Iraq statements were conservative: Hill
AAP via ninemsn.com.au -- 25 February 2004
The federal government had been conservative in statements it made before the war on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Defence Minister Robert Hill said.
[Quotations from speech at U of Edinburgh, comments from interview in Stern, mention of forthcoming book.]
Blix says war 'without foundation'
Ireland Online -- 24 February 2004
The justification for last year’s war in Iraq “was without foundation“, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in the country said tonight.
The armed invasion damaged the credibility of the states which went to war and the authority of the United Nations Security Council, Hans Blix said, addressing an audience of 1,000 at the University of Edinburgh.
In taking armed action, America and Britain “ignored the views of the majority” on the Security Council and the net result was a “loss of legitimacy” for that action, he said.
He said that there was “great relief” that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been eliminated, but described the evolution towards democracy in Iraq as “uncertain“.
Dr Blix’s inspection teams were unable to make significant weapons finds in Iraq in the months leading up to the war.
He said: “The justification for the war – the existence of weapons of mass destruction – was without foundation.
“The military operation was successful, but the diagnosis was wrong.
“Saddam was dangerous to his own people but not a great, and certainly not an immediate, danger to his neighbours and the world.
“The states which we would have expected to support and strengthen some basic principles of the UN order, in my view, set a precedent of ignoring or undermining this order by acting too impatiently and without the support of the Security Council.
“As a result, their own credibility has suffered and the authority of the UN Security Council has been damaged.”
Earlier in his speech, Dr Blix criticised the US and the UK for trusting their own intelligence more than that of the weapons inspectors, who had not found the existence of any “smoking gun” and who had searched a number of sites and “in no case” found any weapon of mass destruction.
The action in Iraq has not strengthened confidence that intelligence is reliable, and it has proved that independent international inspection is more reliable than national intelligence, Dr Blix added.
He said: “It is easy to agree that there was uncertainty about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in March 2003.
“However, certainty, not uncertainty, was the justification advanced for the armed action.
“The governments undertaking the armed action put exclamation marks where there should have been question marks.
“We would like to be told about the real world, not to be shown a virtual one.”
Earlier today, Dr Blix was quoted in German weekly Stern as saying that the US and Britain “created facts where there were no facts” in the run up to war.
“The war was not justified,” he reportedly said. “The United States needed weapons of mass destruction to be able to wage the war.”
Tonight, the former chief weapons inspector launched a staunch defence of the role of the UN in international diplomacy, calling it the “most important multilateral church in the global village“, adding that “the legitimacy it can confer is far greater than any ad hoc alliances of willing states“.
And despite his reservations about the reliability of intelligence, he said that one lesson to be learned from the Iraq conflict was that “cooperation between national intelligence and international inspection was needed for the best result.”
He said: “International inspection supported by, but not remotely controlled by, national authorities, including intelligence, can be an increasingly important instrument in the struggle of the international community against the further spread of weapons of mass destruction.”
Dr Blix received a standing ovation after his speech.
He was speaking as part of a public lecture on the theme of Means of Reducing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A chair in International Relations was established in the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh in 1947.
Single lectures or seminars are given by a notable public figure who is known as The Montague Burton Visiting Professor during his or her brief stay in Edinburgh.
Dr Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, which recounts the process of weapons of inspections in the country, is due out next month.
Ex-CIA analyst rebukes administration on WMD
The Daily Iowan -- February 23, 2004
By Mary Beth LaRue - The Daily Iowan
A critic of President Bush's international policies presented footage to approximately 700 people in the IMU Sunday night in which Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell denied that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction prior to the war in Iraq.
After showing the footage from the documentary Breaking the Silence, former CIA analyst and Iraq intelligence expert Raymond McGovern asked the audience, "How many were aware that Rice and Powell said this?"
Approximately 10 people raised their hands.
"Why didn't the reporters find this?" he said. "Why didn't Americans know?"
McGovern, along with FBI agent Coleen Rowley, addressed national-defense issues during a free public lecture concerning the war Iraq and the Patriot Act.
