Iraq News

Bush's Statements on WMD Went Beyond Intelligence Analyst's Views (Wash Post June 7)

"...The president said in the Rose Garden on Sept. 26 that 'the Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons. The Iraqi regime is building the facilities necessary to make more biological and chemical weapons.'

"But a Defense Intelligence Agency report on chemical weapons, widely distributed to administration policymakers around the time of the president's speech, stated there was 'no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has or will establish its chemical agent production facilities.'

"The disparities between the conviction with which administration officials portrayed the threat posed by Iraq in their public statements and documents, and the more qualified reporting on the issue by intelligence agencies in classified reports, are at the heart of a burgeoning controversy in Congress and within the intelligence community over the U.S. rationale for going to war. The failure of the United States to uncover any proscribed weapons eight weeks after the end of the war is fueling sentiment among some Democrats on Capitol Hill and some intelligence analysts that the administration may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq."

"Cheney kicked off the administration's campaign to win congressional and U.N. support for military action in a speech on Aug. 26 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville. 'Simply stated," Cheney said, "there's no doubt that [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.'"

"...On Sept. 26, as the campaign to win congressional and U.N. Security Council approval for military action intensified, the president told congressional leaders Iraq 'possesses' such weapons. On the same day, Rumsfeld told reporters that Iraq has 'active development programs for those weapons, and has weaponized chemical and biological weapons.'"

"On Oct. 1, the CIA released a 'white paper' on Iraq's weapons programs derived from a broader, classified National Intelligence Estimate that had been sent to the White House and shared with members of Congress in briefings.

"Among the 'Key Judgments' in the first two pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that were meant to summarize the details that followed were statements in the white paper that 'Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons,' and 'Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX.'

"However, the more detailed backup material later in the document did not support those assessments."

Defense Intelligence Agency Report Contradicts WMD Claims of Defense Officials (Reuters June 6)

"As the Bush administration was pushing last fall for a war against Iraq because of alleged weapons of mass destruction, a defense department report said it did not have enough 'reliable information' Iraq was amassing these weapons, a defense official said on Friday.
"News of the classified September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency has added to claims the White House and Pentagon slanted U.S. intelligence on Baghdad's alleged weapons program to justify the war against Iraq."

LA Times Reports Marine Criticism of, & CIA Defense of, Intelligence on Iraqi WMD (LA Times May 31)

"The top Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence was 'simply wrong' in its assessment that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war, but he stopped short of saying there was an overall intelligence failure.

"Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, also said he had fully expected U.S. forces to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction after the war ended.

"'It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons,' Conway said from Baghdad in a teleconference call with reporters in Washington."

"Amid the mounting criticism, CIA Director George J. Tenet took the unusual step of issuing a statement Friday denying that the agency's assessments on Iraq were politicized."

"'Our role is to call it like we see it — to tell policymakers what we know, what we don't know, what we think, and what we base it on,' Tenet said. 'That is exactly what was done and continues to be done on intelligence issues related to Iraq.'"

"The [Central Intelligence] agency is also coming under some criticism from former analysts. A group of retirees, calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, recently sent a letter to the White House calling the assessments on Iraq an 'intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions.' The letter was first reported in Friday's New York Times."

US Expands Chemical-Biological Weapons Hunt in Iraq (Reuters May 30)

"The United States on Friday announced a major expansion of so-far fruitless efforts to find chemical and biological arms in Iraq, forming a team of 1,400 U.S., British and Australian experts to take up the hunt.

"The Pentagon named Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton to head the new Iraq Survey Group, which will try to find alleged arms that Washington cited as its main justification for the invasion of Iraq in March that toppled President Saddam Hussein."

"While the new group will be staffed by up to 1,400 people from the United States, Britain and Australia, it will increase the number of searchers in Iraq to about 300 from the current 200, Dayton said. Others will be involved in tasks ranging from analyzing documents to questioning people who may have knowledge of such weapons."

Top Marine Says US Intel Wrong on Chemical Attack (Reuters May 30)

"U.S. intelligence was 'simply wrong' in leading military commanders to believe their troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the Iraq war, the top U.S. Marine general there said on Friday.

"But Lt. Gen. James Conway said in a teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon that it was too early to say whether the United States also was wrong in charging that Iraq had chemical and biological arms when the invasion began 2-1/2 months ago."

US Says It May Never Find Iraqi WMD (Wash Post May 29)

"... In speeches and comments in recent weeks, senior administration officials have begun to lower expectations that weapons will be found anytime soon, if at all, and suggested they may have been destroyed, buried or spirited out of the country."

"In pressing for international approval of war, President Bush and his top aides said that Iraq possessed weapons that posed an immediate threat to its neighbors and to U.S. territory, and that U.N. inspectors were unlikely to find them in time. Since the Iraqi government collapsed April 9, U.S. military teams have been unsuccessful in finding any proscribed weapons. The teams are being replaced by a much larger weapons survey group that has yet to arrive in Iraq."

"Beginning with Vice President Cheney last August, administration officials delivered a series of speeches expressing absolute certainty the Iraqi weapons existed. 'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,' Cheney said in an Aug. 26 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars."

"'I think there are a whole lot of other questions about WMD which are very, very unclear,' Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'They may have overestimated.'"

New York Times Feud over Bad WMD Info from Chalabi (Wash Post May 25)

"An internal e-mail by Judith Miller, the paper's top reporter on bioterrorism, acknowledges that her main source for such articles has been Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial exile leader who is close to top Pentagon officials. Could Chalabi have been using the Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction?"

"According to the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was a key source of information about weapons for the Pentagon's own intelligence unit -- information sometimes disputed by the CIA. Chalabi may have been feeding the Times, and other news organizations, the same disputed information."

Barrels of Nuclear Material Missing in Iraq (Reuters May 21)

Belgian Fringe Politician-Lawyer Sues Gen. Franks for War Crimes in Iraq (Reuters May 14)

NYT Op-ed Says Main Reason for Iraq War Was To Help Israel in Israel-Palestine Conflict (NYT May 13)

New Type of WMD Search Team Going to Iraq (Reuters May 12)

US WMD Teams, Unable to Find Anything, Plan to Leave Iraq (Wash Post May 11)

US Says It Will Allow UN Inspectors Back in Iraq, but Not When (Reuters May 7)

US Obtains Truck That May Have Been WMD Weapons Lab (Retuers May 6)

UN Asks US to Allow Inventory of Nuclear Material in Light of Press Report of Looting (Retuers May 5)

Radioactive Material Looted and Scattered around Iraqi Nuclear Site (NYT May 4)

Iraqi Nuclear Site Has Been Looted Because Unprotected by US (Wash Post May 4)

Iraqi Scientists Stick to Story that Iraq Has No WMD (AP May 3)

Bush Says He Is Convinced that US Will Find WMD in Iraq (Reuters May 3)