February 04, 2004
The Case Of The Missing Weapons
As we know, ad nauseum, arms-hunter extraordinaire David Kay has blamed faulty intelligence for the Bush Administration's "mistaken" pre-war assertions concerning Saddam Hussein's supposed stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (and programmes for producing same). While many have accepted on its face Kay's analysis, some few commenters have argued that the Administration manipulated available intelligence to fit a desired outcome (in other words, that it lied).
This essay will argue the second point. But first, we should recall the context in which rests the issue at hand.
Bluntly, supposing Saddam had been maintaining such stockpiles?
CIA director George Tenet argued, in October of 2002, that Saddam would have used any WMD he may or may not have had in his possession only if attacked. As for Saddam giving his weapons to bin Laden, former CIA agent Bob Baer argued, at about the same time, that, "I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States." (It's well known that bin Laden and Saddam were not on anything like friendly terms. Indeed, bin Laden considered Hussein a "communist".) Further, there was no evidence that Saddam had any means to deliver the supposed weapons.
So even if Saddam had maintained stockpiles of banned weapons, he had no intention of using them, and no ability to deliver them.
Moreover, the current leaders in North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and India, and Russia -- all countries currently maintaining nuclear stockpiles -- have either come close to using, threatened to use, or made little attempt to completely account for; these stockpiles.
In fact, we now know that Pakistan, erstwhile ally in the "War On Terror", was selling nuclear secrets to the remaining two "Axis of Evil" nations, as well as to the long-time Libyan bogeyman. While the Bush Administration isn't exactly happy about the Pakistani misadventures, it's not currently planning an invasion to thwart this danger -- clearly a proliferation threat much, much greater that that posed by Saddam Hussein.
Meanwhile, at precisely the time that the Bush Administration was waxing hysterical over the "imminent" threat posed by Saddam's WMD arsenal, it was engaged in chemical and biological warfare -- on a massive and devastating scale -- in Colombia, permanently destroying hundreds of thousands of acres with its fumigation campaign, and preparing to set loose the diabolical pathogenic fungi known as "Agent Green".
Even worse, according to the UNDP, 30,000 children perish every single day -- yes, that's ten September 11s of children, every day of the year -- from easily preventable and treatable poverty-related diseases. The UNDP also estimates that 500,000 women per year die in childbirth. This is, essentially, a product of IMF-mandated (read: U.S.-mandated) austerity programmes imposed upon the Third World. In other words, it's bio-warfare (bio-terrorism, if you like), writ very, very large.
In its attack upon Iraq, ostensibly to eradicate Weapons of Mass Destruction, the United States fired off over 1,000 tonnes of Depleted Uranium munitions -- a form of nuclear warfare whose consequences, for Iraqis and U.S. troops both, are sure to be the more horrifying given its extensive use, this time around, in urban areas.
This is far the most underreported story of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Imagine the reaction if an outside force were to poison a geographical area "the size of California", within the United States or Europe, with several hundreds of tonnes of a cancer-causing heavy metal boasting a radioactive half-life of 4.5 Billion years? The non-reaction of even those nominally opposed to the war in Iraq -- France, Russia, China, Germany -- was and is one of history's truly shameful moments, laying bare the despicably racist double-standard by which the "civilised" world operates.
To add insult to injury, the U.S. war machine littered the country with unexploded cluster bomb-lets (which are now killing and maiming about 1,000 children per month), used incendiary munitions "remarkably similar" to Napalm, and has failed to restore the electricity works. Not a trivial matter, this last, as the planners of the first Gulf War were very much aware:
With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.
As far as the future is concerned, Congress has recently given the green light for the Bush Administration to develop "useable" nuclear weapons, and the Pentagon is hard at work on its "FALCON" weapons system, which will ultimately allow it the capability of "striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours," thereby fully automating the process of blowing up those brown-skinned persons whose (as often as not Washington-installed) leaders have fallen out of favour. "FALCON Phase I" contractors were selected in November, with testing set to begin in 2006.
