OIL, POWER AND EMPIRE
Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda
Larry Everest
Common Courage Press
Monroe, Maine
Copyright © 2004 by Larry Everest.
All rights reserved.
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Appendix
“A Bodyguard of Lies”
Dissecting U.S. Pretexts for War
Of course, this conjures up Winston Churchill’s famous phrase when he said—don’t quote me on this, okay? I don’t want to be quoted on this, so don’t quote me. He said ‘sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.’
—Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense Briefing, September 25, 2001 1
“To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war—a global show of American power and democracy.
Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABC News the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam’s weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.
“We were not lying,” said one official. “but it was just a matter of emphasis.”
—ABC News, April 25, 2003 2
In fact, they were lying. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. government relentlessly created pretexts to wage war against Iraq. Charges were featured daily on the front pages of newspapers and as lead stories on TV. As the truth leaked out before the war, it was buried, downplayed, or barely reported. No wonder a USA Today poll reported that over 50 percent of Americans believed there was a direct link between the Sept. 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein,3 even though there was no evidence of such a connection.
The main pretexts that the U.S. used to argue for war on Iraq were that:
1. Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions;
2. with such weapons, Iraq posed a significant threat to the U.S. and neighboring countries; and
3. Iraq was linked to alleged terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda.
Yet, as of this writing, no “weapons of mass destruction” have been found in Iraq, more than half a year after the U.S. invasion, and it seems very unlikely that the U.S. will ever find anything resembling the quantities alleged to justify the invasion. In addition, no credible link had been established between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the Ansar al-Islam group, September 11th, or any attack against the U.S. in at least ten years. What emerges is a portrait of a big power willing to use any fig leaf, no matter how flimsy, to cover its naked imperialist motives for waging war on Iraq.
In fact, by the end of the summer 2003, in the face of the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction and some exposure of the “intelligence” relied upon by the White House, the Bush administration began to revise its reasons for invading Iraq, downplaying the WMD pretext. Rather than charge that Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction, the administration began to claim only that Iraq had a WMD “program,” that the invasion was intended to “liberate” the people of Iraq, and that it was part of an overall effort to transform the Middle East. The Washington Post noted, “As the search for weapons in Iraq continues without success, the Bush administration has moved to emphasize a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein: using Iraq as the ‘linchpin’ to transform the Middle East and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States. President Bush, who has stopped talking about Iraq’s weapons, said…that ‘the rise of a free and peaceful Iraq is critical to the stability of the Middle East, and a stable Middle East is critical to the security of the American people.’”4# Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, after a trip to Iraq, said flat out, “I’m not concerned about weapons of mass destruction…. I’m concerned about getting Iraq on its feet. I didn’t come [to Iraq] on a search for weapons of mass destruction.”#5
The following discussion examines some of the charges that were raised to justify the attack on Iraq. It also examines government statements during and after the war related to weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s alleged links to terrorism.
ALLEGED IRAQI LINKS TO AL QAEDA, ANSAR AL-ISLAM, AND TERRORISM
Alleged Iraqi Links to al Qaeda
Assertion:
The New York Times, September 27, 2002:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that American intelligence had “bulletproof” evidence of links between Al Qaeda and the government of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that recently declassified intelligence reports about suspected ties between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, including the presence of senior members of Al Qaeda in Baghdad in “recent periods,” were “factual” and “exactly accurate.”#6
The Facts:
• No evidence has emerged of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks or of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
• Shortly after the September 11th attacks, even the Wall Street Journal noted that “few U.S. officials believe that any real alliance between Iraq and Al-Qaeda ever emerged... The two groups share few aims and have very different motivations...”7
• According to the New York Times, intelligence officials from Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia do not believe there is any serious Hussein-bin Laden connection.8
• Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter says with regard to the alleged Iraq/al Qaeda link: “This one is patently absurd. He has spent the last thirty years declaring war against Islamic fundamentalism, crushing it…. Osama bin Laden has a history of hating Saddam Hussein.”9# In fact, Ritter thinks a more likely scenario is that if al Qaeda obtained a nuclear device the group would use it against Saddam Hussein.
• The State Department’s own report on terrorism, released in April 2001, stated that Iraq had not attempted an anti-Western attack since 1993.#10
• “At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration’s insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s network. “We’ve been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don’t think it’s there,” a government official said…. Mr. Bush asserted in his State of the Union address this week that Iraq was protecting and aiding Qaeda operatives, but American intelligence and law enforcement officials said the evidence was fragmentary and inconclusive… “It’s more than just skepticism,” said one official, describing the feelings of some analysts in the intelligence agencies. “I think there is also a sense of disappointment with the community’s leadership that they are not standing up for them at a time when the intelligence is obviously being politicized.”11
• British intelligence also said there was no Iraq al Qaeda link. As reported by the BBC: “There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report seen by BBC News. The classified document, written by defense intelligence staff 3 weeks ago, says there has been contact between the 2 in the past… The defense intelligence staff document, seen by BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan, is classified Top Secret and was sent to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior members of the government. It says al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden views Iraq’s ruling Ba’ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an ‘apostate regime’.”#12
• Greg Thielman, the director of the strategic, proliferation, and military affairs division at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research until September 2002, says “Based on the terrorism experts I met with during my period of government, I never heard anyone make the claim that there was a significant tie between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.” He added, “The Bush administration…was ‘misleading the public in implying there was a close connection.’”#13
• On August 1, 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, was asked on The Laura Ingraham Show when he started to think that Iraq had something to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks. In what was believed to be the first such admission by the Bush administration by that date, Wolfowitz conceded that “I’m not sure even now that perhaps Iraq had something to do with it.”#14
• Former U.S. intelligence officials also doubt the alleged connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A Pentagon unit, the Office of Special Plans, had been formed to try to find links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but was disbanded late in 2002. “About a dozen former CIA intelligence officials have been quoted as saying that the Office of Special Plans cherry-picked intelligence, much of which was gathered by unreliable Iraqi defectors, to make a stronger case for war and delivered directly to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice without first being vetted by the CIA.”#15
The Alleged Meeting in Prague Between Iraqi Intelligence and Mohammed Atta
Assertion:
Shortly after the September 11 attack, former CIA chief James Woolsey was dispatched to London “on a mission,” according to the New York Times, “to gather evidence linking Mr. Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks.”16 Woolsey began raising various charges against Iraq. One of the charges, first floated by Woolsey in London, was a purported meeting in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in April 2001.
