Washington Times - Pentagon ousts official who tied Russia, Iraq arms

A Pentagon official who publicly disclosed information showing Russian involvement in moving Iraqi weapons out of that country has been dismissed.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security and formerly an aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was forced to leave his position Dec. 10 as the result of a "reorganization" that eliminated his job, defense officials said.

Mr. Shaw said he had been asked to resign for "exceeding his authority" in disclosing the information, a charge he called "specious."

In October, Mr. Shaw told The Washington Times that he had received foreign intelligence data showing that Russian special forces units were involved in an effort to remove Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.

In a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Shaw said that information about the covert Russian role in moving Iraqi arms to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran was discussed during a meeting that included retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service; and the head of a foreign intelligence service that he did not name.

The Pentagon office was conducting "research focused on analyzing Russian documents to determine the pattern of acquisition and dispersal of weaponry in the pre-war period," Mr. Shaw said in the Dec. 3 letter. A copy was obtained by The Washington Times.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has been fully briefed on the Russian covert arms removal, and Mr. Shaw expected additional information from foreign sources to produce more details, he wrote to Mr. Rumsfeld.

Reports of the Russian role in dispersing Iraqi arms made news during the final days of the presidential election campaign, at a time when the Bush administration was being criticized for failing to secure tons of Iraqi high explosives that could be used in developing nuclear arms.

...

After Mr. Shaw's disclosures, the Pentagon released spy satellite photographs of Iraqi weapons facilities that showed truck convoys at the plants, apparently in preparation to move materials. Further corroborating Mr. Shaw's account, a Russian newspaper reported that two retired Russian generals had received awards from Saddam's government 10 days before the coalition assault on Iraq began.

Mr. Shaw directed a Pentagon program called the Iraq Technology Transfer List that identified foreign weapons and technology discovered in Iraq after the March 2003 invasion.

Seattle Times: Ex-CIA officer alleges agency retaliated after he didn't falsify report

Critics of the Iraq war have asserted the administration pressured analysts and operators to produce information that bolstered the case for invading Iraq. Congressional investigations did not find such evidence, but found the CIA did not have enough spies in Iraq and that the analysis of the highly circumstantial evidence was mischaracterized as firmer than it was.

No biological or chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. A subsequent CIA-led investigation found Iraq was nowhere near producing a nuclear weapon, as the administration had asserted.

This reporter is either ignorant or a liar; so which is it, Seattle Times?

Why does the media lie about Powell's speech to the UN?

...no matter how much conventional media wisdom says otherwise, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell's presentation [to the United Nations] on the eve of the Iraq War remains as true today as it was then, which is to say almost entirely so.

Saddam 'raided UN arms sites for suicide attacks'

As American forces closed in on Baghdad last year, senior members of Saddam Hussein's government devised a plan to send suicide bombers in vehicles packed with devastating high-energy explosives that were under UN safeguards.

...A letter to Saddam from Dr Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, five days before the fall of Baghdad, suggests taking the HMX from underground bunkers, where it had been kept under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and giving it to suicide bombers.

He wrote: "It is possible to increase the explosive power of the suicide-driven cars by using the highly explosive material [HMX] which is sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] and stored in the warehouses of the Military Industry Departments."

The Iraqi regime took credit for several suicide bombs towards the end of the war. After the fall of Saddam, one of the worst attacks - which killed 22 UN workers and the special envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, in August 2003 - had an explosive force that could only have come from military grade explosives.

Iraqi forces find chemical materials in lab

Iraqi soldiers have discovered chemical materials in a Falluja lab, while a top aide of wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been arrested in Mosul, Iraq's interim national security adviser said Thursday.

...Iraq's interim National Security Adviser Kasim Dawood announced discovery of the lab with chemical materials which he said was "manufacturing death, intoxication and assassination."

"We have also discovered in this laboratory a pamphlet and instructions showing how to manufacture explosives and toxins," Dawood said. "And they also talk about the production of anthrax."

In Washington, a U.S. military official confirmed that materials found in the laboratory included instructions for making anthrax, as well as formulas and ingredients for making explosives and chemical blood agents.

Also found in the lab were hydrochloric acid and sodium cyanide, which can be used to make the blood agent hydrogen cyanide, the military official said.

A U.S. military spokesman in Falluja downplayed the discovery, saying "there is no indication right now that (the chemicals) were being used to produce chemical weapons."

"They were, however, being used to make improvised explosives," the spokesman said Wednesday, as he showed slides of the chemicals and a book containing chemical formulas. "There were many formulas on how to make explosives and how to make different types of poison."

Power Line Blog: Sarin in Fallujah?

Several readers have pointed out to us photograph number 2 in the USA today slide show accessible here. The photo depicts 40 vials of suspected sarin gas found by Marines while searching a house in Fallujah. The vials were secreted in a briefcase hidden in a truck in the courtyard of the house.

Caption:

Marines discovered 40 vials of suspected Sarin gas while searching a house in Fallujah, Iraq. It was secreted in a briefcase hidden in a truck in the courtyard of the house. Two mortars tubes, three mortar rockets, compass and fire maps also were found.

Bin Laden Warns of Retaliation for Iraqi Deaths

Osama bin Laden said in a full Internet broadcast of last Friday's video that President Bush had dragged the United States into a quagmire in Iraq and warned of retaliation for Iraqi deaths.

And here I thought Iraq wasn't part of the war on terror...

Washington Times - Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."

Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.

The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.

NRO - Iraq's WMDs: Lost and Found, by James Robbins

Wait a minute -- so there were WMDs in Iraq? The Kerry campaign, the media, assorted pundits, and others are making much of the disappearance of the 380 tons of explosives from the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad. According to the IAEA, the U.N. watchdog agency now apparently in the service of the Democratic National Committee, some of the explosives could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Wow -- nuclear-weapon components were in Iraq? Shouldn't the headline be, "Saddam Had 'Em?"

Iraq War Summary, Part II

In an earlier post summarizing the Iraq War, why we went and what we've found, I gave five reasons why military action was justified:

1. to rid a sworn enemy of his WMD programs

2. to respond to the Iraqi dictator's funding and harboring of terrorists

3. to enforce the terms of a cease fire and 14 years of related UN resolutions

4. to prevent further human suffering and exhume the mass graves

5. to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East

But did President Bush ever offer these five reasons, in the same place and at the same time before the war, or did the Administration's justification for war change again and again after they found our WMD intelligence was flawed, as critics charge?