McGovern contended that the director of the CIA and the chief U.S. weapons inspector have offered very different explanations on why no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been found.
"Why were we reluctant to say there were no weapons of mass destruction?" he said. "We couldn't believe our own president was lying to us through his teeth."
He believes that the government cynically exploited Americans' trauma over 9/11 to persuade them it was necessary to attack Iraq.
"It's sad to say we cannot give him the benefit of the doubt," he said.
Iowa native Rowley, now an FBI special agent in Minneapolis, is the author of a highly publicized May 2002 memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller. She felt the FBI had made mistakes in the months leading up to 9/11. Later that year, Time called her the "public conscience" of the FBI in an article naming her as one of the three "People of the Year," along with Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper.
"We have two views on the Patriot Act," Rowley said. "One is Orwell's Big Brother saying that we're under a microscope, and the other is 'Trust us, we're the government.' "
Clarifying that most have not even read the entire Patriot Act, which contains 160 different laws, she cited a few of the main laws Americans should pay attention to, including the court order for third-party records, the "sneak and peek warrant," and domestic terrorism.
"The Patriot Act isn't a problem. It's the way it's enforced - the mentality and the fear factor," she said. "It stifles debate and stops talk about hard issues while making us more susceptible to making mistakes."
The UI Lecture Committee said bringing Rowley and McGovern to the university exposed students to new ideas.
"Offering an intellectual examination of the most important current events - war, civil liberties, and intelligence - is simply not available in the mainstream press but is an opportunity the University Lecture Committee provides the university community," said UI sophomore Chad Aldeman, the group's financial director. "It is the best investment we can possibly make of student fees to give back to the students."
Democrat Says CIA Didn't Give UN All Iraq WMD Data
Reuters -- 23 February 2004
By Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON - A Democratic senator accused CIA Director George Tenet on Monday of making false statements when he said during public hearings that his agency gave the United Nations information about all the top suspected weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq before the war.
"All such sites were not shared, and Mr. Tenet's repeated statements were false," Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The CIA last month declassified the number of top suspected WMD sites categorized as high and medium priority, and acknowledged that 21 of those 105 sites were not shared with the United Nations before the war, Levin said.
A U.S. intelligence official countered that nine of those 21 sites had been "frequently" visited by U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1999 and they knew as much about them as the CIA. Three of the sites were added to the CIA's list after Iraq declared them to the United Nations, and three sites were duplicate entries, the official told Reuters.
The CIA did not know the precise locations of several other sites and efforts were being made to develop more data on them, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Levin said if the public had known that not all WMD site information had been shared with U.N. weapons inspectors it might have reinforced sentiment that U.N. inspections should be completed before going to war.
"I can only speculate as to Director Tenet's motive," said Levin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of the intelligence committee.
"In other words, honest answers by Director Tenet might have undermined the false sense of urgency for proceeding to war and could have contributed to delay, neither of which fit the administration's policy goals," Levin said.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq has become a key issue in this year's presidential election campaign, with Democrats suggesting the Republican White House exaggerated the threat to build its case for war.
"We provided the best information that we had and the notion that we held back information that would have been useful is simply wrong," the U.S. intelligence official said.
"The U.S. certainly did not hold back timely actionable intelligence information from the (U.N.) inspectors," he said.
[Seen at CEIP. This is an excellent article.]
Officials: U.S. still paying millions to group that provided false Iraqi intelligence
Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau -- February 21, 2004
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
WASHINGTON - The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence programs are classified.
The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into pre-war intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. A probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee is now examining the INC's role.
The decision not to shut off funding for the INC's information gathering effort could become another liability for Bush as the presidential campaign heats up and, furthermore suggests that some within the administration are intent on securing a key role for Chalabi in Iraq's political future.
Chalabi, who built close ties to officials in Vice President Cheney's office and among top Pentagon officials, is on the Iraqi Governing Council, a body of 25 Iraqis installed by the United States to help administer the country following the ouster of Saddam Hussein last April.