CNN report one month after Sept. 11: “U.S. officials revealed Thursday that Mohammed Atta—one of the suspected suicide hijackers—had two meetings, not one, with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague, Czech Republic.
“The first meeting was in June 2000 and the second one was in April 2001, sources said. In both cases Atta met in Prague with Iraqi intelligence officers operating under cover as diplomats.
“Officials declined to identify the Iraqis, except to say Newsweek magazine was incorrect in reporting that one of them was Farouk Hijazi, Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey.”#17
The Facts:
• The reports of a meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence have been completely discredited.
• Nearly a year after this story was planted in the media, it completely fell apart. On October 21, 2002, the New York Times reported “The Czech President, Vaclav Havel, has quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague just months before the attacks on New York and Washington, according to Czech officials.” “Today, Czech officials say they have no evidence that Mr. Atta was even in the country in April in 2001. In fact, American records indicate he was in Virginia Beach, Va. in early April.” The article adds that “Over the years, Czech security officials also say that they have never seen any other evidence that Iraqi intelligence officers stationed in Prague were involved in terrorist activities.”18
The Alleged Iraqi Connection with Al-Zarqawi and with Ansar al-Islam
Assertions:
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN, February 5, 2003:
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch—imagine a pinch of salt—less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein’s controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered Al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.19
On March 27, 2003 U.S. forces destroyed the camp in northern Iraq belonging to Ansar al-Islam. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said on March 30: “It’s from this site where people were trained and where poisons were developed that migrated into Europe.”20 #In London on March 31, 2003 two newspapers, the Mirror and the Sun reported that the American finds at the Ansar al-Islam site offered proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.#21
The Facts:
• Powell misled the public about a link between al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. In February 2003, the Washington Post reported: “Senior administration officials said that, although Zarqawi has ties to bin Laden’s group, he is not under al Qaeda control or direction. ‘They have common goals,’ one intelligence analyst said, ‘but he [Zarqawi] is outside bin Laden’s circle. He is not sworn al Qaeda.’”#22
• New York Times editorial (February 14, 2003): “Mr. Zarqawi, a Palestinian, fought along side Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. But Washington has yet to establish publicly that he is an important figure in Al Qaeda or maintains links with Mr. bin Laden.”23
• There is no hard evidence of any link between Zarqawi and Iraq. The Washington Post reported that “U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that the terrorist, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was no longer in Iraq and that there was no hard evidence Hussein’s government knew he was there or had contact with him.” In any case, this person was removed from Iraq by authorities within days of being told he was there.#24
• Chicago Tribune (February 11, 2003): “A former Al Qaeda recruit told German authorities last year that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, portrayed by the Bush administration as the critical link between Osama bin Laden’s group and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was actually opposed to Al Qaeda. In voluminous statements given to German federal police after his April arrest, Shadi Abdallah, a 26-year-old Jordanian who claims to have served briefly as a bin Laden bodyguard, maintained that Zarqawi was allied instead with Iraq’s enemy, the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran.”#25
• Senior U.S. officials told the Washington Post that although the Iraqi government is aware of the [Zarqawi] group’s activity, it does not operate, control or sponsor it.#26
• Al-Zarqawi had close ties with and support from members of the Qatari royal family. Washington officials acknowledge that al-Zarqawi had support from a member of the Qatari Royal family, Abdul Karim al-Thani, who hosted him in Qatar. However, Washington officials do not claim that, as with Iraq, these facts show that the Qatari court is also connected to al Qaeda—particularly since the United States depends on Qatar to provide staging support for the U.S. Central Command.#27
• The leader of Ansar al-Islam said Saddam Hussein is his enemy. Mullah Krekar told the Guardian newspaper of London that he has no links with Iraqi leaders. “I am against Saddam Hussein. I want (Iraq) to change into an Islamic regime.”28
• Powell’s claim that said Baghdad had an “agent” in “the most senior levels” of Ansar, implying a special relationship with the Hussein government, was not true. The Washington Post: “A senior government official said U.S. intelligence has no direct knowledge of what the “agent” does. “He may be spying on the Ansar group. He may be a liaison with Baghdad,” the official said. “Saddam Hussein likes to keep an eye on such groups.”#29
• The head of Ansar threatened to produce evidence of extensive contacts—with Washington. Mullah Krekar : “I had a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them…but we refused to do so,” he said.30
• A description of the Ansar “base” by reporters two days after Powell’s speech was of a site that was clearly no threat to the U.S. or neighboring countries, and showed no evidence of “poison” production. “A remote site in the mountains of northern Iraq identified by U.S. officials as a crude laboratory where al-Qaeda terrorists concoct poisons is a muddy, decrepit, refuse-strewn compound devoid of any signs of deadly substances. Ansar al Islam, a Kurdish militant group accused by U.S. and Kurdish officials of harboring al-Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan, on Saturday took foreign journalists on a tour of the site and denied it had a poison-making facility.”
“There were no sign of chemicals, mixing vessels, running water or other things associated with the production of deadly substances. The only sharp odor at the compound came from rotting food overflowing from a trash container. The site is in Sargat, an impoverished hamlet of scattered hovels high up steep slopes that crest in snow-crowned peaks of the Iranian border.”
