US newspaper discloses how White House embraced disputed Iraq arms
www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-04 01:21:56
(Here we have more evidence that the U.S. used false claims about Iraq... Will it never end ?,)
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- A leading US newspaper carried areport on Sunday describing in details how the White House embraced suspect intelligence on Iraq's alleged illicit weapons inthe run-up to the Iraq war in March 2003.
The front-paged New York Times report, that ran three full pages, depicted how the Bush administration utilized the intelligence to build its case for the war, while repeatedly failing to fully disclose the contrary views.
According to the report, in September 2002, Vice President DickCheney told a group of Wyoming Republicans that the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" -- thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, that were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges.
The tubes, as the only physical evidence Washington could brandish of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq, the report said.
The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002.
But almost a year before, Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, the report quoted four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.
The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.
However, senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts, the reports said.
Eighteen months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators have found no evidence of unconventional weapons in the country. The absence is now widely seen as evidence of an intelligence community blinded by "group think," but far from the "group think," the report stressed, American nuclear and intelligence experts ever argued bitterly over the tubes.
The report cited senior officials as saying that Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002 CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket theory of the tubes soon afterward. Bush learned of the debate at roughly the same time.
Last week, when asked about the tubes, officials said they relied on repeated assurances by George J. Tenet, then the CIA director, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges.
Tenet declined to be interviewed, the report said. But in a statement, he said he "made it clear" to the White House "that the case for a possible nuclear program in Iraq was weaker than that for chemical and biological weapons." Enditem
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