The former businessman, who lobbied for years for a U.S.-backed military effort to topple Saddam, is publicly committed to making peace with Israel and providing bases in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East for use by U.S. forces fighting the war on terrorism.
The INC's Information Collection Program started in 2001 and was "designed to collect, analyze and disseminate information" from inside Iraq, according to a letter the group sent in June 2002 to the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Some of the INC's information alleged that Saddam was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program, which was destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War, and was stockpiling banned chemical and biological weapons, according to the letter.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Knight Ridder, said the information went directly to "U.S. government recipients" who included William Luti, a senior official in Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's office, and John Hannah, a top national security aide to Cheney.
The letter appeared to contradict denials made last year by top Pentagon officials that they were receiving intelligence on Iraq that bypassed established channels and vetting procedures.
The INC also supplied information from its collection program to leading news organizations in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, according to the letter to the Senate committee staff.
The State Department and the CIA, which soured on Chalabi in the 1990s, viewed the INC's information as highly unreliable because it was coming from a source with a strong self-interest in convincing the United States to topple Saddam.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has concluded since the invasion that defectors turned over by the INC provided little worthwhile information, and that at least one of them, the source of an allegation that Saddam had mobile biological warfare laboratories, was a fabricator. A defense official said the INC did provide some valuable material on Saddam's military and security apparatus.
Even so, dubious INC-supplied information found its way into the Bush administration's arguments for war, which included charges that Saddam was concealing illicit arms stockpiles and was supporting al-Qaida.
No illicit weapons have yet been found, and senior U.S. officials say there is no compelling evidence that Saddam cooperated with al-Qaida to attack Americans.
The Information Collection Program is now overseen by the DIA, the Pentagon's main intelligence arm, which took over when the State Department decided to give it up in late 2002.
The defense official defended the current support of the INC effort, saying that it has been of some help to the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, a team that is trying to determine what happened to Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
INC-supplied informants also have identified insurgents who have been waging a guerrilla war that has claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. troops and hundreds of Iraqis, he said.
"To call all of it (INC intelligence) useless is too negative," said the defense official, who described the Information Collection Program as a "massive" undertaking.
"You never take anything at face value," he continued. "When the INC gives information, we absolutely pursue it. You never know what that golden nugget is going to be."
But a senior administration official questioned whether the United States should still be funding the program.
"A huge amount of what was collected hasn't panned out," he said. "Some of it has turned out to have been either wrong or fabricated."
The senior administration official also sought to justify the initial decision to support the program.
Prior to the invasion, U.S. intelligence agencies had no better human sources in Iraq, and had no choice but to rely on the INC, minority Kurdish guerrilla groups and other sources who claimed to have knowledge of Saddam's illegal arms programs, ties to terrorist groups and his military forces, he said.
"The evidence now suggests that at some points along the way, we may have been duped by people who wanted to encourage military action for their own reasons," he conceded.
Chalabi apparently is less concerned about the past
"We are heroes in error," Chalabi was quoted as saying recently in Baghdad by The Daily Telegraph of London. "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
In a related development, U.S. officials said that on top of the Pentagon funds, Chalabi's organization asked the State Department in August for $5 million in unspent financing that was approved by Congress before the war.
The $5 million has not been released, they said.
The request for the money follows the awarding to the INC of $3.1 million in April 2003 following the fall of Baghdad, according to a State Department statement.
State Department lawyers questioned the decision to turn over the $3.1 million, said a State Department official. But senior aides, anticipating an outcry from Chalabi's supporters in the administration and in Congress, opted to release the money, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime
The Telegraph -- 19 February 2004
By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Anton La Guardia
An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.
Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Ahmad Chalabi: 'we've been entirely successful'
Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.
"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
His comments are likely to inflame the debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the quality of pre-war intelligence, and the spin put on it by President George W Bush and Tony Blair as they argued for military action.
US officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.
US officials at first found the information credible and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC".
He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable.
But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam.
America claimed to have found two mobile laboratories, but the lorries in fact held equipment to make hydrogen for weather balloons.
Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was "shaky".
"What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture," a senior official in Baghdad said. "But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives."
Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, but his star in Washington has waned.
Iraqis blamed for WMD claims
Aljazeera -- 18 February 2004
The US is blaming ex-Iraqi defectors and opponents of Saddam Hussein for false WMD information.
A major in the Iraqi intelligence service, who was a source for a pre-war US intelligence claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs, was introduced to the Defense Intelligence Agency by the Iraqi National Congress, US officials said on Tuesday.
'NY Times' Fails to Acknowledge Its Role in WMD Hype
The paper of record blames intelligence and administration, but any indictment of the national press is missing.
Editor and Publisher -- February 18, 2004
By William E. Jackson Jr.
The New York Times offered a sharp editorial Tuesday critiquing the indisputable role of the White House in distorting the intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and in stampeding Congressional and public opinion by spinning worst-case scenarios -- "inflating them drastically" -- to justify an immediate invasion last March to repel an alleged imminent threat to the United States. Indeed, the logical implication of the editorial might well have been to charge senior officials -- in particular the vice president -- with an impeachable offense.
However, strangely missing from the paper of record was any indictment of the national press, starting with the Times, for its obvious role in gravely misleading the institutions of government and the public when hyping the WMD threat.
[Nice analysis with linkage by Josh Marshall.]
Back to the tangled web files ...
Talking Points Memo -- February 18, 2004
Knocked on his heels by increasing evidence that he willfully deceived the American public, President Bush is off to a new strategy of spreading around the blame. Let's call it the anti-buck gambit. Don't pass
the buck. Just get an M-80, light it, put it over in the corner with the buck on top of it. Then no more buck, no more problem.
In any case, back to our story. The new line is, well, okay maybe we were wrong. But everyone else was wrong too. So who's gonna cast the first stone.
Pre-war advice was no new WMDs
The Australian via NEWS.com.au -- 18 February 2004
By Cameron Stewart
AUSTRALIA'S spy agencies told the Government before the Iraq war there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was building new chemical and biological weapons.
But Australian intelligence agencies did conclude - wrongly - that Saddam's regime harboured a modest stockpile of useable illicit weapons left over from the 1990-91 Gulf War.
The Government used this key assessment as the basis for war, arguing that Iraq's possession of these WMDs posed a "real and unacceptable threat".
However, the spy agencies also issued caveats on this assessment, saying Iraq's WMDs were likely to be limited in number and in poor condition
As pressure mounts for an independent inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, The Australian has confirmed key aspects of what the country's spy agencies told the Government in the weeks before war.
Australian spy agencies were significantly more cautious than their US and British counterparts, but still made the key mistake of overestimating Iraq's WMD capability.
Of the two Australian agencies providing intelligence assessments on Iraq, the Defence Intelligence Organisation was more sceptical about Iraq's capabilities than was the Prime Minister's assessment agency, the Office of National Assessments.
The Australian understands that both the DIO and ONA told the Government that:
In several instances, senior government ministers echoed public claims made by US President George W.Bush and his British counterpart Tony Blair about Iraq's WMDs before Australian agencies had a chance to assess the claims independently.
However, it is understood that Australian agencies did not caution against such comments, before or after they were made.
As one source said: "We may need to be more proactive next time."
A parliamentary joint committee examining the intelligence received on Iraq is due to release its findings on March 1.
It is expected to distribute blame across the spectrum, criticising Australian agencies for overestimating the WMD threat.
The Government is also expected to be criticised, but will not be accused of deliberately misrepresenting - or "sexing up" - the intelligence available to it.
Labor is calling for a larger independent inquiry on intelligence with the powers of a royal commission.
The Government is expected to call a broader inquiry into intelligence on Iraq shortly after the parliamentary report is tabled.
The push for a broader inquiry reflects concerns that the parliamentary committee was not given enough time or access to key intelligence to make conclusive findings.
The Australian understands that committee members were given access to the classified final ONA and DIO analysis on Iraq in the lead-up to war.
But they were not given access to the raw material upon which those assessments were based, for fear that sources might be compromised.