“The satellite photograph presented to the Security Council gave the compound’s location as Khurmal, a town about 4 miles away that is not controlled by Ansar. Khurmal is the headquarters of a more moderate Kurdish Islamic faction, Komal Islami. While some of Komal fighters are said to sympathize with Ansar, Komal’s leaders cooperate with Ansar’s rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.”
“The cinderblock and concrete dwellings were empty except for discarded shoes, sandals and clothing, old pots and pans, worn blankets, and broken cupboards. The grounds were littered with garbage. Inside the main building were a TV studio, computers and a digital scanner.”#31
• No chemical or biological weapons or evidence linking the camp with Baghdad were found in the Ansar camp. A Los Angeles Times reporter, who visited the camp after it had been destroyed during the 2003 war, said that some manuals were found including some that described how to make various chemical weapons. The Times reported that some conventional weapons were found in the camp but no chemical or biological weapons. The Times also reported that the documents and statements by now-imprisoned Ansar guerrillas produced no evidence of connections to Baghdad. According to the Times, “the group was a dedicated but fledgling Al-Qaeda surrogate lacking the capability to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders.”#32
Iraq and the Anthrax Letters
Assertion:
On October 15, 2001 Senator Tom Daschle announced that his office had received a letter laced with “weapons grade” anthrax. On October 18, the Wall Street Journal featured three articles blaming Iraq: a front-page article accused Iraq of being “at the top of [the] suspect list”; the lead editorial said that “by far the likeliest supplier [of the anthrax in the letter to Daschle] is Saddam Hussein”; and an opinion piece by CIA chief James Woolsey, titled “The Iraq Connection,” which claimed, “There are substantial and growing indications that a state may, behind the scene, be involved in the attacks.”33
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen screamed, “Saddam and his bloody bugs have to go.”#34
Two days later, two top senators, McCain and Lieberman, advocated attacking Iraq.
The Facts:
• The anthrax mailed to Senator Daschle was most likely “Made in the USA.” When the anthrax spores in the Daschle letter and other samples were analyzed, they turned out to be the “Ames” strain—the strain of anthrax bacteria developed in the U.S., which the U.S. military tried to “weaponize” in the 1960s. It is not the vollum strain that Iraq had been working with (after buying it from American Type Culture Collection, a Maryland company which sells biological material such as anthrax worldwide).
• Researchers also discovered silica in the anthrax in the Daschle letter. Silica is the agent that U.S. weapons makers mixed with anthrax so that it could more easily disperse through the air. Iraq reportedly used bentonite, which was not found.35
• A U.S. government official admitted that the “evidence at hand—involving not just the coatings, but also genetic analysis of the bacteria and other intelligence—suggested that it was unlikely that the spores were originally produced in the former Soviet Union or Iraq.”36
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Nuclear Weapons
Iraq Six Months Away from Developing a Nuclear Weapon
Assertion:
I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access, a report came out of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.”37
—George W. Bush, September 7, 2002
The Facts:
• The IAEA denied ever issuing such a report.38 The IAEA did issue a report in 1998, around the time weapons inspectors were denied access to Iraq for the final time, but the report made no such assertion. It declared: “...based on all credible information to date...the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.”39
• In his first major report to Congress on the status of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction, in October 2003, David Kay, the Bush administration’s chief inspector for the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), had to concede “that Iraq’s nuclear program was in only ‘the very most rudimentary state.’”40 The report (Kay Report) also stated “...to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.”41
Satellite Evidence that Iraq Is Rebuilding Nuclear Facilities
Assertion:
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.… Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of his nuclear program in the past.42
—George W. Bush, October 7, 2002
The Facts:
• Analysts believe that the facility Bush is referring to is Iraq’s former nuclear complex at Tuwaitha. However, the IAEA, which repeatedly inspected the site—presumably with a greater degree of accuracy than a satellite photo—said that Tuwaitha “now conducts civilian research in the non-nuclear field.”43
• In February 2003, prior to the invasion, “UN sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another. Example: satellite photographs purporting to show new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. When the UN went in to the new buildings they found ‘nothing.’” “So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they’ve been getting as ‘garbage after garbage after garbage.’ In fact, [reporter Mark] Phillips says the source used another cruder word.”44
The “High-Ranking” Nuclear Engineer
Assertion:
In 1998,
information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue.45
—George W. Bush, October 7, 2002
The Facts:
• Bush’s statement about the Iraqi nuclear defector, implying such information was current in 1998, was a reference to Khidhir Hamza. But Hamza, though he spoke publicly about his information in 1998, retired from Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991, fled to the Iraqi north in 1994 and left the country in 1995. Hamza had no knowledge of Iraq’s nuclear program after 1995, at the latest.46
Aluminum Tubes to Be Used to Enrich Uranium For a Nuclear Weapon
Assertion:
Powell at the UN: “Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed... These tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.”47
The Facts:
• While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the I.A.E.A.’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. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it.48
—Dr. Mohammed El Baradei in IAEA report, quoted in the New York Times, January 10, 2003
• A source close to the inspectors said the US military uses similar tubes for a rocket known as the Hydra 70.49
—Dan Stober, San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2003
• In February 2003, prior to the invasion, “UN sources have told CBS News that American tips have lead to one dead end after another. Example: Interviews with scientists about the aluminum tubes the U.S. says Iraq has imported for enriching uranium, but which the Iraqis say are for making rockets. Given the size and specifications of the tubes, the U.N. calls the ‘Iraqi alibi air tight.’”#50
Iraqi Uranium Purchase from Niger
Assertion:
As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has…sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear programme that could require it…51
—September 2002 “Blair Dossier”
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa…. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.52
—George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003
The Facts:
• UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix on the supposed purchase of uranium from Niger:
Consider the case of the production of contracts for a presumed Iraqi purchase of enriched uranium from Niger. This was a crude lie. All false. The information was provided to the international Atomic Energy Agency by the U.S. intelligence services…. When one sees the things that the United States tried to do to show that the Iraqis had nuclear arms, one does have many questions.53
• Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency: El Baradei charged that:
documents provided by unidentified states may have been faked to suggest that the African country of Niger sold uranium to Iraq between 1999 and 2001. He said inspectors concluded that the documents were “not authentic” after scrutinizing “the form, format, contents, and signatures…of the alleged procurement-related documentation.”54
• The CIA had expressed doubts about this claim to the White House months earlier than the State of the Union Address. “The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October [2002] voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, White House officials said yesterday.” “The acknowledgment of the memos, which were sent on the eve of a major presidential speech in Cincinnati about Iraq, comes four days after the White House said the CIA objected only to technical specifics of the Africa charge, not its general accuracy.”55
• Former diplomat Joseph Wilson had reported to the CIA nearly a year earlier, in February 2002, that the alleged Iraqi purchase was highly unlikely. After spending eight days in Niger investigating this claim at the request of the CIA, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson “made an oral report” back to the Agency that the “Iraqi uranium purchase was ‘highly unlikely.’”#56 The report was quietly forgotten until reported in the Washington Post on June 12, 2003, setting off a firestorm of controversy about the validity of the claim.
