The debunking of the lies continues effortlessly....
Al
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Experts Doubt U.S. Claim on Iraqi Drones
9 minutes ago
By DAFNA LINZER and JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writers
Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in
Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public
assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense
biological or chemical weapons.
The evidence gathered this summer matched the
dissenting views of Air Force intelligence
analysts who argued in a national intelligence
assessment of Iraq (news - web sites) before the
war that the remotely piloted planes were
unarmed reconnaissance drones.
In building its case for war, senior Bush
administration officials had said Iraq's drones were intended to deliver
unconventional weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites)
even raised the alarming prospect that the pilotless aircraft could sneak into
the United States to carry out poisonous attacks on American cities.
The administration based its view on a Central Intelligence Agency (news -
web sites) finding that Iraq had renewed development of sophisticated
unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVs — capable of such attacks. The
Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Defense Intelligence Agency also supported
this conclusion.
While the hunt for suspected weapons of mass destruction — and the
means to deliver them — continues, intelligence and defense officials said
the CIA (news - web sites) and DIA stand by their prewar assertions about
Iraqi drone capabilities, some of which Powell highlighted in his Feb. 5
presentation to the U.N. Security Council.
But the Air Force, which controls most of the American military's UAV fleet,
didn't agree with that assessment from the beginning. And analysts at the
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said the Air Force view was widely
accepted within their ranks as well.
Instead, these analysts believed the drones posed no threat to Iraq's
neighbors or the United States, officials in Washington and scientists
involved in the weapons hunt in Iraq told The Associated Press.
The official Air Force intelligence dissent is noted in the October 2002
National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs, parts of which
were declassified last month as the Bush administration tried to defend its
case for war.
"We didn't see there was a very large chance they (UAVs) would be used to
attack the continental United States," Bob Boyd, director of the Air Force
Intelligence Analysis Agency, said in an AP interview. "We didn't see them
as a big threat to the homeland."
Boyd also said there was little evidence to associate Iraq's UAVs with the
country's suspected biological weapons program. Facilities weren't in the
same location and the programs didn't use the same people.
Instead, the Air Force believed Iraq's UAV programs were for
reconnaissance, as are most American UAVs. Intelligence on the drones
suggested they were not large enough to carry much more than a camera
and a video recorder, Boyd said.
Postwar evidence uncovered in July in Iraq supports those assessments,
according to two U.S. government scientists assigned to the weapons hunt.
"We just looked at the UAVs and said, 'There's nothing here. There's no
room to put anything in here,"' one of the scientists said.
The wingspan on drones that Iraqis showed journalists in March measured
24.5 feet and the aircraft were built like large, white model airplanes.
The U.S. scientists, weapons experts who spoke on condition of anonymity,
reached their conclusions after studying the small aircraft and interviewing
Iraqi missile experts, system designers and Gen. Ibrahim Hussein Ismail,
the Iraqi head of the military facility where the UAVs were designed. None of
the Iraqis questioned are in U.S. custody.
While the weapons hunters can't be sure they've recovered all of Iraq's
UAVs, the evidence amassed so far, coupled with the interviews, has led
them to believe that none of the drones are designed for unconventional
weapons. Iraqis involved in the program have insisted the drones were for
reconnaissance and electronic jamming.
Some UAVs were kept north of Baghdad. Weapons hunters found some
drones in better shape than others with the most important finds located at
a facility in the capital, the U.S. scientists said. Weapons hunters hauled
them back to their base on the outskirts of the Baghdad International Airport
where the parts were analyzed.
The unproven U.S. assertion regarding Iraq's UAV programs is one
among many.
American weapons hunters, like their U.N. counterparts, haven't reported
finding any chemical, biological weapons or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.
The lack of success in uncovering unconventional weapons, after warnings
that Iraq posed an immediate danger, has led critics and some former
government analysts to suggest the administration exaggerated the threat
posed by Saddam.
Boyd said the Air Force's dissent was handled fairly, and that his analysts
did not feel pressured to alter their position. "Our view was fully aired in
the process," he said.
The Bush administration has made public some of what led it to believe the
UAVs were for biological or chemical weapons attacks.
Before the war, U.S. intelligence agencies learned that officials with Iraq's
UAV program tried to buy commercially available route-planning software
that was packaged with electronic maps of the United States, according to
the declassified portion of the National Intelligence Estimate.
This discovery was interpreted by some analysts as a sign Iraq was trying
to plan UAV bombing runs over the United States. But Boyd said Air
Force analysts were unconvinced because maps are frequently bundled
with such software.
At the United Nations (news - web sites) in February, Powell told the
world Iraq had test-flown a UAV well beyond a 93-mile limit allowed
under U.N. rules. But both reconnaissance and offensive aircraft would
need to travel long distances, Boyd said.
Compared to other agencies, Boyd said the Air Force relied more on
information from reconnaissance satellites and less on defectors, in
accessing Iraq's UAVs.
Saddam's regime had experimented with remotely controlled jet aircraft
modified for biological and chemical attacks before the 1991 Persian Gulf
War (news - web sites), but U.N. inspectors found no evidence that
program had been successful.
Boyd said attempts in the mid-1990s by Saddam's regime to convert an
L-29 jet trainer into a dispersal system were abandoned. U.S. weapons
hunters also studied jet trainers found in northern Iraq but found no
evidence they had been converted into biological or chemical weapons
carriers, they said. |
