Top US Arms Inspector: Iraq had no WMDs prior to..

[westkoast]

WASHINGTON - Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector reported Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. His report also says Saddam Hussein's weapons capability weakened during a dozen years of U.N. sanctions before the U.S. invasion last year.


 
Contrary to prewar statements by President Bush and top administration officials, Saddam did not have chemical and biological stockpiles when the war began and his nuclear capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, according to the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group.

“I ... do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq,” Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, said in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee. His prepared remarks were obtained by Reuters before the 2:30 p.m. ET hearing.


Duelfer's findings, contained in a report that runs more than 1,000 pages, come less than four weeks before an election in which Bush's handling of Iraq has become the central issue.

Democratic candidate John Kerry has seized on comments this week by the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, that the United States didn't have enough troops in Iraq to prevent a breakdown in security after Saddam was toppled.

Report could boost Kerry
The inspector's report could boost Kerry's contention that Bush rushed to war based on faulty intelligence and that sanctions and U.N. weapons inspectors should have been given more time.

But Duelfer also supports Bush's argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made clear to inspectors that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if sanctions were lifted, the report said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said before the report's release that it would conclude “that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations through illegal financing procurement schemes.”

But a top Democrat in Congress, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said Duelfer’s findings undercut the two main arguments for war: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he would share them with terrorists like al-Qaida.

“We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction,” Levin said.

On Wednesday, Bush cited Saddam's "history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America" in calling the invasion the right thing to do.

‘A risk, a real risk’
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said in a campaign speech in Wilkes Barre, Pa. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

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And British Prime Minister Tony Blair, traveling in Africa, said that the report shows that Saddam was “doing his best” to get around the United Nations’ sanctions. Like Bush, Blair has been trying to defend his justification for joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the face of heavy criticism from some in his own party.

Duelfer found that Saddam, hoping to end U.N. sanctions, gradually began ending prohibited weapons programs starting in 1991. But as Iraq started receiving money through the U.N. oil-for-food program in the late 1990s, and as enforcement of the sanctions weakened, Saddam was able to take steps to rebuild his military, such as acquiring parts for missile systems and restoring domestic chemical production.

Duelfer said that by the time of the war in 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in months and nerve agent in less than a year.

“We have not come across explicit guidance from Saddam on this point, yet it was an inherent consequence of his decision to develop a domestic chemical production capacity,” Duelfer said.

One of Saddam’s priorities was to escape U.N. sanctions, he said.

Designing new missiles
“Over time, sanctions had steadily weakened to the point where Iraq, in 2000-2001, was confidently designing missiles around components that could only be obtained outside sanctions,” Duelfer said in his prepared remarks.

The erosion of sanctions stopped after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Duelfer found, preventing Saddam from pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

He also said the sanctions were successful in limiting Saddam's ability to develop nuclear weapons.

Duelfer said that “despite Saddam’s expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the program (after 1991), during the course of the following 12 years Iraq’s ability to produce a weapon decayed.”

The report avoids direct comparisons with prewar claims by the Bush administration on Iraq's weapons systems. But Duelfer largely reinforces the conclusions of his predecessor, David Kay, who said in January, "We were almost all wrong" on Saddam's weapons programs. The White House did not endorse Kay's findings then, noting that Duelfer's team was continuing to search for weapons.

Duelfer did reveal a threat that he said had emerged since he last briefed Congress on the status of the WMD hunt — a connection between chemical weapons experts from Saddam’s former regime with insurgents fighting the U.S.-led forces now in Iraq.

Threat posed by insurgents
“I believe we got ahead of this problem through a series of raids throughout the spring and summer. I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat,” Duelfer said.

“Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands,” he said.

Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam’s Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.

Saddam’s government fell in early April 2003 after a lightning U.S.-led invasion in mid-March. He was captured in December.

Bush administration officials asserted that Iraq had obtained weapons of mass destruction in the months before ordering the invasion.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Vice President Dick Cheney said Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6½ months before the invasion. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

Bush made the case
The president made similar charges, laying out in an Oct. 7, 2002, speech what he described as Iraq’s threat:

“It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”
“We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.”
“Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. “
Instead, U.S. inspectors found only limited signs of the banned weapons after the active fighting ended. Among the finds:

A single artillery shell filled with two chemicals that, when mixed while the shell was in flight, would have created sarin. U.S. forces learned of it only when insurgents, apparently believing it was filled with conventional explosives, tried to detonate it as a roadside bomb in May in Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers suffered from symptoms of low-level exposure to the nerve agent. The shell was from Saddam’s pre-1991 stockpile.
Another old artillery shell, also rigged as a bomb and found in May, showed signs it once contained mustard agent.
Two small rocket warheads, turned over to Polish troops by an informer, that showed signs they once were filled with sarin.
Centrifuge parts buried in a former nuclear scientist’s garden in Baghdad. These were part of Saddam’s pre-1991 nuclear program, which was dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The scientist also had centrifuge design documents.
A vial of live botulinum toxin, which can be used as a biological weapon, in another scientist’s refrigerator. The scientist said it had been there since 1993.
Evidence of advanced design work on a liquid-propellant missile with ranges of up to 620 miles. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had been prohibited from having missiles with ranges longer than 93 miles.
The Iraq Survey Group did not deal with whether Saddam’s government had contacts with members of the al-Qaida network, a matter that remains subject to wide debate.