• Wilson then became the object of a White House smear campaign. “Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign” telling “NBC News the White House deliberately leaked his wife’s identity as a covert CIA operative, damaging her career and compromising past missions…”#57
• Others had also warned the Administration that the claim didn’t check out. “…Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Fitzpatrick reported it was false in February 2002. So did four-star Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford two months later.”#58
• The U.S. then warned Niger to stay out of the controversy. “America has warned the Niger government to keep out of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme from the impoverished West African state.” Mr. Hama Hamadou told the British newspaper The Telegraph that “…the Niger government had never had discussions with Iraq about uranium and called on Tony Blair to produce the ‘evidence’ he claims to have to confirm that Iraq sought uranium from Niger in the 1990s.”#59
• Officials repeated the same allegation both before and after the State of the Union speech. The allegation of the uranium purchase was made not just in the Bush State of the Union speech, but several times. “…[In] the days before and after the State of the Union address, the allegation was repeated by national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, and in at least two documents sent out by the White House.”#60
Cheney On the Peril of a Nuclear Iraq
Assertion:
The New York Times:
Vice President Dick Cheney today presented the administration’s most forceful and comprehensive rationale yet for attacking Iraq, warning that Saddam Hussein would “fairly soon” have nuclear weapons. “…What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons,” Mr. Cheney said. “The risks of inaction, he said, “are far greater than the risk of action.”61
The Facts:
•IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed El Baradei on Iraq’s Nuclear Program:
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.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum 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 aluminum tubes in question.
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.
After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. We intend to continue our inspection activities, making use of all the additional rights granted to us by resolution 1441 and all additional tools that might be available to us, including reconnaissance platforms and all relevant technologies. We also hope to continue to receive from States actionable information relevant to our mandate. I should note that, in the past three weeks, possibly as a result of ever-increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been forthcoming in its co-operation, particularly with regard to the conduct of private interviews and in making available evidence that could contribute to the resolution of matters of IAEA concern. I do hope that Iraq will continue to expand the scope and accelerate the pace of its cooperation.#62
Chemical and Biological Weapons
Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Program and Inventory
Assertion:
George Bush, January 28, 2003: “Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent…upward of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents…materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.”63
At the Geneva biological weapons conference the U.S. claimed, “Iraq has taken advantage of three years of no UN inspections to improve all phases of its offensive biological weapons program... The existence of Iraq’s program is beyond dispute.”#64
The Facts:
• The charges related to Iraq’s WMD inventory were largely based on Iraq’s inability to definitively “verify” the destruction of certain stocks to UN inspectors in the 1990s. As Scott Ritter has discussed in his book with William Rivers Pitt, War on Iraq, simply because UNSCOM did not verify that all the chemical weapons (CW) inventory had been destroyed did not mean Iraq still maintained that inventory. In addition, CW agents have a “shelf life” after which they are no longer useful. Ritter explained that, by 2003, virtually all of the CW agents that may have existed even as late as 1998 had likely degraded and were no longer useful.65
• Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2001 “told reporters during a trip to Egypt” that Saddam Hussein “‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.’”66
• The Pentagon’s own intelligence group said it had no reliable information on Iraqi chemical weapons. It wasn’t until June 2003, after the U.S. invasion, that the existence of a second intelligence report was revealed, a report that contradicted the earlier, highly publicized CIA Report on chemical weapons. In November 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) “issued a report stating that there was ‘no reliable information’ showing that Iraq was actually producing or stockpiling chemical weapons…” In fact, the DIA’s assessment in November “mirrors a September [2002] analysis that the agency made on the same subject.” The DIA report is titled “Iraq’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapon and Missile Program: Progress, Prospects, and Potential Vulnerabilities”. Specifically, the DIA report says, “No reliable information indicates whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or where the country has or will establish its chemical agent production facility.”67
• After the 2003 war had begun, no weapons were found at the top sites identified by U.S. intelligence. After searching more than 80 of the top 100 sites that U.S. intelligence had labeled as possible Iraqi hiding places for chemical and biological weapons, no stockpiles have been found and the search teams said they were setting aside their “intelligence” reports for the time being.68
• After the 2003 U.S. invasion, reports of discoveries of chemical or biological weapons in each case turned out to be false. For example:
• On April 7, 2003, at an Iraqi military camp near Karbala, U.S. troops discovered two dozen drums that allegedly tested positive for sarin and mustard gas.69 Later, the U.S. military determined the chemicals were ordinary pesticides.
