US Mulls Shifting Experts From Iraq Arms Hunt

Reuters/Yahoo ^ | 10-29-2003 | Will Dunham

[blam]

U.S. Mulls Shifting Experts from Iraq Arms Hunt

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is considering shifting intelligence personnel in Iraq from the so-far fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction to strengthen efforts to combat the intensifying resistance, officials said on Wednesday.

"What's more important right now and what's more destabilizing: the insurgency or knowing about the WMD?" asked a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Officials said Pentagon leaders are considering reassigning a number of intelligence officers, interrogators, translators, linguists and others from the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which is conducting the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush cited what he said were Iraq's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons to help justify the war that toppled President Saddam Hussein , but such arms have not yet been uncovered.

Any shifted staff would augment efforts to prevent further attacks like those that have killed dozens in Baghdad this week and better identify who is involved with the resistance, the officials said. For example, U.S. officials say they are uncertain about the level of activity inside Iraq of foreign Islamic radicals.

More U.S. troops -- 117 -- have been killed since Bush declared major combat over on May 1, surpassing the 115 killed during the actual war that toppled Saddam.

Lawrence Di Rita, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's chief of staff, said the United States was not diluting the effort to find the weapons of mass destruction.

"The ISG has a principal mission of WMD and that remains unchanged. And the emphasis remains unchanged," Di Rita said.

Di Rita said no decision has been reached on the reallocation of intelligence personnel, but other officials said it was very likely such a move soon would be made.

'NEEDS MORE COUNTER-TERRORISM RESOURCES'

Gen. John Abizaid, who as head of U.S. Central Command leads the military effort in Iraq, "feels strongly that he needs more counter-terrorism resources and he's going to get them," Di Rita said.

"And as the commander there he has an awful lot of authority to determine how resources are balanced."

Abizaid and Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator for Iraq, have been in Washington meeting with Pentagon leaders this week.

"There is a finite number of linguists, translators, area experts, intelligence officers. And there are a lot of problems -- problems in dealing with the insurgency and problems dealing with other stuff. And so tough decisions have to be made," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Another option would be to add new intelligence personnel, including contractors, to the counter-insurgency effort without drawing from the Iraq Survey Group, officials said.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on what CIA Director George Tenet's views were on the proposal to take people away from the weapons hunt. CIA adviser David Kay, who heads the Iraq Survey Group, reports to Tenet.

Kay's group began its work in June, taking over from another unit. In an interim report this month, Kay said no actual weapons have been found, but told reporters that "does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons."

The defense official said Kay's group has provided staff to counter-insurgency intelligence efforts "on a case-by-case basis" but the current proposal would be a broader siphoning of personnel away from the Iraq Survey Group.

"Since the weapons search is now down the road here going on six months or so, is the pace and workload for them easing up where you can do that or not? It's all a management of resources," the official said.

[dead]

"What's more important right now and what's more destabilizing: the insurgency or knowing about the WMD?" asked a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

If the "insurgency" finds the WMDs, we'll see how f#*ked we can really be.

How about we hire enough experts to do both?

I’ll chip in. In fact, I already do.