What they said before the war, about Iraqi WMD:
–VP Cheney, 8/26/02:
After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit U.N. inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms. In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon… Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. whitehouse.gov
President Bush, 11/7/02:
Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons….
…the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons…
Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?…
In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.
We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th.
And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Every chemical and biological weapon that Iraq has or makes is a direct violation of the truce that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Yet, Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons despite international sanctions, U.N. demands, and isolation from the civilized world.
Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction…
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists…
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud….
The U.N. inspections program was met with systematic deception.
The world has tried limited military strikes to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities -- only to see them openly rebuilt, while the regime again denies they even exist.
After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence.http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
On NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms. 9/8/02 cgi.cnn.com
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the United States can't underestimate Iraq's weapons activities. "After the Iraq war, Desert Storm, after they invaded Kuwait ... we went in and were able to find out that they were within six months to a year away from developing a nuclear weapon," Rumsfeld told CBS' "Face the Nation." He said intelligence estimates at the time indicated Iraq was at least two, and as many as six, years away from possessing nuclear capabilities. "Until you're down on the ground, you can't know precisely," Rumsfeld said. "The intelligence we have is clearly sufficient for the president to say that he believes the world has to recognize the Iraqis have repeatedly violated these U.N. resolutions." 9/8/02 cgi.cnn.com
Iraq continues to build and expand an infrastructure capable of producing WMD. Baghdad is expanding its civilian chemical industry in ways that could be diverted quickly to CW production. We believe it also maintains an active and capable BW program; Iraq told UNSCOM it had worked with several BW agents.
We believe Baghdad continues to pursue ballistic missile capabilities that exceed the restrictions imposed by UN resolutions. It may also have retained the capability to deliver BW or CW agents using modified aircraft or other unmanned aerial vehicles.
We believe Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons program. Iraq retains a significant number of nuclear scientists, program documentation, and probably some dual-use manufacturing infrastructure that could support a reinvigorated nuclear weapons program. Baghdad's access to foreign expertise could support a rejuvenated program, but our major near-term concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to fissile material. –George Tenet, CIA Director, 3/19/02 usinfo.state.gov
Fake Iraq-Africa Link That Drove America to War:
DURING A crucial four-month period leading up to the current war in Iraq, US and British officials falsely charged that Saddam Hussein's government had tried to buy large quantities of uranium for nuclear weapons from an African country.
Among those making the claim was President George W. Bush, who included it in his annual State of the Union address in January.The US State Department eventually identified the African country as Niger. In a "fact sheet" issued last December, the department said that Iraq's cover-up of the attempted uranium purchase showed that Baghdad was lying about its programme for developing weapons of mass destruction….
It was less than two weeks before the initial bombing of Baghdad that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency decisively discredited accusations that had all along been denied by both Niger and Iraq. Mohammed ElBaradei told the UN Security Council that the documents on which the charges were based had been found to be forgeries.
The US now accepts that the apparent evidence of an Iraqi link to African uranium has been proven to be counterfeit. Secretary of State Colin Powell denies that Washington played any role in fabricating the documents, and US and UN officials say they do not know who is responsible for the forgeries.
A US senator recently urged the FBI to investigate. "There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq," said John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat representing the state of West Virginia.
Iraq's supposed connivance with an African nation was first cited by the British government in a dossier published on September 24. That same day, according to US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, CIA chief George Tenet said at a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had sought to buy 500 tonnes of uranium oxide from Niger.
Secretary of State Powell made a similar charge to the same committee in another closed-door session two days later, Mr Hersh writes in the current edition of The New Yorker magazine.
"The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the president a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq," Mr Hersh reports.
The documents in question consisted of a series of faked letters between Iraqi and Niger officials. One letter, dated July 2000, reportedly bears an amateurish forgery of the Niger president's signature. Another letter was sent over the name of a person identified as Niger's foreign minister, when the signatory had left the position of foreign minister 10 years prior to the date of the letter.
According to Mr Hersh's calculations, the 500 tonnes of uranium oxide mentioned in the purported correspondence would potentially be enough to build 100 nuclear bombs.
Iraq did seek to assemble a nuclear arsenal during the 1980s and 1990s. And Niger Prime Minister Hama Hamadou recently acknowledged that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from his country in the 1980s. But that approach was rebuffed, Mr Hamadou said.
Iraq's own nuclear-weapons potential was severely diminished as a result of US-led bombing raids carried out during the 1991 Gulf War. And UN weapons inspectors subsequently removed or destroyed all that apparently remained of Iraq's nuclear fuel and equipment.
Mr Hersh, who came to fame by exposing a US platoon's massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1971, points out in his new article that Niger's entire output of uranium oxide is pre-sold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan and Spain. Mr Hersh quotes an unnamed official from the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying, "Five hundred tonnes can't be siphoned off without anyone noticing."
But despite the many apparent discrepancies in the charges involving Niger, they were taken seriously by both the British and American governments for several months. Questions are now being asked as to why the forgeries were not uncovered sooner - at least in time to spare President Bush the embarrassment of making accusations subsequently shown to be unfounded. (3/31/03 article in East African) allafrica.com
What I'm very certain of is that the Bush administration has not provided any evidence to substantiate its allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime is currently pursuing weapons of mass destruction programs or is in actual possession of weapons of mass destruction. Based upon my experience as a weapons inspector from 1991 to 1998, while we had serious concerns about unaccounted aspects of Iraq's weapons program, we did ascertain a 90 [percent] to 95 percent level of disarmament that included all of the production equipment and means of production used by Iraq to produce these weapons. So if Iraq has weapons today, like President Bush says, clearly they would have had to reconstitute these capabilities since December 1998. And this is something that the Bush administration needs to make a better case for, especially before we talk about going to war. - Scott Ritter 9/8/02 cgi.cnn.com
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What they really found:
Sunday May 4, 2003
A mobile chemical lab found on 11 April, near Baghdad. Substances sent off for testing. No more has been heard.
Marines find underground network of labs and warehouses plus drums of uranium. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Authority said uranium was of no practical use in making weapons.
14 barrels of chemicals found on 7 April, soldiers 'collapse' from fumes. Turned out to be pesticides. Soldiers had heat exhaustion.
White powder suspected of being WMD found at Latifiyah explosives plant on 4 April. Turned out to be conventional explosive.
guardian.co.uk |