• MSNBC/NBC News, reported on May 11, 2003 that military teams searching for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq found three trailers believed to be mobile biological weapons laboratories capable of producing deadly germs for weapons.”70# Later, the Defense Intelligence Agency determined that hydrogen for weather balloons was made in the trailers, not biological weapons. “Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say. The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28, 2003 by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.”#71
• On April 27, 2003, AP reported out of Baiji, Iraq: “U.S. troops found about a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near this northern Iraqi town, and initial tests indicated one of them contained a mixture of a nerve agent and mustard gas, an American officer said Sunday.” “A chemical team checked the drums, one of which tested positive for cyclosarin, a nerve agent, and a blister agent which could have been mustard gas,” a U.S. military officer said.72 However, the material in the drums turned out to be rocket fuel.73
• As of October 2003, no chemical or biological weapons had been found in Iraq. In October 2003, the Kay Report admitted that the ISG had “not yet found stocks of weapons.” The Kay Report also acknowledged that “information found to date suggests that Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced—if not entirely destroyed—during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.74
Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institution
Assertion:
A CIA Report, “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” released in October 2002, and which received extensive media coverage, states as evidence of Iraq’s biological weapons capabilities that “Iraq has the capabilities to convert quickly legitimate vaccine and biopesticide plants to biological warfare production and may have already done so.…The Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institution is an ideal cover location for biological weapons research, testing, production and storage.”75
The Facts:
• The U.S. routinely placed “holds” on Iraqi purchases of vaccines under the sanctions program, saying that Iraq could develop biological weapons with the live cultures in the vaccines. In an exposure of the sanctions program, Joy Gordon noted in Harpers that, “UNICEF and UN health agencies…objected strenuously. European biological weapons experts maintained that such a feat was in fact flatly impossible. At the same time, with massive epidemics ravaging the country, and skyrocketing child mortality, it was quite certain that preventing child vaccines from entering Iraq would result in large numbers of child and infant deaths.”76
• Another plant that the CIA report cites as a factory that could produce chemical weapons is the Fallujah II facility. This is a “dual use” facility that could produce these chemicals for civilian or military use. What the CIA report doesn’t say is that the plant produces chlorine that is desperately needed in Iraq for water treatment facilities that were decimated by the U.S. in the Persian Gulf War.#
al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility
Assertion:
The October 2002 CIA Report also asserted that in 2001 Iraq announced it was going to begin renovating the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility. The Report’s “Key Judgments,” i.e., the sound bites that hit the news, were that Iraq had largely rebuilt and was expanding its biological weapons facilities “under the cover of civilian production.”77
The Facts:
• In fact, the CIA Report admitted that UNSCOM could not prove the facility was connected to biological weapons work.
• As part of the renewed UN inspections that restarted in November 2002, the al-Dawrah facility was inspected by UN inspectors who had “raced up to the gates” of the facility. After looking around for four hours, the inspectors “concluded that the plant was no longer operational—not for the production of toxins, and not for animal vaccines either. Reporters who were allowed to wander around the plant after the inspectors left found the place largely in ruins,” according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.78
Satellite Evidence of Weapons at the Taji Facility
Assertion:
Let’s look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells. Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong. This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different bunkers. Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone, it’s been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.”#79
—Colin Powell at the UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• The New York Times reported:
Both sides agree that American satellites photographed what American analysts said were Iraqi clean-up crews operating at a suspected chemical weapons site they had identified within 48 hours after the information about the site was shared with Unmovic. But the diplomats say inspectors concluded that the site was an old ammunition storage area often frequented by Iraqi trucks, and that there was no reason to believe it was involved in weapons activities. “It was a wild goose chase,” one diplomat said.80
• Hans Blix, Briefing at the Security Council, February 14, 2003:
The presentation of intelligence information by the U.S. Secretary of State suggested that Iraq had prepared for inspections by cleaning up sites and removing evidence of proscribed weapons programmes. I would like to comment only on one case, which we are familiar with, namely, the trucks identified by analysts as being for chemical decontamination at a munitions depot. This was a declared site, and it was certainly one of the sites Iraq would have expected us to inspect. We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart. The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection. Our reservation on this point does not detract from our appreciation of the briefing.81
Mobile Biological Weapons Laboratories
Assertion:
Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eye witness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.82
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• Powell attributed his information on the mobile laboratories to Iraqi defectors. What Powell didn’t report is that the claims of these defectors, including one of a secret biological laboratory beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital in central Baghdad, had repeatedly been disproved by UN inspectors.#83
Mr. Blix took issue with what he said were Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.84
—The New York Times, January 31, 2003
• Raymond Zilinskas, a microbiologist and former UN weapons inspector, told the Washington Post that the 24-hour production cycle Powell reported was insufficient for creating significant amounts of pathogens such as anthrax:
“You normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation,” said Zilinskas, director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “The short processing time seems suspicious to me.”
Zilinskas and other experts said the drawing presented by Powell as an example of Iraq’s mobile labs did not deal with big problems such as how to dispose of large quantities of highly toxic waste. “This strikes me as a bit far-fetched,” Zilinskas told the Post.85
• The Kay Report of October 2003 stated “We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW [biological weapons] production effort.86
Scud Missiles
Assertion:
While inspectors destroyed most of the prohibited ballistic missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past decade, from sources inside Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers.87
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• No scud missiles were used during the war and none were found since.#88
• On day one of the war, March 20, 2003 military spokesmen for the U.S. and UK announce that “Scud-type” missiles have been fired into Kuwait. This was significant because Iraq was banned from having Scuds or other missiles of a similar range under UN resolutions. Three days later U.S. General Stanley McChrystal reports: “So far there have been no Scuds launched.”#89
• The Kay Report of October 2003 stated “...one high-level detainee has recently claimed that Iraq retained a small quantity of Scud-variant missiles until at least 2001, although he subsequently recanted these claims...”90
Sources of Information for Weapons of Mass Destruction
Powell’s Claims of Solid Evidence
Assertion:
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.91
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• Analysts believe that much of U.S. information on WMDs has come from Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) which received Pentagon money for intelligence gathering. “The INC saw the demand and provided what was needed,” an analyst told the Independent newspaper in the UK. “The implication is that they polluted the whole U.S. intelligence effort.”92
• Another human source that Powell cites are detainees being held in Guantanamo, who are being held in horrific conditions, denied access to attorneys or the media, and who are threatened with torture (if not actually being tortured).
