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Denies Intelligence Failure
by
Jason Leopold
June
10, 2003
The
evidence, or lack thereof, speaks for itself. In the months leading up to the
war in Iraq, the Bush administration produced hundreds of pages of intelligence
for members of Congress and for the United Nations that showed how Iraq’s
President Saddam Hussein possessed tons of chemical and biological weapons and
was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
The
intelligence information, gathered by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence
Agency, a Department of Defense agency that gathers foreign military
intelligence for the Pentagon, was used by the Bush administration to convince
the public that Iraq posed a threat to the world.
But
the information in those reports, much of which has been declassified and is
now available online, hasn’t panned out as U.S. military forces comb Iraq for
weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, it turns out that a bulk of the
intelligence contained in the reports was just plain wrong, suggesting that
either the intelligence was doctored to make a case for war or, even worse,
that a massive intelligence failure is rampant inside the CIA and other U.S.
government agencies.
The
Bush administration has come under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike
over the past two weeks for failing to find any WMD in Iraq and for possibly
manipulating intelligence reports to back the war. Secretary of State Colin
Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice appeared on news programs
Sunday and vehemently denied these claims, saying that the media has turned the
issue of the absence of WMD into a scandal and that the public is not
concerned.
Last
week, U.S. News and World Report disclosed the existence of a DIA report that
said no reliable evidence of Iraq’s WMD program could be found, but the agency
said it believed that Iraq had some chemical weapons.
“There
can be no question there were weapons before the war” in Iraq, Powell said.
“They have had weapons throughout their history. They have used chemical
weapons. They have admitted that they had biological weapons. And they never
accounted for all that they had or what they might or might not have done with
it.”
“I
don't think that the public is as upset about all this or as concerned about
this as is the media, which has had a feeding frenzy for the last week,” Powell
said Sunday in an interview with Fox News.
That’s
not entirely accurate. Depending on how the question is asked, some people
believe the Bush administration mislead the public by using exaggerated
evidence of WMD in making a case for war while other polls, conducted by
outlets such as Fox News, say a majority of people still believe the war was
justified even if WMD are never found.
Still,
despite the denials by Rice and Powell, both of who said they believe the
intelligence information to be accurate, most, if not all, of the intelligence
information publicly available has turned out to be false. And in its rush to
war, it has become clear that the Bush administration overstated the urgency of
the so-called Iraq threat.
For
example, in a report produced by the CIA in October 2002, the agency said that
Iraq had tried to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes “capable of producing
enough highly enriched uranium for a couple of weapons per year.” A copy of the
CIA report can be found at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm
President
Bush seized upon this intelligence last year as evidence that Iraq was pursuing
a nuclear weapons program and urged the U.N. to back the U.S. in disarming Iraq
by force if the country failed to do so voluntarily.
But
aluminum tubes that Iraq was trying to obtain was to build rockets rather than
for centrifuges to enrich uranium, according to the International Atomic Energy
Agency.
“While
the matter is still under investigation, and further verification is foreseen,
the IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum
tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with
reverse-engineering of rockets," an IAEA report submitted in January to
the UN Security Council said. "While it would be possible to modify such
tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for
it.”
The
claim about Iraq trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger first emerged in
British intelligence documents last September. The documents have since turned
out to be forgeries, according to the IAEA.
The
IAEA quickly realized that the documents handed over by the US were phony after
one letter purportedly signed by a Nigerian minister who had been out of office
for 10 years.
The
CIA report contains more than three-dozen other instances of erroneous
information, including the time frame for producing nuclear and biological
weapons and alleged evidence of Iraq’s ballistic missile programs.
The
IAEA report also said “to date, no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or
nuclear-related activities has been detected.”
The
CIA report identifies dozens of specific geographical locations where Iraq is
alleged to have been developing its chemical and biological weapons program and
goes even further in identifying the exact quantity of chemical and biological
weapons, such as anthrax, VX, serin and mustard gas Iraq already has, but a
search of these sites after the war has turned up nothing.
Case
in point: In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had
visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Saeed, a civil engineer, supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government
contracts, complete with technical specifications. Saeed said Iraq used
companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations - and
then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.
But
the information never held up and turned out to be one of the single biggest
intelligence failures for the Bush administration. Judith Miller first brought
the existence of Saeed to light in a New York Times story in December 2001 and
again in January. The White House, in September 2002, cited the information
provided by Saeed, who told U.S. officials that chemical and biological weapons
labs could be found in hospitals and presidential palaces, which turned out to
be completely untrue, in a public report on the imminent threat Iraq presented
to U.S. security. The White House report, “A Decade of Deception and Defiance”
can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect3.html
The
argument within the Pentagon and the Bush administration is that Iraq, a
country the size of California, has done an outstanding job of hiding its
weapons. But the CIA in its report identified tons of chemical and biological
weapons stockpiled throughout the country yet not even a spec of anthrax has
been found, which doesn’t make sense if Iraq did in fact have such a large
quantity of chemical and biological weapons agents.
Hans
Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said last week in his final report to
the U.N. Security Council that during the relatively short time U.N. inspectors
searched Iraq for WMD “the commission has not at any time during the
inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of
programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed
items – whether from pre 1991 or later.” (http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocusnewsiraq.asp?NewsID=529&sID=6)
“This
does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist,” Blix said. “They
might – there remain long lists of items unaccounted for – but it is not
justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is
unaccounted for.”
Jason Leopold, formerly the
bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires, is a freelance journalist based in
California. He is currently finishing a book on the California energy crisis.
He can be contacted at jasonleopold@hotmail.com.
* See also DV News Service’s Compilation:
“Bush
Administration's Lies About Iraq's WMD Unraveling”