That document is from March, 2003. It does not reflect what we know now. What I said is that Iraq's disclosures were in fact quite accurate. The fact that we or anybody else at the time were unable to accept that is a totally different matter.
No. That's just not the case. Much of the missing inventory of WMDs have just been "written off" as having been destroyed, or were accounting errors.
For example, the documents relating to missing chemical bombs from the Iran-Iraq war (Page 48), were NEVER accounted for from what I was told. There were some interviews of various Iraqis, and the story I recall was that our analysts just finally accepted that it was an accounting oversight and that Iraq had originally "over-reported" how many bombs they had expended during that war.
We just believed them because it was more convenient and we lacked any tangible evidence.
But I think you're missing the point in claiming that Iraq's disclosures were "quite accurate". That's all based upon 20/20 hindsight after years of digging through millions of pages of documents, interviewing detained scientists, and unfettered access to possible sites, none of which we previously had access to.
However, it was Saddam's attitude that is relevant. His INCESSANT DECEIT and unwilingness to just "fess up" everything.
Those unresolved issues are not minor. They were major infractions that had not been resolved and the Iraqis were making little attempt to try and resolve them by providing documentation or other credible evidence.
We learned a long time ago in jurisprudence, that the burden of proof rests on the accuser, not the accused.
Hmm.. doesn't seem to apply to Israel, now does it?
But the difference is that Saddam was not just the "accused", he was CONVICTED, and thus, on probation. Thus, like any convicted criminal who is declared in violation of his probation, he can be apprehended for immediate execution of sentence. Which, in Saddam's case, was his overthrow and removal from power. So your analogy does not hold up, as might be the case with Iran, which stands accused of violating its obligations under the NPT.
There was a lot of general discussion that Saddams top people simply covered their asses and lied on everything so Saddam stayed happy.
Sure, if they held sufficient power that a rival wouldn't attempt to politically undermine them by tattling to Saddam about the subterfuge that person might be carrying on.
But WMDs were the venue of the IIS, SSO, and the Military Industrial Commission.
But here.. take a gander at the Duelfer Report:
cia.gov
Taji Lab (N 33 22 49.3 E 044 18 59.2)
The chemical preparation division’s lab in Taji focused on the research of three chemical substances, but the purpose of opening the lab may have been to give the division a covert location to produce CW agent for the regime.
The IIS M16 laboratory located near Taji was opened in 2000 for the purpose of producing nitrogen mustard, according to a former IIS scientist. The five individuals assigned to work at the lab lacked the necessary chemicals to produce nitrogen mustard, so they worked on a plant-based anesthetic per the order of M16 director Nu’man Muhammad al-Tikriti.
The source said that while they were waiting for Adnan Abdul Razzaq to send back precursor chemicals to produce the CW agent, the division researched the compounds dimethylnitrosoamine, a mixture of fluoroacetate and thallium chloride, and a natural anesthetic extracted from the datura plant.
An exploitation team that visited this site found a non-residential drainage system and signs that chemical ventilation had been present, which help corroborate the source’s claim that the house was used as a laboratory.
A former IIS scientist who worked at the Taji lab said that the lab was shut down and all the equipment removed when the US issued its ultimatum to Saddam Husayn to leave Iraq in 48 hours (see Figures 12, 13, and 14).
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The burial and destruction of chemicals also occurred at two M16 warehouses located near the former M16 facility in Djerf al-Naddaf.
IIS officers moved chemicals from a warehouse in the Karada district of Baghdad to be disposed of at a site in Salmadiyah in March 2003, according to reporting. The report stated that chemical containers of various sizes were buried in a deep pit and that several of the containers were broken either during the move or when they were placed in the pit.
A former IIS officer with direct access to the information reported that chemicals stored at the Mustansariyah site were moved to the warehouses in Salmadiyah where some were destroyed. A burn pit was near the warehouse where IIS officers took some of the chemicals and poured them directly into the ground.
In a separate report, the same former IIS officer describes the chemicals as being CW components, but the source also describes the chemical components in non-scientific terms, such as “impressive and beautiful,” which indicates that he probably has little training in chemistry and may not have had direct knowledge about the identity of the chemicals.
A former IIS chemist with direct access claims that material at the Mustansariyah site was relocated to the Salmadiyah warehouses in 2002.
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And here we see from the Duelfer Report that their is no further discussion of the "Air Force Document" that terminated Saddam's cooperation with UNSCOM. No resolution in accounting for the missing WMD warheads or disparate accounts between 1991 and 1998. Nothing.. We just accepted the explanations provided because we were unable to find any physical evidence.
Concealment failures ultimately compounded issues raised by UNSCOM. The most notorious failure was UNSCOM’s discovery in July 1998 discovery of the “Air Force Document” which called into question Iraq’s declaration of destroyed chemical munitions. Inspectors found the document despite extensive Iraqi efforts to sanitize the site prior to inspector arrival. The discovery resulted in a presidential decree creating a committee to purge such documents from MIC facilities to prevent other such occurrences.
Iraq’s Internal Monitoring Apparatus: The NMD and MIC Programs
In 1998, after the Air Force Document incident, Saddam personally ordered the establishment of a Document Committee under the purview of the NMD to purge all MIC establishments of records of past-prohibited programs to prevent their discovery.
The NMD oversaw the destruction of redundant copies of declared documents, as well as continued the concealment of documents of past programs that would cause additional problems with the UN. Financial documents that were deemed too valuable to destroy but too controversial to declare were placed in a lockbox in the care of a special agent of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
cia.gov
And...
Prior to December 2002, Saddam told his generals to concentrate on their jobs and leave the rest to him, because he had “something in his hand” (i.e. “something up his sleeve”), according to Minister of Military Industrialization ‘Abd-al-Tawab ‘Abdallah Al Mullah Huwaysh.
Saddam surprised his generals when he informed them he had no WMD in December 2002 because his boasting had led many to believe Iraq had some hidden capability, according to Tariq ‘Aziz. Saddam had never suggested to them that Iraq lacked WMD. Military morale dropped rapidly when he told senior officers they would have to fight the United States without WMD.
Saddam spoke at several meetings, including those of the joint RCC-Ba’th National Command and the ministerial council, and with military commanders in late 2002, explicitly to notify them Iraq had no WMD, according to the former presidential secretary. Saddam called upon other senior officials to corroborate what he was saying.
In Saddam’s last ministers’ meeting, convened in late March 2003 just before the war began, he told the attendees at least three times, “resist one week and after that I will take over.” They took this to mean he had some kind of secret weapon. There are indications that what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of insurgency against the coalition. |