Iraq’s Failure to Allow UN Unrestricted Access to Scientists
Assertion:
You know the basic facts. Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons as required by Resolution 1441.
The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, quote, “Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.
Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the inspectors of conducting espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating with UN inspectors was committing treason.93
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• Once Saddam Hussein was removed, according to U.S. logic, the scientists and others would feel free to reveal the secrets about Iraq’s suspected hidden arsenal. But few have come forward. And U.S. officials say that those in custody are sticking to their stories—that Iraq hadn’t had a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program in years.94
• In fact the scientists’ denials come despite the pressure that the U.S is putting on them. Rumsfeld announced that the US will pay a reward to anyone providing evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and he has threatened Iraqi scientists that if they don’t cooperate they would be taken to a detention facility for interrogation and ultimately could be charged with war crimes.#95
British Intelligence Documents
Assertion:
I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.96
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• It turns out that the British report plagiarized from two earlier sources. Britain’s intelligence document entitled “Iraq: It’s Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation” plagiarized from articles from the military magazine Jane’s Intelligence Review and from a school thesis by a post graduate student in California. The author of the articles from Jane’s said, “I don’t like to think that anything I wrote has been used as an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war.” The student, Ibrahim al-Marashi said, “this is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the government if it is up to these sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish with a lot of skepticism from now on.” Both of the authors said that their figures had been altered in the British document.#97
• The BBC reported that the British government exaggerated claims of Iraqi weapons, which then hounded the BBC to reveal its source. In late May/early June 2003, the BBC quoted an unnamed government official alleging the British government wanted the “Blair Dossier” “‘sexed up’ with a reference to Saddam Hussein’s ability to launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes.” The British government subsequently hounded the BBC about its source for the statement and demanded that the BBC confirm or deny that Dr. David Kelly was the source. Ten days later, Kelly was found dead, an apparent suicide.#98
Powell’s Audio Tapes
Assertion:
During his February 5, 2003 speech before the UN, Powell played what he said were intercepted conversations between Iraqi officers who were discussing ways to conceal prohibited materials from UN inspectors.
The Facts:
• None of the three recordings, if real, amounted to a “smoking gun.” If they were real, they could be incriminating in a certain context, but they could also have been taken out of a context in which they were entirely innocent.
• Or they could have been faked. New York’s Village Voice newspaper reported late last year how, during the 1990s, a Harvard graduate student celebrated for his convincing impersonation of Saddam Hussein was hired by the high-powered, US government-linked public relations firm, the Rendon Group, to make fake propaganda broadcasts of Saddam’s voice to Iraq.99
Iraq’s Disclosure Statement
Assertion:
My colleagues, operative paragraph four of U.N. Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall constitute—the facts speak for themselves—shall constitute a further material breach of its obligation.
We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test—to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they early on indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed to be an early test. They failed that test. By this standard, the standard of this operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable.100
—Colin Powell at UN, February 5, 2003
The Facts:
• The United States edited out more than 8,000 crucial pages of Iraq’s 11,800 page dossier on weapons before passing on a sanitized version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
• A UN source in New York said: “The question being asked is valid. What did the U.S. take out? And if weapons inspectors are supposed to be checking against the dossier’s content, how can any future claim be verified? In effect the US was saying trust us and there are many who will not.”
• Current and former UN diplomats are said to be “livid” at what some have called the “theft” of the Iraqi documents by the U.S. Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary general of the UN and the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq until 2000 said: “This is an outrageous attempt by the US to mislead.”#101
Weapons Inspections
Assertion:
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: “I don’t understand how anyone can say the inspections are working.”102
The Facts:
• IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei:
In the past three months they have conducted over 200 inspections at more than 140 locations, entering without prior notice into Iraqi industrial facilities, munitions factories, military establishments, private residences, and presidential palaces, following up on inspection leads provided by other States, confiscating nuclear related Iraqi documents for further scrutiny, interviewing scientists and engineers known to have played a key role in Iraq’s past nuclear weapons programme, lowering themselves by rope into abandoned underground reactor chambers, and—taking advantage of the “signature” of radioactive materials—conducting radiation surveys over thousands of kilometres of Iraqi roads and collecting samples of soil, air, water, and vegetation and particulate matter from key locations in Iraq for laboratory analysis.
In short, the nuclear inspectors in Iraq have been far from idle, and their efforts far from futile. The IAEA’s inspectors have systematically examined the contents and operations of all Iraqi buildings and facilities that were identified, through satellite surveillance, as having been modified or newly constructed since December 1998, when inspections were brought to a halt. They have determined the whereabouts and functionality of Iraq’s known “dual-use” equipment—that is, equipment that has legitimate industrial uses, such as precision machining, but that could also be used for the high-precision manufacture of components relevant to a nuclear weapons programme...
Nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq are making marked progress. To date, we have found no substantiated evidence of the revival in Iraq of a nuclear weapons programme—the most lethal of the weapons of mass destruction…. The IAEA should be able, in the near future, to provide the Security Council with credible assurance regarding the presence or absence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq.103
• Hans Blix, February 14, 2003:
The eight helicopters are fully operational. With the resolution of the problems raised by Iraq for the transportation of minders into the no-fly zones, our mobility in these zones has improved. We expect to increase utilization of the helicopters.
Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.
