes Iraq as having been a "gathering threat," a phrase he has used at least 11 times since Aug. 12. In a Sept. 9 campaign speech, Mr. Bush told voters in Ohio: "Remember, Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons; he could have passed that capability on to the enemy."
Mr. Kerry, by contrast, has focused on the fact that the illicit weapons have not been found in Iraq as evidence that Mr. Bush's assertions lack credibility. "Everybody knows that just saying that there are weapons of mass destruction didn't make them so," Mr. Kerry said in an Aug. 2 television interview.
Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq.
Good, we stopped them before it was too late, and finally finished what we should have finished in 1991. Saddam violated the terms of the cease-fire, thus we had every right to do what we did.
Don't forget to do a google search on the words "Salman Pak".
Tell all your liberal friends to do the same. It will shut them up.
"But he also said there was evidence that Iraq was developing "test amounts" of chemical weapons and researching how to produce ricin for use in weapons, and that it had made little progress toward restarting its nuclear program."
Isn't that enough?
this makes no sense. If Iraq had thousands of gallons of toxins and thousands of barrels of chemical weapons in the past - why would they need a small research program. They ALREADY knew how to do it. They just need to give the order.
In the past they probably had large quantities of certain chemical weapons (mostly nerve agents and blister agents). Later, they may have done research into different types of toxins, like ricin. That's the way the article reads to me.
IIRC, in the leadup to the war Bush never said that Iraq was an immenent threat, but rather something along the lines of "we need regime change in Iraq BEFORE Iraq becomes an immenent threat." It seems that this report supports that position.
"In its current form, the report reaffirms previous interim findings that there is no evidence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of illicit weapons."
"Since we now at least have an admission that Saddam was waiting for the UN embargo and sactions to end so he could restart his program, can we now address those countries (like France) who were actively working to have the sanctions lifted...and were helping Saddam achieve those goals."
Very good summary!
Nice job!
I changed my early position on the war because our president said the threat was real and I certainly didn't want to wait until it was on our doorstep. (As Condi so well put it, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.") Now we're up to our neck in this BS and there doesn't seem to be a plan to get us out. I never felt that Iraq's chemical weapons capabilities were enough to go to war, or even violation of the cease-fire, but nuclear proliferation in the Middle East scares the sh*t out of me. Now to hear that Iraq ...had made little progress toward restarting its nuclear program when we were told before that they could be on the brink of passing such a device on to terrorists.
So if the sanctions were working and Saddam was being effectively contained, what are we doing there? I think removing Saddam from power is, overall, a good thing, but I'd rather have $200 billion spent on domestic issues, 1000+ soldiers still breathing and several thousand soldiers unhurt.
There's no way we can just pull out of Iraq now, so we're committed for several years, several hundred billion, and many more lives. And while Kerry is certainly the wrong choice in these times, I can't help but be pissed with the president about getting us into this mess. I feel Iraq was a hornets nest we would have been better off leaving alone or, at the very least, use pressure from a broad international alliance to bring Saddam into compliance.
Seems like every few days some new information makes this look more and more like the beginnings of a possible Vietnam. How many more years, billions and lives will this take? And how will we view this mess in 30 years? I certainly agree with the idea that bringing the light of democracy to the Middle East will make for a more stable region (and world), but we must lead by example. The US is losing credibility at a tremendous pace, which, in the end, may do more to harm to us than Saddam ever hoped he could. Especially if we ever hope to "win" this War on Terror.
So you want Saddam back in power?
So you'd be okay with Saddam producing chemical weapons and sending them with a terrorist on the next plane to NY and killing potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans? Don't forget, Saddam at one time did have large stockpiles of chemical weapons. (just ask the hundreds of thousands of Kurds who saw them; wait a second you can't they're dead!!!) How long do you think it would have taken for him to produce enough to kill massive numbers of Americans, with or without the ineffective inspections? He was probably hoping that the sissy French could convince the UN to lift the sanctions before going back into production. I have no doubt that he could have and probably did produce these weapons despite the sanctions. Exactly what was on the trucks that were seen in satellite photos heading for Syria days before the invasion?
Yes.The fact that Dan Rather bit on obviously fraudulent memos demonstrates that he was overeager to believe the worst of GWB.
Just so, the fact (if such it be) that on thorough inspection the Iraqi WMD capabilities were less than estimated would reflect negatively on GWB only to the extent that he was overeager to believe intel to the contrary. Kerry's problem is that Bush innoculated himself against that critique when he got Kerry to vote for the use of force in Iraq before ending the uneasy cease-fire with Iraq and implementing regime change.
