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To: Lost1 who wrote (21)	6/11/2003 1:28:02 PM
From: Lost1	Respond to of 45

Missing in Action: Saddam's Nuclear Program By Louis Charbonneau VIENNA (Reuters) - In October, six months before the war on Iraq (news - web sites), the CIA (news - web sites) warned that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites)'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 Bush (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites) 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 on 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 on 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 told Reuters 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 had 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."