The inspections have taken place throughout Iraq at industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites. At all sites which had been inspected before 1998, re-baselining activities were performed. This included the identification of the function and contents of each building, new or old, at a site. It also included verification of previously tagged equipment, application of seals and tags, taking samples and discussions with the site personnel regarding past and present activities. At certain sites, ground-penetrating radar was used to look for underground structures or buried equipment.
Through the inspections conducted so far, we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq, as well as of its missile capability but, as before, we do not know every cave and corner. Inspections are effectively helping to bridge the gap in knowledge that arose due to the absence of inspections between December 1998 and November 2002.
More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened using our own analytical laboratory capabilities at the Baghdad Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have been consistent with Iraq’s declarations.”
The total number of staff in Iraq now exceeds 250 from 60 countries. This includes about 100 UNMOVIC inspectors, 15 IAEA inspectors, 50 aircrew, and 65 support staff.104
--------------------------------
NOTES
APPENDIX
“A Bodyguard Of Lies”
1 U.S. Department of Defense News Briefing, Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, September 25, 2001
2 John Cochran, “Reason for War?: White House Officials Say Privately the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed Everything,” ABC News, April 25, 2003
3 Romesh Ratnesar, “Iraq & al-Qaeda: Is There a Link?” CNN.com, August 26, 2002
4 Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, “U.S. Shifts Rhetoric on Its Goals in Iraq: New Emphasis: Middle East Stability,” Washington Post, August 1, 2003
5 Robert Burns, “Deputy Defense Secretary Says Weapons Issue is Now Secondary in Iraq,” Associated Press, July 21, 2003
6 Eric Schmitt, “Rumsfeld Says U.S. Has ‘Bulletproof’ Evidence of Iraq’s Links to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, September 27, 2002
7 Hugh Pope and Neil King, Jr., “U.S. Officials Discount Any Role by Iraq in Terrorist Attacks,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2001
8 Bonner, New York Times, October 11, 2001
9 William Rivers Pitt with Scott Ritter, War on Iraq: What the Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know (New York: Context Books, 2002), 49
10 Alan Simpson and Dr. Glen Rangwala, “Labour Against the War’s Counter Dossier,” September 17, 2002
11 James Risen and David Johnston, “Split at CIA & FBI on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, February 2, 2003
12 “Leaked Report Rejects Iraqi al Qaeda Link,” BBC, February 5, 2003
13 Peter S. Canellos and Bryan Bender, “Questions Grow Over Iraq Links to Qaeda,” Boston Globe, August 3, 2003
14 U.S. Department of Defense, “News Transcript: Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with The Laura Ingraham Show,” August 1, 2003
15 Leopold, Antiwar.com, August 7, 2003. See also Matt Kelley, “Ex-Officials Dispute Iraq Tie to al-Qaida,” Newsday, July 13, 2003
16 Sciolino and Tyler, New York Times, October 12, 2001
17 “Atta met twice with Iraqi intelligence,” CNN, October 11, 2001
18 James Risen, “Prague Discounts an Iraqi Meeting,” New York Times, October 21, 2002
19 “Full Text of Colin Powell’s Speech,” Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
20 “U.S. troops search for chemical, biological weapons, Iraqi camp alleged to be source of ricin found in London,” CNN.com, March 31, 2003
21 “Iraq War: Unanswered Questions,” BBC News, April 17, 2003
22 Walter Pincus, “Alleged Al Qaeda Ties Questioned: Experts Scrutinize Details of Accusations Against Iraqi Government,” Washington Post, February 7, 2003, A21
23 “Elusive Qaeda Connections,” New York Times, February 14, 2003
24 Dana Milbank, “For Bush, Facts Are Malleable,” Washington Post, October 22, 2002
25 Cam Simpson and Stevenson Swanson, “Story at odds with Powell’s UN case,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 2003
26 Pincus, Washington Post, February 7, 2003
27 William O Beeman, “Colin Powell’s Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection Tenuous At Best,” Pacific News Service, February 6, 2003
28 Pincus, Washington Post, February 7, 2003
29 Pincus, Washington Post, February 7, 2003
30 “Ansar al-Islam leader threatens to document his links to US,” Agence France-Presse, February 1, 2003
31 Johathan S. Landay, “Militant group allows tour of site labeled al-Qaida poison lab,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, February 8, 2003
32 Jeffrey Fleishman, “An inside look at Ansar al-Islam,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2003
33 Carla Anne Robbins, Marilyn Chase and Hugh Pope, “Spreading Fear: Sophistication of Anthrax Raises New Questions About Germs’ Source”; R. James Woolsey, “The Iraq Connection”; “The Anthrax War” (editorial), all from Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2001
34 Michael Massin, “Seven Days in October,” The Nation, November 12, 2001
35 For discussion of anthrax mailings, see: Sabin Russell, “Silica grains detected in anthrax letter are tiny clues,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 30, 2001; Mark Schoofs, Gary Fields, and Jerry Markhon, “Killer’s Trail: Linguistic, Other Analyses Hint at Unabomber Type, Implying Long Search,” Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2001; “Anthrax Attacks Likely Came from U.S. Government Laboratory Expert,” Dow Jones Newswires, November 21, 2001; William J. Broad, “The Spores: Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S.,” New York Times, December 3, 2001; William J. Broad with David Johnston, “U.S. Inquiry, Tried, but Failed, to Link Iraq to Anthrax Attack,” New York Times, December 22, 2001
36 Rick Weiss and Dan Eggen, “Lethal formula in anthrax mail points to labs of three countries,” International Herald Tribune, October 26, 2001
37 White House, “President Bush, Prime Minister Blair Discuss Keeping the Peace,” September 7, 2002 (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020907-2.html [1])
38 Joseph Curl, “Agency disavows report on Iraq arms,” Washington Times, September 27, 2002
