Austin American-Statesman
U.S. Commander: No evidence Iraq tried to deploy WMD in battle
By George Edmonson
Cox News Service
(05-08-03)
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army commander in Iraq said Wednesday that while there is documentary evidence to suggest that the country had an active program for chemical and biological weapons, nothing has been found to show the country's military was prepared to use them on U.S. forces.
Meanwhile, a senior Pentagon official, Stephen Cambone, said Wednesday that tests are continuing on a trailer captured from a defector that may have been part of a mobile laboratory system.
Cambone, the Defense Department's undersecretary for intelligence, said, "Technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond what the defector said it was for, which was the production of biological agents."
The suspected presence of weapons of mass destruction was a prime justification by President Bush for waging war to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime.
Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of the Army's 5th Corps, told reporters at the Pentagon in a videoconference from Baghdad that U.S. forces have uncovered "no evidence of him trying to employ them directly against U.S. troops."
He said he could only speculate on the reasons and offered several theories.
One possibility he suggested was that in their haste to hide material from inspectors "they were so clever in disguising that and burying it so deep" it could not be retrieved rapidly enough. Others were that U.S. forces moved too fast for Iraqis to respond and that pre-war initiatives urging commanders not to use weapons of mass destruction succeeded.
The suspect trailer, Cambone said at a separate Pentagon briefing, was turned over to U.S. officials by Kurds who captured it at a checkpoint April 19 in northern Iraq. It had been cleaned with a "very caustic substance" and painted "nice green military colors," he added.
In a February presentation to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq had at least seven mobile weapons factories. He called their existence "one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file."
Powell told the Security Council that U.S. officials had gotten information from defectors and knew what many lab components such as pumps, compressors and fermenters looked like and how they fit together.
Cambone said there were "common elements" in the trailer and the information Powell presented.
In the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, Cambone said teams have been to about 70 of more than 600 suspected sites, and no evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found. He said additional inspection forces were being sent to Iraq.
"It is a tough, laborious process," Cambone said.
Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was with Cambone at the briefing, said it was too early in the process to reach any conclusions: "This is piecing together a major jigsaw puzzle, and we're only just beginning to gain insights and to work the puzzle."
In his discussion, Wallace addressed a variety of issues that ranged from how the war went to his future.
Wallace was catapulted to public attention in the early days of the war when he was quoted as saying that "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against" and remarked on overextended supply lines.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials downplayed Wallace's comments.
"I suppose everyone can have their own view," Rumsfeld said at the time.
Because the Army and the secretary have sometimes clashed, virtually every strong statement by top Army officers or officials is often viewed through that lens. The occasionally acerbic Rumsfeld is reported to be generally displeased with the Army's response to his quest to transform the military into a lighter, more agile and flexible force.
Wallace said he has not received his next assignment, describing himself as having a "great time" commanding 5th Corps.
"And I don't think I've been treated poorly by anybody," Wallace added. Officials have said the timing of the change -- Wallace took command of 5th Corps in July 2001 -- is not out of the ordinary. And some reports have speculated that Wallace is under consideration to replace outgoing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki.
Wallace said he had no apologies for the comments he made during the war. The enemy, he said, was "much more aggressive than what we expected him to be, or at least, what I expected him to be," while the Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary forces were "at least fanatical, if not suicidal." He defended the way the military handled protecting museums and other Baghdad sites that faced looters.
"Well, I don't think it was as much an issue of the number of troops as the fact that we were still fighting our ass off as we went into Baghdad," he said. "And our first responsibility was to defeat the enemy forces, both paramilitary and regular army."
Wallace also said recent reports he'd seen indicated only a few items remained unaccounted for at the main museum, and he said troops prevented looting at a "significant museum that is located at the Tomb of the Unknowns in downtown Baghdad."
In other developments Tuesday:
• U.S. Central Command announced the capture of Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi, former Baath Party regional command chairman for the Al-Kut district. He is No. 32 on the list of 55 most wanted suspects and was represented by a silhouette on the two of hearts.
• Treasury Secretary John Snow said some sanctions against Iraq were suspended to assist in humanitarian and reconstruction efforts.
• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said an examination is under way on an audio tape purporting to be Saddam exhorting Iraqis to "kick out" foreigners. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald said its reporters in Baghdad received the approximately 15-minute recording from two men who were unsuccessful in their efforts to get it to an Arab broadcaster.
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