President Bush's biggest speech on Iraq was given to the United Nations on Sept 12, 2002. Below are excerpts from that speech, and as you can see, they each fit into the categories listed above. In this speech, George W. Bush offers each one of these factors as reasons for military action in Iraq.

I'll let him explain, in his own words: "In one place -- in one regime -- we find all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms, exactly the kind of aggressive threat the United Nations was born to confront."

1. "the Iraqi regime agreed to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and to prove to the world it has done so by complying with rigorous inspections. Iraq has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge."

2. "Our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a massive scale... If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions."

3. "To suspend hostilities, to spare himself, Iraq's dictator accepted a series of commitments. The terms were clear, to him and to all. And he agreed to prove he is complying with every one of those obligations. He has proven instead only his contempt for the United Nations, and for all his pledges. By breaking every pledge -- by his deceptions, and by his cruelties -- Saddam Hussein has made the case against himself."

4. "Last year, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights found that Iraq continues to commit extremely grave violations of human rights, and that the regime's repression is all pervasive. Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution, and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation, and rape. Wives are tortured in front of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents -- and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state."

5. "In the Middle East, there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides... Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq."

Kausfiles - Boots on ground, foot in mouth

the Kerry camp may regret calling attention to that McLaughlin transcript. Earlier in the interview--which, remember, took place two months after 9/11, in the middle of our Afghan campaign against the Taliban--McLaughlin asks Kerry "What do we have to worry about [in Afghanistan]?" Here's the last part of Kerry's answer:

I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt -- and I've said this publicly -- about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]

Wait--I thought shifting the focus to Saddam was a "diversion" and distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda! Not, apparently, when Kerry saw an opportunity to score political points by advocating it.

DRUDGE - NBCNEWS: HUGE CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ -- AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AGO -- BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED

tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to inform readers how the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing when troops first arrived.

The TIMES left the impression the weapons site had been looted since Iraq has been under US control.

NRO - Disappearance & Blame, by Andy McCarthy

If what the Times says is right, isn't that implicitly an indictment of UNSCOM and further proof that the President was right to remove the monstrous Saddam regime?

...Let's take a look at Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991), which imposed the terms that ended the Gulf War. ...As I read it, Iraq was required, among other things, to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of . . . [a]ll ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities[.]" One might think that what the Times describes as "powerful conventional explosives--used to … make missile warheads" were a fairly "related major part" of ballistic missiles.

In addition, with respect specifically to nukes, Iraq was required "not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components[,]" and, to the extent it had such items, present them for "urgent on-site inspection and the destruction, removal or rendering harmless as appropriate of all items specified above." Again, a detonator would seem to be a fairly important component of a nuclear bomb.

...if the weaponry is as frightening as the Times suggests and Saddam actually had it--that is, if it had not been destroyed, removed or rendered inert in the decade or so during which the inspectors were "monitoring" it--how effective were the inspections?

MSNBC - Vast explosives cache reported missing in Iraq

U.N. agency confirms 377 tons of explosives have vanished

Several hundred tons of conventional explosives were looted from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday.

A "lack of security" resulted in the loss of 377 tons of high explosives from the sprawling Al-Qaqaa military installation about 30 miles south of Baghdad, said Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.

...The letter informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad had resulted in the loss of 214.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives.

HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives, such as C-4 and Semtex -- substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.

ElBaradei's cover letter to the council said that the HMX had been under IAEA seal and that the RDX and PETN were "both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels."

"The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003," he said.

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Carolina Journal - Right War at the Right Time, By John Hood

The American and coalition intervention in Iraq was the right war, at the right time. By all means, there remain legitimate grounds for questioning the Bush administration's prosecution of the war and reconstruction. Rich Lowry's latest cover story in National Review, entitled "What Went Wrong," provides some interesting and well-source observations on that score. But don't let the revisionists, isolationists, and anti-Bush ideologues rewrite history through selective quotation, innuendo, and outright fraud and deceit. Saddam Hussein represented a grave danger to the United States, was a common denominator in the threat of anti-American terrorism and of the use of bio-weapons against us, and was one of the cruelest dictators of the 20th century.

CNN - . U.S.: Saddam regime funds financing Iraq insurgency

About $500 million in unaccounted funds from Saddam Hussein's former regime is being used to finance a growing insurgency in Iraq, a U.S. military intelligence official said Friday.

The official said that, and other key findings, are contained in an updated military intelligence assessment of the Iraq insurgency.

The top finding is that the United States believes about a half-billion dollars that once belonged to the former Iraqi government, along with funds from individuals and religious groups in Saudi Arabia, is being funneled through Syria and used to fund insurgents.

WorldTribune - Duelfer: 'A lot of material left Iraq and went to Syria'

Charles Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month he could not rule out Saddam's transfer of Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Syria.

Duelfer, an adviser to the CIA, said at the Oct. 6 hearing that a large amount of material had been transferred by Iraq to Syria before the March 2003 war.

"A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria," Duelfer said. "There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say."

CNN.com - Al-Zarqawi group claims allegiance to bin Laden

'We will listen to your orders,' group tells al Qaeda boss

A statement attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's militant group declared allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Sunday.

The statement, posted on Islamist Web sites, addressed bin Laden as "the sheik" and said al-Zarqawi's Unification and Jihad movement "badly needed" to join forces with al Qaeda.

"We will listen to your orders," it said. "If you ask us to join the war, we will do it and we will listen to your instructions. If you stop us from doing something, we will abide by your instructions."

U.S. officials have said they believe the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi is in the insurgent-held city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, and numerous American airstrikes have targeted buildings believed to house his followers in recent weeks.

Unification and Jihad has claimed responsibility for the killings of numerous Westerners in Iraq, including the recent slayings of two Americans and a Briton kidnapped in September.

CNN.com - Zarqawi charged in Jordan attack plot

Jordan's military prosecutor indicted 13 alleged Muslim militants Sunday, including fugitive Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, for an al Qaeda-linked plot to attack targets in Jordan with chemical and conventional weapons, according to government officials and the indictment.