39 IAEA Press Release, “IAEA Submits Six-Monthly Progress Report on its Verification Activities in Iraq,” October 7, 1998
40 Priest and Pincus, Washington Post, October 3, 2003
41 Kay Report, October 2, 2003
42 “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat,” speech delivered at Cincinnati, Ohio, October 7, 2002, (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html [2])
43 Sheelagh Doyle, “Fake document and exaggerations,” Independent (UK), April 20, 2003
44 Mark Phillips, “Inspectors Call U.S. Tips ‘Garbage,’” CBS News, February 20, 2003
45 “President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat,” October 7, 2002
46 Norman Dombey, “What Has He Got?” London Review of Books, October 17, 2002
47 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
48 Michael R. Gordon, “Agency Challenges Evidence Against Iraq Cited by Bush,” New York Times, January 10, 2003
49 Dan Stober, “Nuclear inspectors reportedly angry,” San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2003
50 Phillips, CBS News, February 20, 2003
51 “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government,” September 2002
52 “Bush’s State of the Union speech,” CNN.com, January 29, 2003
53 “Hans Blix: War Planned ‘Long in Advance,’” News24.com, April 9, 2003. It is unclear who concocted the documents. New Zealand’s Herald cites the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, who speculates that British intelligence may have forged the documents to help Bush quell congressional opposition to the war: “In September, late September, before the Senate voted on a resolution authorizing the war, [the documents were displayed] at a series of top-secret briefings in a secure room over in the Congress.” Roger Franklin, “Layers of deceit that built a case for war,” New Zealand Herald, April 29, 2003
54 Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “Top Inspectors Criticize CIA Data on Iraqi Sites,” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2003
55 Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, “Bush Aides Disclose Warnings from the CIA,” Washington Post, July 23, 2003
56 Robert Novak, “Mission to Niger,” Townhall.com, July 14, 2003
57 Andrea Mitchell, “White House Striking Back?” NBC News, July 21, 2003
58 Mitchell, NBC News, July 21, 2003
59 David Harrison, “America Silences Niger Leaders in Iraq Nuclear Row,” Telegraph (UK), August 3, 2003
60 Walter Pincus, “Bush Team Kept Airing Iraqi Allegation,” Washington Post, August 8, 2003
61 Elisabeth Bumiller and James Dao, “Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies an Attack,” New York Times, August 27, 2002
62 “Statement to the United Nations Security Council by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei,” March 7, 2003
63 “Bush’s State of the Union speech,” CNN.com, January 29, 2003
64 Alexander Higgins, “U.S. Accuses Rogue States of Developing Bio Weapons,” Associated Press, November 19, 2001
65 Pitt and Ritter, 28-29, 33-37
66 Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, “Interim U.S. report on arms indefinite,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 2003
67 David E. Kaplan and Mark Mazetti. “Second Intelligence Report: ‘No Reliable Information’ Iraqis Stockpiling Chemical Weapons,” U.S. News and World Report, June 13, 2003
68 Pauline Jelinek, “More than half of Iraq’s top ‘weapons sites’ searched with no result,” Associated Press, April 23, 2003
69 For example, see Bernard Weinraub, “Chemical Agents; American Soldiers Find Drums Possibly Storing Chemical Agents,” New York Times, April 8, 2003
70 “Suspected Bioweapons Lab Found,” MSNBC, May 11, 2003
71 Douglas Jehl, “Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms,” New York Times, August 9, 2003
72 Louis Meixler, “U.S. troops said to have found evidence of sarin, blister agents north of Baghdad,” Associated Press, April 27, 2003
73 Guy Taylor, “Final tests find no nerve agents in Iraqi chemical,” Washington Times, May 2, 2003
74 Kay Report, October 2, 2003
75 CIA, “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” October 2002, 13, 16 (www.cia.gov/cia/publications/iraqwmd/IraqOct_2002.htm [3])
76 Gordon, 48
77 CIA, October 2002, 16
78 John F. Burns, “Biological arms site reinspected: UN weapons checkers find little despite suspicions of renewed activity,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 2002
79 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
80 Judith Miller and Julia Preston, “Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War,” New York Times, January 31, 2003
81 “Hans Blix’s briefing to the Security Council,” Guardian (UK), February 14, 2003
82 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
83 Raymond Whitaker, “Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies,” Independent (UK), April 27, 2003
84 Miller and Preston, New York Times, January 31, 2003
85 Jo Warrick, “Despite Defectors’ Accounts, Evidence Remains Anecdotal,” Washington Post, February 6, 2003
86 Kay Report, October 2, 2003
87 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
88 Andrea Mitchell, “Where is the feared Iraqi arsenal,” NBC News, May 1, 2003
89 “Iraq War: Unanswered questions,” BBC News, April 17, 2003
90 Kay Report, October 2, 2003
91 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
92 Whitaker, Independent, April 27, 2003
93 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
94 Dafna Linzer, “Iraqis won’t admit to banned weapons,” Associated Press, May 3, 2003
95 Doyle McManus and Bob Drogan, “U.S. to step up its search for banned arms,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2003
96 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
97 Gary Jones and Alexandra Williams, “Real Authors of Iraq Dossier Blast Blair,” Daily Mirror (UK), February 8, 2003
98 “Timeline: The Gilligan Affair,” Guardian (UK), July 18, 2003
99 Ian Urbina, “Broadcast Ruse,” Village Voice, November 13-19, 2002
100 Powell, Guardian (UK), February 5, 2003
101 James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot, “America Tore Out 8000 Pages of Iraq Dossier,” Sunday Herald (Scotland), December 22, 2002
102 Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, “Saddam Has ‘Weeks, Not Months,’ Says Security Adviser Rice,” American Forces Press Service, February 16, 2003
103 Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, “Mission Possible: Nuclear Weapons Inspections in Iraq,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2003
104 Blix, Guardian (UK), February 14, 2003