The committee was, however, able to compare and contrast the final ONA and DIO assessments with the public comments made by John Howard and his senior ministers in the lead-up to war.
Bush Says His View of Iraq Threat Was Widely Held
Reuters -- February 17, 2004
By Steve Holland
FORT POLK, La. - President Bush on Tuesday sought to blunt criticism he exaggerated prewar intelligence by saying his conclusion that Iraq had banned weapons was shared by the U.S. Congress and the U.N. Security Council.
Weapons 'capacity' of Iraq challenged
Boston Globe -- February 17, 2004
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON -- Prewar Iraq was highly unlikely to produce a device that could easily inflict mass casualties -- despite President Bush's current assertion that Saddam Hussein had the "capacity" to make a weapon of mass destruction, former weapons inspectors and former national security officials say.
Bush's assertion about Iraq's capabilities, which he made repeatedly during his interview last week on the NBC television program "Meet the Press," is a central prong of his administration's defense that the war was justified despite the failure to find stockpiles of unconventional weapons. It is a theme to which Bush is likely to return often in this election year. And it marks Bush's first characterization of the Iraq threat since the testimony of his former chief weapons inspector, David Kay.
"David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons," Bush said. "Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons."
But Kay did not describe Iraq's production capacity so clearly in either his interim public report last fall or in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 28. In an interview last week, he told the Globe that although Iraq had pesticide equipment that could be switched to produce fine-grain anthrax in a lab, it would have remained a challenge to deliver it in a way that would inflict mass casualties.
"I think it's fair to say they had the capacity [to switch over to anthrax production], but you're always going to get into the issue of not just producing an agent, but in a usable way," Kay said. "The real trick is delivery in a way that gets to you in a way that is inhaled -- aerosolized. That is much more difficult."
Moreover, although Hussein employed scientists who had once been working on military programs, Kay found that almost all of Iraq's infrastructure for nuclear and chemical weapons production was destroyed during the 1991 Gulf War and by United Nations inspectors.
He cited the pesticide lab equipment as among his most potentially worrisome findings, but Kay testified last month that he considered the possibility that an Iraqi scientist might sell the know-how on the black market "a bigger risk than the restart of [Hussein's] programs being successful."
Many specialists described even weapons-grade anthrax as more of a weapon of mass "disruption" because it is difficult to keep it in the air and it is not contagious, limiting its ability to inflict wide damage.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of the CIA's counterterrorism unit and a former director of intelligence for the National Security Council, noted that Bush has been accused of exaggerating intelligence before the war by taking shards of analysis that included conditions and hedged suspicions about what Iraq might be harboring -- then representing it as a certainty.
Cannistraro said Bush's description of Kay's postwar findings is also a questionably aggressive interpretation of the evidence.
"It's not as flatly wrong, but it is misleading," Cannistraro said. "To translate knowledge . . . to capability, that's inaccurate because knowledge can be, `Yeah, I know how to do this.' But having the capability of doing this requires the acquisition of a lot of component parts you don't have."
Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said Bush's assertion was based on portions of Kay's interim report in which the inspector said he had found evidence of "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
"One question is, `How close [to making a weapon] do you want them to be able to be?' " McCormack said.
"Clearly, the president and policy makers have to make judgments about threat and risk. And they had to make judgments about Saddam Hussein, who had shown that he would use weapons of mass destruction and that he was intent on building and acquiring them. This regime was sitting in the middle of one of the most unstable regions in the world."
Nonetheless, several specialists on weapons of mass destruction who have studied Kay's findings said Bush's insistence that Iraq had the "capacity" to make such a weapon -- not just the goal of eventually building one -- is accurate only in the loosest sense of the word.
"There are easily ways in which that would be a true statement and easily ways in which it could be a stretch," said Gerald Epstein, a former assistant director for national security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "It all depends on the squishy word `capacity.' Almost everything is dual-use technology -- there is biotech all over the world that is not much different than what you'd need to produce a weapon. But does that mean having everything ready to go for a military attack using that weapon? No, that's very different."