Keeping the foregoing in mind, let us turn to the question of whether or not the Bush Administration sincerely believed that Saddam had "failed to disarm". Both logical and evidentiary considerations should make it fairly clear that the Bush Administration was lying then, and is lying now.
Logical Considerations If the Bush Administration truly believed that Saddam was in possession of WMD, then it never would have invaded, for the same reason that it hasn't invaded North Korea: it doesn't want WMD to be used against them! So obvious, yet so rarely cited.
If the Bush Administration truly believed that Saddam was in possession of WMD, then why did it not re-consider this position when Colin Powell's aenemic February '03 presentation of "evidence" before the United Nations went over like a lead balloon. Any honest analysis would have taken the world's skepticism into account instead of, ultimately, resorting to bullying and coercion in a failed attempt to cause the UN to sign off on its designs? Tony Blair's infamous September '02 dossier claimed that Saddam could launch a WMD attack in 45 minutes' time. Tony needed simply show the evidence that led to this "conclusion", and obtaining UN approval would have been a slam dunk. Even more to the point, why, when it was perfectly clear that the UN was only all too happy to allow the Administration to unleash the dogs at even the slightest sign of a "smoking gun", did Colin Powell, who claimed to "have more assets available to me than the inspectors do," not share his "assets" with the UNMOVIC inspectors, who instead were left to complain that the Bush Administration was feeding it "garbage after garbage after garbage" -- a charge George Tenet more less acknowledges?
If the Bush Administration truly believed that Saddam was in possession of WMD, why did it mount repeated attempts to manipulate intelligence to its desired ends?
"This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents. ... Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," read a July23, 2002 "UK Eyes Only" report summing up a meeting involving Anglo-American planners.
"In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the preparation of the dossier in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities," says the head of the British Defence Intelligence Staff.
Similarly, U.S. intelligence officials, in October of 2002, worried that, "Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," and that, "I would just say there is not much support for that [nuclear] theory around here," and that, "There's a catfight going on about this right now. On one side you have most of the experts on gas centrifuges. On the other you have one guy sitting in the CIA," and that, "The administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain silent."
Do we not remember the Administration's "stovepiping" of intelligence to fit its needs? Do we not remember Donald H. Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans", created specifically to end-run around the established intelligence agencies' work? Do we not remember (certainly the Washington Post doesn't want us to remember) when, back in the lazy days of Autumn 2002, Dubya was cheered for having "until now relied little on the Langley agency for his information on Iraq," as, "There is simply no way to reconcile what the CIA has said on the record and in leaks with the positions Bush has taken on Iraq."
If the Bush Administration truly believed that Saddam could lay an attack upon a Western city at any moment, and that only an invasion and "regime change" could eliminate this threat, why did it wait so long to attack? Dubya claims that it's because he "didn't know", before September 11, that terrorists were capable of striking on U.S. soil. This is total horseshit. Al-Qaida's 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center would have, except for a slight placement error, killed tens of thousands of people. If nothing else, the Oklahoma City bombing demonstrated the country's continued vulnerability to terror bombings, while the millennium plot revealed the ongoing desire of the bin Laden-ites to carry out attacks.
But supposing that 9/11 had, as he claims, taught Bush this harsh lesson? Even supposing that the invasion of Afghanistan were the logical first step in addressing this new-found vulnerability (though the perpetrators were almost all Saudi, not Afghan, nationals; and though the Taliban offered to extradite bin Laden if shewn some evidence of his involvement in the plot; and though the Afghan invasion proved absolutely devastating to the civilian population while apparently strengthening bin Laden: al-Qaeda has pulled off 17 major attacks in the two years since 9/11, as opposed to five in the eight years before 9/11)?