...The trial was expected to begin in early to mid-November. Al-Zarqawi, the best-known figure indicted, is thought to be directing anti-U.S. attacks and kidnappings in neighboring Iraq, where he leads the Tawhid and Jihad group.

Scotsman - Saddam bankrolled Palestinian terrorists

SADDAM Hussein's links to terrorism have been proven by documents showing he helped to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Drudge - Wash Post Corrects Scream Header: U.S. 'Almosts All Wrong' On Weapons

Yesterday's screaming banner Page One headline in the WASHINGTON POST was:

"U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons"
"Report on Iraq Contradicts Bush Administration Claims"

But this morning the POST issues a correction [in the very tiniest of print inside the A section]:

...An Oct. 7 article and the lead Page One headline incorrectly attributed a quotation to Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The statement, "We were almost all wrong," was made by Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 28.

And now Bremer has a few words at the New York Times: What I Really Said About Iraq:

The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.

The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda, and certainly not just to Osama bin Laden, who is probably trapped in his hide-out in Afghanistan. As the bipartisan 9/11 commission reported, there were contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back a decade. We will win the war against global terror only by staying on the offensive and confronting terrorists and state sponsors of terror - wherever they are. Right now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Qaeda ally, is a dangerous threat. He is in Iraq.

President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right. Mr. Zarqawi's stated goal is to kill Americans, set off a sectarian war in Iraq and defeat democracy there. He is our enemy.

Our victory also depends on devoting the resources necessary to win this war. So last year, President Bush asked the American people to make available $87 billion for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.

AP - Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No WMDs, by Scott Lindlaw

Bush concedes, Lindlaw editorializes.

"Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," Bush said. His words placed the blame on U.S. intelligence agencies.

..."He's claiming I misled America about weapons when he, himself, cited the very same intelligence about Saddam weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said. Citing a lengthy Kerry quote from two years ago on the menace Saddam could pose, Bush said: "Just who's the one trying to mislead the American people?"

Reuters - CIA: Saddam Bought Off Countries, People with Oil

The Central Intelligence Agency has published hundreds of names of people, firms, political parties and government officials Saddam Hussein purportedly tried to buy off to get U.N. sanctions lifted.

At the same time, Saddam and his government managed to amass some $11 billion through shadowy deals to circumvent the sanctions, first imposed in 1990 and lifted after the U.S.-led invasion a year ago, said the report, released on Wednesday.

...

The lists, parts of which had been published previously, were compiled from 13 secret files maintained by former Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan and the former oil minister, Amir Rashid.

Washington Times - Saddam paid off French leaders

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.

The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.

... One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq.

...Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told the Survey Group that he personally awarded several Frenchmen "substantial" oil allotments.

AP - Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.

..."The suggestion is clearly there by Mr. Duelfer that Saddam had used the program in such a way that he had bought off foreign governments and was building support among them to take the sanctions down," Cheney said.

That being the case, there was no reason to wait to invade Iraq to give inspectors more time to do their work, Cheney said.

Washington Times - Saddam worked secretly on WMDs

Saddam Hussein's goal through the 1990s and until the 2003 U.S. invasion was to end U.N. sanctions on Iraq, while working covertly to restore the country's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector says.

"Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's WMD capability — which was essentially destroyed in 1991 — after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities," the report said.

...

Mr. Duelfer said that officials with the Iraq Survey Group continue to receive a "stream of reports about hidden WMD locations" and in one recent case turned up a "partially filled nerve agent container from a 122 mm rocket."

But, "like others recovered, [it] was from old pre-1991 stocks," he said, adding "despite these reports and finds, I still do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq."

...

Mr. Duelfer said it is "still difficult to rule" on whether Iraq had a mobile biological-weapons production effort, but he noted that Iraq secretly destroyed stocks of biological weapons in 1991 and 1992, after having denied to weapons inspectors that it had such a program.

Comments from "Bob"

Oh, man, you look pretty stupid today. I just love your list 'some things we know for certain', full of things we never knew for certain, now demonstrably wrong. I wonder why you haven't posted anything since April - perhaps you should post some corrections!

Do I, Bob?

Here's the list of 'some things we know for certain.' Which of these are demonstrably wrong, Bob?

Points two and three are correct -- you can't even argue those facts. As for points one, four and five: Hussein had hidden weapons capabilities that were not disclosed to inspectors. That would include the nuclear centrifuge parts in the scientist's back yard, all the thousands of pages of documents on weapons programs we uncovered, the strains of biological agents, the sarin bomb and even the prohibited conventional weapons we discovered, among other things. As far as his ties to terrorism, they are plentyful, even though the 9/11 commission found these ties not to be "formal."

Bob, here is a raw summary of why these three points still stand. Incidentally, I drafted that summary in August, which by the way comes after April. And there are posts before and after it, as well, in the archives.

Now, seeing as how everything here is linked and referenced, I see no need for "corrections" of my own. If you have information that is relevant to this topic and contradicts anything you see here, by all means pass it along, but the odds are that I've already linked it.

And, in case you're wondering, Bob, there's a difference between evidence of "ongoing WMD programs" and WMD stockpiles.

Thanks for playing, try again.

Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD

This report relays the findings of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

We are aware that the files comprising this 1,000-page report are extremely large and, in practice, available only to visitors who have a broadband connection to our site. Thus, we extracted the key findings from each of the major sections of the report and provide them as a separate, much smaller file. All of the files linked below are in PDF format and require Adobe's free Acrobat® Reader™ to view. We plan to post an HTML version of the complete report soon and appreciate visitors' patience in the interim.

Key Findings

Volume 1

Charles Duelfer's Transmittal Message
Acknowledgements
Scope Note
Regime Strategic Intent
Regime Finance and Procurement


Volume 2

Delivery Systems
Nuclear

Volume 3

Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program
Biological Warfare
Glossary and Acronyms

NRO - BBC & WMD, by Cliff May

I was just on the BBC World Service providing a minority view on Charles Duelfer's report--The Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD.

Preceding me were Scott Ritter, David Kay and some British academic whose name I don't recall.

The basic spin of all them--and that of the moderator--was that Duelfer has now proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Saddam Hussein didn't have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), wasn't an imminent threat and, therefore, that Saddam should have been left alone, the war is a crock, Bush and Blair misled us, etc., etc.