Asked to respond to Bush's characterization of his findings, Kay agreed that one could say Iraq had the "capacity," but he also described this as a "really mushy" question and added a series of significant qualifiers that Bush did not mention.
"Did they have the capacity to make a small number of chemicial or biological weapons using existing civilian infrastructure? Sure," Kay said. "Look, if some nut can make enough anthrax to terrorize us in very small amounts, Iraq could have made some. That's different than saying it could have made large amounts of weaponized anthrax that would have been useful in a militarized conflict."
Kay also reported that on at least two occasions, Hussein or his sons asked scientists how long it would take to produce mustard or VX nerve gas. The scientists answered that they could make mustard gas in several months but that VX would take several years. But Kay also reported that many of the dictator's scientists had been lying to him while collecting funding.
Kay said that because the order was never given, "we can't be sure" whether they could make a useful chemcial weapon.
He also said his investigation had looked into whether Iraq possessed the chemical ingredients needed to make mustard or VX gas, with varying results.
"They probably had adequate precursors for mustard gas," he said. "For VX, they faced certain problems, and they were working on how they could find solutions in their own indigenous production."
The pesticide laboratory Kay found was working with Bt, a substance that closely mirrored the properties of anthrax.
He said the Bt equipment could have been converted into producing fine-grain anthrax powder -- if Iraqi scientists were able to find a virulent strain to seed a batch.
But even if the Bt equipment were retrofitted to mill anthrax spores, analysts said, it would have been extremely difficult to deliver the agent in a way that would yield mass casualties rather than several deaths -- such as the anthrax mailing attacks in 2001 that killed five people.
And Kay said delivery problems are multiplied for chemical weapons because a much greater volume is needed.
Before the war, the Bush administration said Iraq was working on unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with sprayers that could have been part of an airborne delivery system. But Kay's investigation found that the vehicles were designed for surveillance only.
Kay's report conceded Iraq had restarted a longer-range missile program, and in the interview he noted that Iraq's history of having produced unconventional weapons in the past would have made it easier to make them again.
But Jonathan Tucker, a former Iraq inspector for the UN, said an enormous distance remains between that evidence and the implication that Hussein would have been able to produce new weapons of mass destruction.
"It would be inaccurate to say they had a rapid breakout capability," he said.
"It would be accurate to say they were continuing some research and development in some areas related to WMD with the long-range intention of having the capacity to rebuild their programs when sanctions were lifted.
"With chemical and nuclear, it would take them years to rebuild production capacity. In biological, they had the production infrastructure because of dual-use technology, but they didn't necessarily have the capacity for weaponization."
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
Iraq: Prewar Intelligence Said Weapons Of Mass Destruction Would Be Hard To Find
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Truth News -- February 17, 2004
CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11 Said Iraq Posed No Threat To U.S., Containment Was Working
Common Dreams -- February 17, 2004
Govt prepares for new WMD probe
The Age -- 17 February 2004
[Excerpt.]
The federal government appeared to prepare the ground for a new inquiry into the pre-war intelligence it received about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the government would consider a new inquiry if it is recommended in a parliamentary committee report to be published on March 1.
It is an open secret, following a series of leaks, that the committee will recommend another inquiry.
The Blame Game
Bush and the MIA WMDs
The Nation -- February 12, 2004
Talking Points – Iraq's WMD
US Department of Defense via Josh Marshall -- Feb. 12, 2004
PM resists WMD probe pressure
ABC News Online (Australia) -- 12 February 2004
[Excerpt]
The Prime Minister says he still wants to wait until a parliamentary committee reports on pre-war intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons program before deciding if he will set up an independent inquiry into the matter.
The Federal Opposition has called on Prime Minister John Howard to reveal if the Government has already made its decision.
Q & A with Congresswoman Jane Harman
Center for American Progress -- February 11, 2004
[Tom Tomorrow had some comments about this story.]
Rumsfeld 'unaware' of WMD claim
BBC News -- 11 February 2004
The 45-minute claim was publicised in the run-up to war
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he cannot remember hearing the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.