The Revised Official Bush Administration History of the War in Iraq
This Modern World -- June 10, 2003
[Trailer Mania strikes again!]
Loose Nukes In Iraq Not WMD?
The Rush Limbaugh Show -- June 10, 2003
Missing in Action: Saddam's Nuclear Program
Reuters via ENN -- June 10, 2003
By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters
VIENNA — In October, six months before the war on Iraq, the CIA warned that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was close to making a nuclear bomb.
"If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," the CIA wrote in a report called "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Sept. 24 dossier on Iraq's weapons programs said it would take one to two years.
Washington and London also accused Iraq of making chemical and biological arms, but the idea that Iraq was attempting to create an atomic bomb was the clincher: the doomsday scenario.
"Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no threat is greater than the threat of nuclear weapons," Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, wrote to President George W. Bush in a letter dated June 2. Waxman wrote that he and other members of Congress had voted in favor of the use of force in Iraq largely because of the administration's warnings about Saddam's nuclear program.
In the run-up to the war, the Bush administration repeatedly criticized the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for finding no evidence that Baghdad had revived its nuclear weapons program, evidence the United States insisted was there.
On March 16, only four days before the war began, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "We know he (Saddam) has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
The war to disarm Iraq is over, but the proof that Baghdad had revived its nuclear arms program — like Saddam himself — is still missing. And the allies' failure to find clear proof that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has become a source of embarrassment for both Blair and Bush.
Some lawmakers in the United States and Britain have expressed worries that their governments misrepresented the evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and want Bush to explain his pre-war claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear arms.
Bush and Blair vehemently deny overstating the case for Iraq's weapons programs and stand by the pre-war intelligence they cited.
Blair said allegations that Downing Street had "sexed up" his Iraq arms dossier were "completely untrue" and insisted that Baghdad's WMD would eventually be found.
A top Blair aide Sunday promised to take more care in presenting intelligence material to the public. A spokesman said parts of the dossier from intelligence sources should have been clearly distinguished from publicly available material. Chunks of the report came from a student's 2002 thesis, which itself relied heavily on documents more than a decade old.
Senior Bush administration officials Sunday rejected accusations they exaggerated threats posed by Iraq's weapons, calling the charges "outrageous" and the results of "revisionist history."
FORGED EVIDENCE, RUN-DOWN LABS
Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix's UMOVIC monitoring and verification agency never found proof of chemical or biological arms in Iraq, though his team did uncover al-Samoud missiles that exceeded the 90-mile range permitted by the U.N.
On March 7, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that his arms inspectors in Iraq had found "no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program."
He also said that documents submitted by the United States and Britain as proof that Iraq had tried to import uranium from Niger were forgeries. An IAEA official later said the fakes were so crude that his jaw dropped when he saw them.
When the IAEA asked if there was any other, genuine evidence supporting the Niger import claim, the answer was no.
In an April 11 report to the Security Council, ElBaradei said that after 237 inspections at 148 locations in Iraq, he had been two to three months away from declaring Iraq innocent.
During nearly four months of inspections in Iraq, IAEA inspectors said privately that what they found in Iraq was very different from the looming "mushroom cloud" Bush had said Saddam was capable of unleashing on the world.
"At the various sites that the inspectors visited, they found the conditions of the buildings and equipment were very run-down," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "We did not find any large industrial capacity that would be required for a nuclear weapons program."
In order to build a conventional nuclear bomb, one would need a dedicated team of scientists and technicians working in pristine laboratory conditions with full access to the requisite equipment and raw materials — something the IAEA did not find.
Blair said in his weapons dossier that Iraq "retained and retains many of its experienced nuclear scientists and technicians who are specialized in the production of fissile material and weapons design."
But the U.N. inspectors also found that this was not the case. On April 11, ElBaradei said, "The core of expertise that existed in 1990 appears to have been disbanded."
While the IAEA found no proof of recent illicit activity, there is no doubt that Iraq had worked hard to develop nuclear arms before the IAEA found and destroyed the program in the 1990s.
The IAEA has said Iraq's secret program was "near success" with its uranium enrichment program and had produced several grams of weapons-grade material. Although this was far from the 55 to 66 pounds needed for a nuclear weapon, it showed Baghdad had the technology and know-how to make a key atomic bomb ingredient.