In the days ahead, FDD's Andrew Apostolou will provide a rather different interpretation at some length and in some detail. But for right now here are some key points he and I would have you keep in mind as you discuss this issue in the media or at your local pub or at dinner with your wife and the twins:

**The case for war was that Saddam was violating numerous UN resolutions as well as the ceasefire agreement he had signed as a condition for being left in power.

**The onus was not on the US or even the inspectors to prove that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. The onus was on Saddam to account for the anthrax and VX and other weapons he had in the past -- and had used in the past, against the Kurds, among others.

**The onus was on Saddam to account for his WMD and the equipment used to make them, and to destroy them in a verifiable manner. Saddam refused to do so.

**There was never any doubt about Saddam's malevolent intentions. The question was about his capabilities. It would have been irresponsible, post-9/11, to simply cross our fingers and hope he didn't have the capabilities to match his intentions --- especially since every intelligence agency of any reputation--US, British, French, even those of Jordan and Egypt--believed Saddam retained not only the capability to make WMD but also existing WMD stockpiles.

**Stockpiles are not really the issue anyway. Rolf Ekeus, the first and most effective head of UNSCOM, wrote (July 2003 in The Washington Post) that the focus on stockpiles is "a distortion and trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security." Ekeus is not a neo-con. He's a Swedish Social Democrat.

***Saddam never gave up his nuclear ambitions. Mahdi Obeidi, his former chief nuclear scientist wrote in The New York Times on September 26: "Our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers." Obeidi added: "Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary."

**Duelfer has found that French, Chinese and Russian companies were involved in the corruption of the Oil-for-Food program. It appears clear that money that Saddam skimmed from that program--money that should have purchased baby formula for Iraqi children--went instead to purchasing prohibited materials and missile components instead.

**Duelfer's report shows that Saddam Hussein was a threat and that he retained the intent and capability to make WMD--as soon as he thought it safe for him to do so. He was importing illegal military and dual-use goods for that purpose.

**It probably would have been safe for Saddam to get back to WMD production soon. UN sanctions were eroding and increasingly ineffective.

**The Duelfer report shows Saddam Hussein, through illicit streams, amassed about $11 billion in revenue from the early 1990s to 2003 outside U.N.-approved methods.

**Saddam created a network of front companies and relationships to help pursue the regime's military reconstitution efforts, and evade or end U.N. sanctions;

Final point: Saddam had WMDs. Saddam used WMDs. The question is what did he do with his WMDs?

Did he secretly and illegally destroy them? Did he hide them? Did he transfer them? Did he do whatever he did three years before the US liberation of Iraq? Or three weeks before American troops were on the ground?

These mysteries remain.

WorldNetDaily: Is this one of Saddam's mobile bio-weapons labs?

A trailer found by the U.S. in Northern Iraq last year likely was used by Saddam Hussein's regime as a mobile biological weapons laboratory, and not to fill hydrogen balloons as some in Britain and the U.S. have charged, a view supported by exclusive photos obtained by WorldNetDaily that for the first time offer inside views of the trailer components.

...

The internal components provide the kind of mobile biological weapons laboratory described to the United Nations' Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the conflict began, and match in design and configuration the mobile weapons labs U.S. intelligence learned about several years ago from an Iraqi scientist.

...

A U.S. Army Intel officer in Iraq said he was convinced the trailer was used to make biological weapons: "There are too many indications this was used for biological weapons. The tubing, the heating system, the exhaust system are specific to the kind of military-grade production we saw before the first Gulf War. Also, when you're conducting legitimate laboratory work, you want to do it in the most stable environment possible. Why would scientists work from a trailer?"

CNN.com - Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq

CIA: Saddam intended to make arms if sanctions ended

In a final report to be made public Wednesday, investigators will conclude that Saddam Hussein didn't possess stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Based in part on interviews with Saddam, the report from the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group also will conclude that he wanted to acquire weapons of mass destruction because he believed they kept the United States from going all the way to Baghdad during the first Gulf War.

...

The report also will find that Iraq made strenuous efforts to evade U.N. sanctions and pursued an aggressive strategy to try to get them lifted, which included subverting the U.N. oil-for-food program, the senior administration officials said -- adding that the report will name names of individuals and countries that illegally did business with Saddam.

Other U.S. officials confirmed to CNN Tuesday that the report from the Iraq Survey Group will cite evidence that Iraq's intelligence agency used clandestine labs to manufacture small quantities of biological weapons in recent years, although probably for use in assassinations, rather than mass casualty attacks.

Weekly Standard - Unasked and Unanswered

"MR. VICE PRESIDENT, we were attacked but we weren't attacked by Saddam Hussein."

John Edwards used those words--and others like them--several times throughout his debate with Dick Cheney. "They diverted resources from the people who attacked us," Edwards said. The Bush Administration took its "eye off the ball."

Edwards didn't always feel this way. On October 10, 2002, John Edwards explained his vote to authorize the war in Iraq this way: "Others argue that if even our allies support us, we should not support this resolution because confronting Iraq now would undermine the long-term fight against terrorist groups like al Qaeda. Yet, I believe that this is not an either-or choice. Our national security requires us to do both, and we can."

...

On September 12, 2002, Edwards said this: "The terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam's arsenal, and there is every reason to believe that Saddam would turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11 had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror."

Washington Post: Report discounts Iraqi arms threat

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

...

A senior U.S. government official said that the report includes comments Hussein made to debriefers after his capture that bolster administration assertions, including his statement that his past possession of weapons of mass destruction "was one of the reasons he had survived so long." He also maintained such weapons saved his government by halting Iranian ground offensives during the Iran-Iraq war and deterred coalition forces from pressing on to Baghdad during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the official said.

The official also said that Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had uncovered Iraqi plans for ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers and for a 1,000-kilometer-range cruise missile, farther than the 150-kilometer range permitted by the United Nations, the senior official said.

The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in testimony today that Hussein intended to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction programs if he were freed of the U.N. sanctions that prevented him from getting needed materials.

Duelfer's report said Hussein was pursuing an aggressive effort to subvert the international sanctions through illegal financing and procurement efforts, officials said. The official said the report states that Hussein had the intent to resume full-scale weapons of mass destruction efforts after the sanctions were eliminated, and details Hussein's efforts to hinder international inspectors and preserve his weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

...