Besides, is Iraq alone in its abilty to produce chemical weapons? Are chemical weapons the only method terrorists can use to kill scores of Americans. Was Iraq the only threat to national security?
No, No and No.
If a country in the Middle East was producing box cutters would you go to war, because that's all it really took to make 9/11 happen. Yes, Saddam was a threat, but North Korea is an even larger threat and there has been little action on the part of the Bush administration, and certainly no calls for the removal of Kim Jong Il, who is just as bad if not worse than Saddam.
As I said in my previous post, removing Saddam was a good thing, but the price of doing so in comparison with other methods (diplomacy, sanctions, etc.) is getting higher and higher and no longer seems worth it. If all the promises that led us into this war came to be, fine, but that's just not the case as much as I'm sure we all wanted it to be.
This article shows that the sanctions were working and instead of sending 1000s of troops to death or dismemberment, we should have kicked the international community in the butt to get serious about Saddam. I'm proud of W taking a stand when the rest of the world would not, but he did it with the wrong information. As president, he can't be allowed to screw this up, but he was undermined by intel failures across the board and his own personal desires to get Saddam. Add to this the Halliburton nonsense and you begin to feel misled. As Truman made clear, "the buck stops" in the oval office.
Oh stop it with the "personal desires' and the "Halliburton nonsense". You're being ridiculous. You are incapable of grasping the big picture. As Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair magazine (no friend of Ronald Reagan) said about Bush's grand plan to install democracy in the center of the middle east... "What if it works?".
It could be an historic move and Bush would go down in history as one of mankind's greatest freedom fighters.
So while creating a stable democracy in the Middle East would be an important step in stabilizing the entire region, it appears more and more that this is neither the time nor the way to do it. Instead we've knocked the hornets' nest and it's growing beyond our control. When it comes down to it, we must lead by example. What is the example we've given the world here?
We also have to consider whether or not these people are ready for democracy. It's tremendously arrogant for us to assume that just because it worked out so well for us (and we chose to fight for it) that these people are ready for it. Culturally, the Muslim world still holds to many of the same social and political systems it's had for the last several hundred years. If they're not ready to listen, all the preaching in the world isn't gonna help. America is the greatest country in the world because the American people worked to make it that way. We've managed to spread our culture around the world because people like what they see, there's no reason to ram it down their throats. It's great to play nation-builder, but by speeding up the process beyond what's natural may, in the long run, have done more harm to the process of democratizing the Middle East than good. And, in turn, more harm than good in the war on terror.
The world is moving away from an Empirical model of world power and into a cooperative multinational framework. In this shift we have the opportunity to be a strong and reliable leader. Losing credibility and alienating the world could ultimately be far more damaging than it's worth and threaten continued American supremacy.
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That's exactly what they said about Ronald Reagan and his implementation of the Pershing II missles in Europe to counter the Soviet's SS-20 missles. THEY were wrong. Pacifists always are. And you are wrong about Halliburton. That no-bid contract was started under Clinton, was renewed several times under Clinton, and renewed again with Bush. Please get your facts straight before engaging in Bush bashing. .
Second, I'm not "Bush bashing." I'll leave that to Kerry's drones. There are many things I like about the guy. I wouldn't be voting for him again if there weren't. You sound like some crazy lib who suddenly assumes you eat children and strangle kittens because you disagree with Kerry's latest position on something. I am simply criticizing his decisions on Iraq, but I have every right, and every obligation, to do so. Bush may manage the direction of this country and make the day-to-day decisions, but my obligation is to the people of this great nation. The people, not one man, are what make this country the envy of the world. Deciding to blind yourself to his shortcomings just because he's "our guy" is treason in my eyes.
To your points:
1. The Cold War was a real situation and not created by the placement of Pershing II missiles. Reagan was absolutely right in that because Russia was an overt threat to the world. There was no misinformation about "possible" nuclear capabilities, they had 'em and the world knew it. Reagan deftly handled US military strategy to maintain the tenuous balance of power in the world. Had he not, God only knows what could have happened. The current situation in Iraq was created by US policy, not an attempt to maintain a balance of power. (Though I'm certainly not trying to say SH didn't deserve to be removed from power.) Iraq wasn't sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons pointed at the US. We also had many allies in the struggle against Communism. Not the ridiculous "Coalition of the Willing" we're trying to pass off as a mandate from the world. Not even close to a similar situation, this comparison doesn't hold water.
2. Halliburton has been getting government contracts for decades under a litany of presidents, no question. They've been providing for the needs of our troops through contracts initiated and renewed by Clinton, yes. But who handed them contracts to "rebuild" Iraq? Clinton? These contracts are huge in comparison and are the ones in dispute, not those which were already in effect.
Straight enough for you?
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