But even if the U.N. weapons inspectors had been permitted to finish their work in Iraq, ElBaradei said a declaration of Iraq's innocence "would have had a high degree of uncertainty."
"We couldn't rule out that there was a guy sitting somewhere in Iraq working on a design for a nuclear weapon on a computer," IAEA's Fleming said.
For this reason, ElBaradei said the IAEA would stay there permanently "to act as an effective deterrent to — and insurance against — resumption by Iraq of its nuclear weapons program."
U.S. Hunt for Iraqi Banned Weapons Slows
Associated Press via Philidelphia Inquirer -- June 10, 2003
By DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties, even as pressure mounts on President Bush (news - web sites) to explain why no banned arms have been found
Al Qaeda links with Iraq denied
Senior leaders interrogated by U.S. agents
New York Times
via Global Exchange -- June 9, 2003
JAMES RISEN
Two of the highest-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in American custody have told the C.I.A. in separate interrogations that the terrorist organization did not work jointly with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, according to several intelligence officials.
Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda planner and recruiter until his capture in March 2002, told his questioners last year that the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Qaeda leaders, but that Osama bin Laden had rejected such proposals, according to an official who has read the Central Intelligence Agency's classified report on the interrogation.
In his debriefing, Mr. Zubaydah said Mr. bin Laden had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Mr. Hussein, the official said.
Separately, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Qaeda chief of operations until his capture on March 1 in Pakistan, has also told interrogators that the group did not work with Mr. Hussein, officials said.
The Bush administration has not made these statements public, though it frequently highlighted intelligence reports that supported its assertions of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda as it made its case for war against Iraq.
Since the war ended, and because the administration has yet to uncover evidence of prohibited weapons in Iraq, the quality of American intelligence has come under scrutiny amid contentions that the administration selectively disclosed only those intelligence reports that supported its case for war.
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, declined to comment on what the two Qaeda leaders had told their questioners. A senior intelligence official played down the significance of their debriefings, explaining that everything Qaeda detainees say must be regarded with great skepticism.
Other intelligence and military officials added that evidence of possible links between Mr. Hussein's government and Al Qaeda had been discovered — both before the war and since — and that American forces were searching Iraq for more in Iraq.
Still, no conclusive evidence of joint terrorist operations by Iraq and Al Qaeda has been found, several intelligence officials acknowledged, nor have ties been discovered between Baghdad and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York.
Between the time of the attacks and the start of the war in Iraq in March, senior Bush administration officials spoke frequently about intelligence on two fronts — the possibility of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and Baghdad's drive to develop prohibited weapons. President Bush described the war against Iraq as part of the larger war on terrorism, and argued that the possibility that Mr. Hussein might hand over illicit weapons to terrorists posed a threat to the United States.
Several officials said Mr. Zubaydah's debriefing report was circulated by the C.I.A. within the American intelligence community last year, but his statements were not included in public discussions by administration officials about the evidence concerning Iraq-Qaeda ties.
Those officials said the statements by Mr. Zubaydah and Mr. Mohammed were examples of the type of intelligence reports that ran counter to the administration's public case.
"I remember reading the Abu Zubaydah debriefing last year, while the administration was talking about all of these other reports, and thinking that they were only putting out what they wanted," one official said.
Spokesmen at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon declined to comment on why Mr. Zubaydah's debriefing report was not publicly disclosed by the administration last year.
In recent weeks, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, and other officials have defended the information and analysis by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies in the months before the war. They said reports were not suppressed, and were properly handled and distributed among the intelligence agencies.
The issue of the public presentation of the evidence is different from whether the intelligence itself was valid, and some officials said they believed that the former might ultimately prove to be more significant, since the Bush administration relied heavily on the release of intelligence reports to build its case, both with the American people and abroad.
"This gets to the serious question of to what extent did they try to align the facts with the conclusions that they wanted," an intelligence official said. "Things pointing in one direction were given a lot of weight, and other things were discounted."
copyright New York Times
U.S. RIPS WMD SKEPTICS
New York Post -- June 9, 2003
The Bush administration yesterday launched a counterattack against criticism that it overhyped intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before going to war, calling the sniping "outrageous" and "revisionist history."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on ABC's "This Week," pointed to intelligence estimates made in October pegging Iraq's stockpile of chemical agents at between 100 to 500 metric tons.