The report includes page after page of names of individuals and companies -- many from China, Russia and France -- that had traded illegally with Iraq in ways that could have furthered the development of nuclear weapons, the senior government official said. The State Department began briefing the named governments on the report yesterday, the official said.

...

The Bush administration has held out the possibility that illicit weapons and their components were secreted by Hussein across the border into Syria. This may still be true, but Duelfer's team did not find any proof to support this notion, the official said. "They have no evidence of this," the official said. "It's an unresolved issue." Syria denies it aided the hiding of illicit materials.

...

The report also includes an investigation of a broad range of subjects that are either loosely or not at all connected to weapons of mass destruction, a foreign intelligence official said. These include Iraq's conventional weapons programs, evidence of corruption and abuse in the U.N.-monitored oil-for-food program, and dual-use equipment -- which could be used for either peaceful or military programs -- that U.N. inspectors may not have been aware of.

CNN.com - Cheney, Edwards stretch findings and facts

Democrat John Edwards and Vice President Dick Cheney stretched the findings of U.S. intelligence to their own ends Tuesday night in tangling over Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Edwards said the connection between Saddam and the terrorist network was minimal or nonexistent; Cheney asserted Saddam's Iraq "had an established relationship with al Qaeda."

Both statements mask what intelligence sources have said. The contacts were limited and sketchy, mostly Iraqi intelligence agents and al Qaeda operatives, and did not amount to state sponsorship of al Qaeda or any link to the September 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence officials have said.

But the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on flawed Iraqi intelligence did conclude that the CIA reasonably assessed there probably were several contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, although they did not add up to a formal relationship.

CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

A CIA report has found no conclusive evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein harbored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush administration asserted before the invasion of Iraq.

...But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that the report, which was a mix of new information and a look at some older information, did not make any final judgments or come to any definitive conclusions.

CNS News - Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

One of the Iraqi memos contains an order from Saddam for his intelligence service to support terrorist attacks against Americans in Somalia. The memo was written nine months before U.S. Army Rangers were ambushed in Mogadishu by forces loyal to a warlord with alleged ties to al Qaeda.

Other memos provide a list of terrorist groups with whom Iraq had relationships and considered available for terror operations against the United States.

Among the organizations mentioned are those affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, two of the world's most wanted terrorists. Zarqawi is believed responsible for the kidnapping and beheading of several American civilians in Iraq and claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings in Iraq Sept. 30. Al-Zawahiri is the top lieutenant of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, allegedly helped plan the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the U.S., and is believed to be the voice on an audio tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Oct. 1, calling for attacks on U.S. and British interests everywhere.

A senior government official who is not a political appointee provided CNSNews.com with copies of the 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents. The originals, some of which were hand-written and others typed, are in Arabic. CNSNews.com had the papers translated into English by two individuals separately and independent of each other.

There are no hand-writing samples to which the documents can be compared for forensic analysis and authentication. However, three other experts - a former weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counter-terrorism official with vast experience dealing with Iraq, and a former advisor to then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton on Iraq - were asked to analyze the documents. All said they comport with the format, style and content of other Iraqi documents from that era known to be genuine.

...

The senior government official and source of the Iraqi intelligence memos, explained that the reason the documents have not been made public before now is that the government has "thousands and thousands of documents waiting to be translated.

"It is unlikely they even know this exists," the source added.

The government official also explained that the motivation for leaking the documents, "is strictly national security and helping with the war on terrorism by focusing this country's attention on facts and away from political posturing.

...

To protect against the Iraqi intelligence documents being altered or misrepresented elsewhere on the Internet, CNSNews.com has decided to publish only the first of the 42 pages in Arabic, along with the English translation. Portions of some of the other memos in translated form are also being published to accompany this report. Credentialed journalists and counter-terrorism experts seeking to view the 42 pages of Arabic documents or to challenge their authenticity may make arrangements to do so at CNSNews.com headquarters in Alexandria, Va.

NY Times - Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq

Mr. Cheney told a group of Wyoming Republicans the United States had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.

The tubes quickly became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq.

...

In response to questions last week about the tubes, administration officials emphasized two points: First, they said they had relied on the repeated assurances of George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the tubes were in fact for centrifuges. Second, they noted that the intelligence community, including the Energy Department, largely agreed that Mr. Hussein had revived his nuclear program.

...

Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence community blinded by "group think," false assumptions and unreliable human sources.

...

For this reason, international rules prohibited Iraq from importing certain sizes of 7075-T6 aluminum tubes; it was also why a new C.I.A. analyst named Joe quickly sounded the alarm.

At the C.I.A.'s request, The Times agreed to use only Joe's first name; the agency said publishing his full name could hinder his ability to operate overseas.

...

At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, "I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence." But in October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had relied on a briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said. "According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons," Mr. Kerry said then, explaining his vote. "There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons."

The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper, said nothing about the tubes debate except that "some" analysts believed the tubes were "probably intended" for conventional arms.

...

Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, served on the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr. Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principle evidence of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program.

"We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons," Mr. Edwards said then.

San Diego Union Tribute - S.D. school crisis plan is found on disk in Iraq

A man arrested by U.S. authorities in Iraq had a computer disk in his possession containing a public report downloaded from a U.S. Department of Education Web site on crisis planning in school districts, including San Diego Unified.

The man was described as an Iraqi national with connections to terrorism and the insurgency that is fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Officials in San Diego said the man's intentions were unknown.

BBC - Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton

The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong.

I acknowledge that and accept it.

I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries.

And the problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

New York Times - Saddam, the Bomb and Me, by Mahdi Obeidi

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

...

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn't mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein's security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

Hundreds of my former staff members and fellow scientists possess knowledge that could be useful to a rogue nation eager for a covert nuclear weapons program.

...

Mahdi Obeidi is the author of "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind."

Telegraph - Syria brokers secret deal to send atomic weapons scientists to Iran

Syria's President Bashir al-Asad is in secret negotiations with Iran to secure a safe haven for a group of Iraqi nuclear scientists who were sent to Damascus before last year's war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

...