Why then, after the fall of the Taliban in November of 2001, did not the Bush Administration immediately set its sights upon Iraq? Why did it wait until the mid-term elections began heating up, almost a full year later, to begin pleading its hysterical case? (Apparently, in the words of Chief of Staff Andrew Card, it was because "from a marketing standpoint, you don't roll out a new product in August." Okay, but why, if it posed such a grave danger, wasn't the Iraqi menace "product" rolled out any time before August of 2002?)
Shortly after the mid-term elections, the New York Times reported that, "President Bush gave notice to the United Nations and to the American people today that the political season is over and that the time has come to disarm Saddam Hussein -- and that it may take war to accomplish that goal." Would we expect, if it were truly a matter of "national security" that the schedule of the "political season" would have any bearing on the timing of the war build-up?
If the Blair Administration truly believed that Saddam could strike within 45 minutes, why did Blair acknowledge, in private, to former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that Saddam's WMD capability, if any, was limited to battlefield uses, and that "the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use"?
If the Bush Administration truly believed that Saddam posed an imminent threat, why did Colin Powell remark, in February of 2001, that Saddam "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors"?
Why, if the Anglo-American intelligencies agencies were unable to determine that Saddam posed no threat whatever, was the 90% of the world's population opposed to the war able to recognise precisely this fact? Why was opposition to the war strongest in the region itself? Why is the United States now a worldwide pariah state? Why can't Dubya show his face anywhere in the world without touching off massive protests?
If the Bush Administration truly sought war only out of concern that "the lives and the liberty of the American people" were in imminent danger from Saddam's weapons programmes, then why did Paul Wolfowitz later reminisce that, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
Why did materials from Dick Cheney's March '01 Energy Task Force, obtained through an FOIA lawsuit, "contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, and terminals; as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects; and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts'"?
Why did the Dubya, in May of 2003, enact Executive Order 13303, declaring sovereign control over
all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons?
Why did, upon coming into "possession" of Iraq, the Bush Administration immediately begin selling off the country's resources to "suitors" closely connected to the Administration, while at the same time rewriting the country's economic laws, putting it "up for sale" -- a violation of International Law?
Why did Donald H. Rumsfeld, on the afternoon of September 11, pen his famous attack memo, urging his staffers to, "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not" when looking for potential targets?
If the Bush Administration was truly intent upon accurately determining the status of Saddam's WMD programmes, then why did the famous "sixteen words" concerning the fabled Niger uranium purchases make their way into the 2003 State of the Union address over the objections of the CIA?
Why, after Joseph Wilson had publicly debunked the story (claiming, no less, that, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat,") did the Administration retaliate against Wilson by outing his wife?
Why did the Bush Administration make the decision to go to war before the completion of the October '02 National Intelligence Estimate (regarding Saddam's weapons programmes)?
Why did Colin Powell lovingly praise as a "fine paper" a Blair Administration "dossier" that had been culled -- spelling mistakes and all -- from dated materials taken from the Internet?
Why did the United States pinch Iraq's December '02 weapons declaration, "on grounds that Washington had the best photocopying capabilities", then return "purged" copies to the non-permanent Security Council members?
Why did the Bush Administration begin smearing the UNMOVIC inspectors even before inspections had begun?
Why did Richard Perle acknowledge that the United States would invade even if UNMOVIC returned a "clean bill of health"?
If the Bush Administration truly launched its war only to remove the "threat" to world peace posed by Saddam -- either directly, or indirectly through bin Laden and co. -- or even to "liberate" the Iraqi people, why is it still there? All three have been either accomplished or found wanting. Why not apologise for its "mistake", offer to pay reparations, clean up the Depleted Uranium and the unexploded munitions, and leave off?
Evidentiary Considerations Hussein Kamel, one of the Bush Administration's pet Iraqi defectors, testified in 1995 that, "All weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed."