Bush Asserts Iraq 'Had a Weapons Program'
Associated Press via Mercury News -- June 9, 2003
SCOTT LINDLAW
WASHINGTON - President Bush insisted Monday that Iraq had a weapons program, and the White House asked for patience during a search for evidence to prove it.
As lawmakers considered an investigation into the handling of intelligence that led to war, the White House said it would not resist such an inquiry.
Bush Insists Iraq Had Banned Arms Program
Associated Press via WJXX/WTLV -- June 9, 2003
WASHINGTON -- President Bush insisted Monday that Baghdad had a program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, seeking to rebut critics who say his administration's credibility is at stake in the search for illicit arms.
Iraqis near nuclear site took ore barrels home
In war's chaos, thirsty villagers drank from contaminated containers
New York Times via SF Chronicle -- June 8, 2003
Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times
"We had to find something to bring water," said Idris Saddoun, 23.
They say they broke into the warehouse, emptied hundreds of radioactive barrels of their yellow and brown mud, took them to wells and canals and filled them with water for cooking, bathing and drinking. The barrels had held uranium ores, low-enriched uranium "yellowcake," nuclear sludge and other dirty byproducts of nuclear research.
Transcript: Colin Powell Talks WMD
Fox News Sunday -- June 8, 2003
Spies threaten Blair with 'smoking gun' over Iraq
Senior intelligence officers kept secret records of meetings after pressure from No 10
The Independent -- June 8, 2003
By Kim Sengupta and Andy McSmith
reprint at Global Policy
Intelligence officers are holding a "smoking gun" which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair's staff in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Kristol: Bush Made Misstatements on Iraq WMDs
NewsMax -- June 8, 2003
In comments sure to be seized upon by Bush administration critics at home and abroad, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq said Sunday that President Bush may have misstated the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. attacked.
"We shouldn't deny, those of us who were hawks, that there could have been misstatements made, I think in good faith," Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told "Fox News Sunday."
Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs'
Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs
The Observer -- June 8, 2003
Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett
Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing of the sort.
Defense Agency Issues Excerpt on Iraqi Chemical Warfare Program
DIA director Jacoby clarifies press reports on agency assessment
US Department of State -- June 7, 2003
The Defense Department released on June 7 an unclassified excerpt of an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study on Iraq's chemical warfare (CW) program in which it stated that there is "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities."
But the excerpt, drawn from a classified DIA study published in September 2002, also Stated that "Iraq will develop various elements of its chemical industry to achieve self-sufficiency in producing the chemical precursors required for CW agent production." The full excerpt is based on the DIA's analysis titled: "Iraq -- Key WMD Facilities -- An Operational Support Study."
Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for War
Associated Press via Common Dreams -- June 7, 2003
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war.
Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use
New York Times -- June 7, 2003
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.
seen at
eschaton
reprint at Information Clearing House
Weapons dossier 'sent back six times'
BBC -- June 6, 2003
US Defense Intelligence: Never Any Doubt About Iraq's WMD Program
Voice Of America News -- June 6, 2003
"It is a sentence lifted out of the text," he said. "The single sentence was not intended to summarize the program. So what we are saying is, that in 2002 in September, we could not reliably pin down for someone who was doing contingency planning, specific facilities, locations, or production that was underway at a specific location at that point in time."
But Admiral Jacoby said his agency had no doubt about the existence of a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq.
Data didn't back Bush's weapons claims, officials say
San Jose Mercury News -- June 6, 2003
"Some people higher up the food chain made the leap from suspicion to conviction," said a senior military official who is critical of how the intelligence was handled.
"I think they honestly believed that, based on how the Iraqis had always behaved in the past and not just because they wanted to scare the public into supporting the war," said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved.
DIA Report
BBC News (as seen on BBC America) -- June 6, 2003
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."
US Defence Intelligence Agency, September 2002
Blix Interview
BBC News (as seen on BBC America) -- June 6, 2003
Newsreader: The controversy over western intelligence on Iraq has deepened. Now the UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has cast doubt over the quality of US intelligence he received about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war. Mr. Blix told the BBC that his team followed up British and American leads at a large number of suspected weapons sites only to find nothing when they got there. But the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld has again insisted that American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass desctruction has been good.
[snip]
Blix: Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all. And in none of these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction. And that shook me a bit, I must say. I was impressed by that. Because we had been told that they would give us the best intelligence that they had. So I thought, my god, if this is the best intelligence they have, and we find nothing, what about the rest?