A group of about 12 middle-ranking Iraqi nuclear technicians and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam's regime. The transfer was arranged under a combined operation by Saddam's now defunct Special Security Organisation and Syrian Military Security, which is headed by Arif Shawqat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law.

The Iraqis, who brought with them CDs crammed with research data on Saddam's nuclear programme, were given new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education and health certificates. Since then they have been hidden away at a secret Syrian military installation where they have been conducting research on behalf of their hosts.

Growing political concern in Washington about Syria's undeclared weapons of mass destruction programmes, however, has prompted President Asad to reconsider harbouring the Iraqis.

Washington Times: - Inside the Beltway

During a 1997 debate on CNN's "Crossfire," Sen. John Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, made the case for launching a pre-emptive attack against Iraq.

...

"We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."

MORE: Tom Maguire is doubting the Washington Times' use of direct quotes.

MORE: related comments here:

"where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity?"

and

In an op-ed in the Sept. 6, 2002, New York Times, Kerry wrote: "If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."

MORE: The Times has issued a correction: "Due to erroneous information from Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, an item in the Inside the Beltway column in yesterday's editions incorrectly quoted Sen. John Kerry in a 1997 appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" as arguing for a unilateral, pre-emptive war against Iraq."

CNN - Women held in Iraq: Dr. Germ, Mrs. Anthrax

Islamic militants who beheaded an American contractor in Iraq say they will kill the other two hostages -- an American and a Briton -- unless Iraqi women are released from two American prisons in the country.

...

They are Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha Al-Azzawi Al-Tikriti, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a biological weapons researcher known as "Mrs. Anthrax."

...

A mobile weapons laboratory found in northern Iraq did contain equipment for making biological agents but no biological material was found, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is expected to tell the Pentagon Tuesday. Pentagon officials told CNN the equipment in the truck had "recently been thoroughly scrubbed."

UPDATE: CNN - Iraq: 'Dr. Germ' to be freed on bail

The Iraqi Council of Ministers plans to release a female prisoner "on bail" from U.S. custody but did not say whether it was responding to recent terrorist demands that women prisoners be freed, according to a Ministry of Justice spokesman.

However, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said Wednesday that neither of two Iraqi female prisoners being held by U.S. authorities would be released imminently, Reuters reported.

Robi Sen's Blog: Iraqi WMD links

Links on Iraq's connection to the Pakistan-based nuclear black market...

FOX - Possible Saddam-Al Qaeda Link Seen in U.N. Oil-for-Food Program

Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his infamous war on the U.S.

AP - U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD [stockpiles]

Bracketed word mine - this headline is a typical AP slant.

Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.

In a 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

Seems correct so far, minus the headline. This is basically what the last weapons report stated. See link at right.

After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.

Zap! Wrong.

Duelfer's report, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war - portraying Saddam as a grave threat - and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.

Where will it fall relative to John Edwards' statement that Iraq was an "imminent threat," I wonder.

Reuters - Powell: Unlikely WMD Stocks Will Be Found in Iraq

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made the case to the world that pre-war Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said on Monday he now thought these will probably never be found.

Iraq Watch: Iraq's Dangerous Junkyard

Last summer, we at the Wisconsin Project warned that even if no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq, the potential for export of know-how and equipment from Iraq's banned weapon programs presented a real proliferation risk. We predicted that failure to properly secure these items could lead to their sale to places like Iran or Syria. Since last summer, the United States has been blasted for intelligence lapses and for failure to provide security and prevent insurgency in post-war Iraq. As it turns out, the United States must also be condemned for failing to prevent the looting of sensitive dual-use equipment.

Washington Times: French connection armed Saddam

The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq's military.

"U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer to Iraq of arms and materiel of all types, including military aircraft and spare parts," State Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. "We take illicit transfers to Iraq very seriously and work closely with our allies to prevent Iraq from acquiring sensitive equipment."

Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declared that France's selling of military equipment to Iraq was "international treason" as well as a violation of a U.N. resolution.

John Kerry on Iraq

July 29, 2002, Kerry spoke to the moderate Democratic Leadership Council and said, "I agree completely with (the Bush) administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq. . . . Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on tough conditions of surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991."

...

In an op-ed in the Sept. 6, 2002, New York Times, Kerry wrote: "If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."

...

During a May 3, 2003, debate among Democratic presidential candidates, Kerry said President Bush made "the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him."

...

In a November 12, 1997, appearance on CNN's "Crossfire," Kerry criticized two U.S. allies for failing to oppose Saddam's failure to comply with the agreement that ended the Persian Gulf war: ".where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity.?"

Thousands of Iraqis Demand Saddam's Execution

Better late than never

Washington Times - Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.

The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

The Yin Blog: Salman Pak -- The Smoking Gun Linking Iraq to 9/11?

Links and excerpts from Yin co-blogger Kevin Jon Heller.

NewsMax - Iraqi Physicist: 500-Ton Uranium Stockpile Not for Nukes

The physicist who ran Iraq's nuclear weapons program for 25 years before the U.S. liberation claimed on Wednesday that Saddam Hussein gave up his nuclear ambitions in 1991 - even though the Iraqi dictator maintained a 500-ton stockpile of uranium and kept his nuclear research team intact right up until March 2003.

In his first-ever broadcast interview, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar told the BBC that Saddam's al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons research facility was heavily damaged in the first Gulf War.

"Everything was destroyed, such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all, and it never restarted," he claimed.

...

Jafar also failed to address findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded last month:

"Iraq was procuring dual use equipment that had potential nuclear applications."

The Senate's investigation found that, "Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program."

The Iraqi physicist declined to challenge the testimony of top U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who told Congress in March that Iraq had been "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons" throughout the 1990s.

One al Tuwaitha laboratory, Duelfer said, "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development."

Duelfer's contentions were bolstered by satellite photos published in the Washington Post in 2002 that showed new construction at the sprawling 23,000-acre facility.

More background on Jaffar Dhia Jaffar...

Iraq Watch:

In early March, Iraq's top two nuclear scientists decided to speak publicly about their country's banned weapon programs. While presenting a coauthored paper at a conference in Beirut, the "father" of Iraq's nuclear program, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, admitted that Iraq tried to hide its weapon efforts when U.N. inspectors arrived in early 1991. But he claimed that all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and weapon material were destroyed that summer. On the sidelines of the conference, Noman Saad al-Noaimi, a former director-general of Iraq's nuclear program, told the Associated Press that in his "personal estimation" Iraq was three years away from producing a nuclear bomb before the 1991 war. Both scientists said they were certain that Iraq did not revive any of its WMD programs after 1991.