UNSCOM Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus stated in August of 2000 that "in all areas we have eliminated Iraq's [WMD] capabilities fundamentally." This after having affirmed in 1996 that "not much is unknown about Iraq's retained proscribed weapons capabilities," in 1997 that, "Iraq has sustained a good level of cooperation in the operation of the monitoring system," and in 1998 that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance."
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter (who voted for George W. Bush) has claimed, on repeated occasions, that Iraq had been "qualitatively disarmed" by 1997. In an interview with journalist John Pilger for his 2000 documentary Paying The Price, Ritter minced few words: "If I had to quantify Iraq's threat, in terms of 'weapons of mass destruction', the real threat is: zero. None." Then: "Does Iraq have a chemical weapons program today? No. Does Iraq have a long-range ballistic missiles program today? No. Nuclear? No. Biological? No. Is Iraq qualitatively disarmed? Yes."
Another former weapons inspector, Raymond Zalinskas, stated in 1998 that, "UNSCOM has destroyed all the chemical facilities, the chemical weapons facilities, and also all known chemical weapons. ... In the biological area, UNSCOM has destroyed the dedicated biological weapons facility at al-Hakam, plus other ones at other institutes. And as far as we know, they have no biological weapons stored up."
UNSCOM head Richard Butler stated, in July of 1998 that, "If Iraqi disarmament were a five-lap race, we would be three-quarters of the way around the fifth and final lap."
The Congressional Research Service's November '01 update of its Issue Brief, "Iraq: Compliance, Sanctions, and U.S. Policy", argued that the United States had "succeeded in preventing Iraq from re-emerging as an immediate strategic threat to the region."
Hans von Sponeck, a former UN Administrator in Iraq, traveled back to Iraq in the Summer of 2002 to informally inspect some Iraq's former WMD facilities, concluding that, "The U.S. Department of Defence and the CIA know perfectly well that today's Iraq poses no threat to anyone in the region, let alone in the United States. To argue otherwise is dishonest," and that, "One does not need to be a specialist in weapons of mass destruction to conclude that these sites had been rendered harmless and have remained in this condition. The truly worrying fact is that the U.S. Department of Defence has all of this information."
Former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski (who recently retired after twenty years in the military -- the last four-and-a-half of those at the Pentagon), in a February 2004 interview with LA Weekly is similarly assertive. After discussing her first-hand experience with the Administration's dirty dealings, she concludes:
We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the UN, we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know.
The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent -- a billion dollars! -- by David Kay's group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything.
According to "government officials", "In the two years before the war in Iraq, American intelligence agencies reviewed but ultimately dismissed reports from Iraqi scientists, defectors, and other informants who said Saddam Hussein's government did not possess illicit weapons," because "they were telling us something we didn't want to believe: that Iraq had no active WMD programs."
IAEA inspector Mohammed ElBaradei, a few weeks before the war, updated the Security Council on the status of Saddam's nuclear weapons programmes (from which would spring Condi Rice's "mushroom cloud" nightmare):
At this stage, the following can be stated:
One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
Third, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.
Fourth, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.
UNMOVIC head Hans Blix, a few weeks before the invasion, arguing that Iraq was taking "proactive" measures to cooperate with the inspections, noted that, "The destruction undertaken [of the Al Samoud missiles] constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament. We are not watching the destruction of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed," and that, "It will not take years, nor weeks, but months," to completely disarm the country.
UNMOVIC inspectors were "scandalised" at the Bush Administration's having cut short their work in order to go to war, after having found Iraq "a ruined country, not a threat to anyone," and considering the extent of Saddam's weapons programmes "a few guys with paper and pencil and some computer in a back room.''
Faulty intelligence, then, or Bush Administration lies? You decide!
Update, 5/8/04: Highly recommend an excellent piece by Doug Giebel, on the Counterpunch website, staking out similar territory.
Update, 8/5/04: In These Times' David Siroty and Christy Harvey are on the case as well.
Posted by Eddie Tews at February 4, 2004 07:12 PM
Comments