During the conference, Jaffar called for a probe into what was known by U.N. inspectors before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. According to Jaffar, the inspectors had concluded that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons, but failed to declare this frankly to the U.N. Security Council because of U.S. pressure.

FAS.org:

Iraq successfully concealed both the size and level of progress of its nuclear program. Four months after the June 1981 bombing by Israel of Iraq’s Osirak reactor, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar (deputy minister of industry, head of reactor physics at Tuwaitha and now believed to have been the head of Iraq’s nuclear weapon program) reportedly convinced Saddam Hussein that remaining in the NPT while embarking on a clandestine nuclear weapon program would present no serious difficulties...

Washington Post:

The man some regard as the father of Iraq's nuclear weapons program never aspired to the title, according to former colleagues now living in the West. Hussein used imprisonment and torture to persuade the British-trained physicist to help him in his quest to become the Arab world's first nuclear-armed head of state.

Among his punishments: being forced to watch as guards broke the back of an elderly man and left him to suffer in Jaffar's presence. "He recanted and returned to work," Hamza, a former subordinate, wrote in "Saddam's Bombmaker."

The deputy head of Iraq's atomic energy agency ultimately took command of Iraq's secret "Petrochemical-3" unit, which ran clandestine programs to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. At its height, the unit employed more than 20,000 people and cost an estimated $10 billion.

After his jailhouse conversion in the early 1980s, Jaffar promised to deliver Hussein a nuclear weapon within 10 years. By Western estimates he came very close -- perhaps as near as a few months -- when the program was disrupted by the outbreak of war in 1991.

ABC News:

Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, considered to be the godfather of Iraq's nuclear weapons program, is insisting that Iraq discontinued its nuclear weapons program after United Nations weapons inspections began in 1991, according to senior coalition intelligence officials.

...

Jaffar fled to Syria soon after the military campaign in Iraq began, and surrendered to U.S. forces from a third Arab country.

Washington Post - The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.

...

No Post reporter burrowed into the Iraqi WMD story more deeply than [Walter] Pincus, 71, a staff member for 32 of the last 38 years, whose messy desk is always piled high with committee reports and intelligence files. "The main thing people forget to do is read documents," said Pincus, wielding a yellow highlighter.

A white-haired curmudgeon who spent five years covering the Iran-contra scandal and has long been an expert on nuclear weapons, Pincus sometimes had trouble convincing editors of the importance of his incremental, difficult-to-read stories.

His longevity is such that he first met Hans Blix, who was the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, at a conference in Ghana in 1959.

"The inspectors kept getting fed intelligence by our administration and the British and the French, and kept coming back and saying they couldn't find" the weapons, Pincus said. "I did one of the first interviews with Blix, and like everyone else he thought there would be WMDs. By January and February [of 2003], he was starting to have his own doubts. . . . What nobody talked about was how much had been destroyed," either under U.N. supervision after the Persian Gulf War or during the Clinton administration's 1998 bombing of Iraqi targets.

CNN.com - Kerry stands by 'yes' vote on Iraq war

Democratic presidential nomiee John Kerry said Monday he would not have changed his vote to authorize the war against Iraq, but said he would have handled things "very differently" from President Bush.

Bush's campaign has challenged Kerry to give a yes-or-no answer about whether he stood by the October 2002 vote which gave Bush authority to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The question of going to war in Iraq has become a major issue on the campaign trail, especially in light of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found there.

sigh...

The U.S. senator from Massachusetts said the congressional resolution gave Bush "the right authority for the president to have."

But he told reporters on a campaign swing through Arizona, "I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has." He challenged Bush to answer four questions.

"My question to President Bush is why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace?" Kerry asked. "Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?

"Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?

"There are four, not hypothetical questions like the president's, but real questions that matter to Americans," Kerry said. "And I hope you'll get the answers to those questions because the American people deserve them."

...

More than 900 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 that deposed Saddam. No WMD arsenal has been found, although a few aging gas shells have been located, and U.S. inspectors have said Iraq tried to conceal some weapons-related research from U.N. weapons inspectors.

Bush said Iraq had the ability to build weapons of mass destruction and had been deceiving weapons inspectors, who reported no sign of banned weapons in Iraq in the weeks before the invasion.

NewsMax - Iraq Survey Chief Duelfer: Saddam Was Developing Nukes

Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons development program at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer has told Congress.

In comments that received virtually no press coverage in the United States, Duelfer testified that Iraq was "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons." One Iraqi laboratory "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development," the top weapons inspector said.

...

The former U.N. weapons inspector, who replaced David Kay as head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group last year, said that Saddam was financing his nuclear program by misappropriating funds from the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program.

...

Most of the recent nuclear research took place at Iraq's notorious al Tuwaitha weapons facility, where Saddam had stockpiled over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium ore since before the first Gulf War.

Iraq was also in talks with North Korea on the possibility of importing a 1,300 km missile system, the ISG chief revealed.

...

In June of this year, the U.S. Energy Department removed 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium from al Tuwaitha.

Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press at the time that the low-enriched uranium stockpile could have produced enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.

FOXNews - Iraq Evidence Led Feds to Albany Mosque

Information found in Iraq led federal investigators to become suspicious of an Albany, N.Y., mosque leader, FOX News has learned.

Last summer, U.S. troops discovered Yassin Muhhiddin Aref's name, telephone number and address in a book left behind in a vacated terrorist training camp, a U.S. official told FOX News. The book also revealed that Ansar al-Islam, the group running the camp, had given Aref a title: "the commander."

Aref also made several telephone calls to individuals in Iraq within the past year, the official said.

Aref, 34, is the Imam of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany, N.Y. He and one other mosque leader were arrested Thursday and charged with helping an undercover informant posing as a weapons dealer who was plotting to buy a shoulder-launched missile that would be used to kill the Pakistani ambassador in New York City.

...

Earlier on Thursday, law enforcement officials said the men had possible ties to Ansar al-Islam, which has been linked to Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network. However, that link was not noted in court documents.

Ansar al-Islam has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and killings in Iraq, and has ties to the U.S.-led coalition's most-wanted terrorist there, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Insight - Saddam's WMD Have Been Found

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported.

The Iraq War - A Summary

UPDATE: See also Part II.

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There were essentially five main reasons for the United States to use military force in Iraq:

1. to rid a sworn enemy of his WMD programs

2. to respond to the Iraqi dictator's funding and harboring of terrorists

3. to enforce the terms of a cease fire and 14 years of related UN resolutions

4. to prevent further human suffering and exhume the mass graves

5. to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East

Taken together, these reasons more than justify the U.S.-led military action to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Below is information that pertains to the first two reasons.

Iraqi WMDs

Highlights: thus far we have found

1. chemical and biological weapon systems plans and equipment

2. reference strains of biological weapons agents

3. new research on brucella and congo-crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin

4. a biological weapons lab

5. prohibited long-range missiles suitable for delivering WMDs

6. documents showing Saddam tried to obtain long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea

7. 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq

8. gas centrifuge elements for enriching uranium, parts of a nuclear weapons program, buried in the back yard of Mahdi Obeidi, a nuclear scientist. Obeidi also gave up nuclear development documents and said there were other pieces of the puzzle hidden elsewhere.

9. a barrel of enriched uranium found near Mosul

10. Iraq was 3 years from a building a nuclear weapon, according to top nuclear scientists quoted by CNN

11. French, British and American intelligence that an Iraqi delegation approached Niger to purchase uranium. That contact was verified by former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose criticism of the administration is contradicted by the 9/11 commission report.

12. an Iraqi artillery shell filled with sarin gas, a drop of which will kill you

13. in October 2003, Kuwaiti security forces intercepted Iraqis attempting to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads to an unnamed European country

14. on January 16, 2003, UN weapons inspectors discovered 11 rocket warheads designed to deliver chemical weapons in a bunker 75 miles south of Baghdad.

15. Chief Weapons Inspector David Kay reported "dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002," including vials of live botulinum bacteria that were found hidden at the home of an Iraqi scientist. Botulinum is the single most poisonous substance known to mankind.

16. Kay's final report reveals Iraq's attempt to "revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001," and that "Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin."

17. Kay successor Charles Duelfer reported on March 30, 2004: "Iraq did have facilities suitable for the production of biological and chemical agents needed for weapons. It had plans to improve and expand and even build new facilities." Iraq was also working up to March 2003 to construct new facilities for the large-scale production of dual-use chemicals.

18. "the CIA has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program" - former Justice Dept prosecutor John Loftus

19. "we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD" - David Kay, who also told the Associated Press that satellites showed "a lot of traffic" from Iraq to Syria

20. a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January has named three sites in Syria where Iraqi WMDs are buried, based on contacts of his in Syrian Intelligence. Israeli intelligence has confirmed his account

21. An Iraqi scientist told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria just before the war, according to the New York Times

22. Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al Qaeda members who brought the stuff in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others

23. Following reports that Syria was secretly transporting WMD material to Sudan, Sudanese President Omar Bashir responded, ordering that Syria remove its Scud C and Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. A U.S. official confirmed the Syrian missile shipments to Sudan but said the U.S. intelligence community has not determined that WMD systems were included

Terrorist ties

Highlights of ties to Al Qaida and terrorist activities known thus far:

1. papers found in Iraqi intelligence headquarters documented the beginnings of Saddam's relationship with al-Qaida. Iraq offered to pay all travel and hotel expenses for a top aide to Osama bin Laden visited Iraq in 1998, bearing a message from bin Laden. The aide stayed in Iraq for a week, after which Iraq intelligence officers sent a message back to bin Laden concerning "the future of our relationship."

2. According to Czech intelligence, 9/11 suspect Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague

3. In his address to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell named Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq as evidence of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network." Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war began and is currently leading the terrorists efforts against coalition forces there.

4. in December 2003, US forces operating in the Sunni Triangle discovered an Iraqi weapons cache accompanied by Al Qaida literature and videotapes, according to CNN

5. in January 2004, a senior Al Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured, as was Husam al Yemeni, who is also a terrorist with ties to Al Qaida

6. Abu Nidal was a known terrorist who was harbored by Saddam Hussein and was responsible for the deaths of several American citizens. Iraq's coalition government claims it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta was trained by Nidal in Baghdad, in the summer of 2001.

7. The Defense Department has a memo detailing over 50 contacts between senior officials in Iraq and Osama bin Laden's followers going back to the 1980s

8. There are U.S. satellite photos confirming the existence of a Boeing 707 fuselage in Salam Pak, Iraq, that was used as a hijacking classroom.

9. In February 2004, U.S. troops arrested seven militants believed linked to Al Qaeda in the Iraqi city of Baqouba.

10. Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi, was the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He arrived in America on an Iraqi passport.

11. Abu Abbas, a known terrorist involved in a hijacking that resulted in the murder of an American, was found in Baghdad on April 14, 2003.

12. September 11 hijackers Nawaz al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar met Iraqi VIP airport greeter Ahmad Hikmat Shakir in Malaysia, on January 5, 2000, where he is said to have escorted them to a 9/11 planning summit with other al Qaida members.

13. Khala Khadar al-Salahat was a top deputy to Abu Nidal and also a resident of Baghdad before he surrendered to US Marines in April 2003.

14. Iraqi diplomat Hisham al Hussein was in contact with leaders of Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group allied with Al Qaida and responsible for the deaths of at least three US citizens, including U.S. soldier Mark Wayne Jackson.

15. Uday Hussein's newspaper, Babylon Daily, published a "List of honor" that included the following passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That document was discovered by Carter-appointed US federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt.

16. Iraqi ambassador Farouk Hijazi admitted to meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994.

17. An Iraqi intelligence memo dated February 19, 1998, said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him."

18. U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer found Iraq partially responsible for the 9/11 attacks, a ruling that was upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last October

John Kerry on WMDs

July 29, 2004:

Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so.

Jan. 23. 2003:

We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. [W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...

Oct. 9, 2002:

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I b elieve that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security

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Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try? ... According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons ... Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents...

Oct. 9, 1998:

We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.

More...

American Amnesia talks with Ambassador Joseph Wilson

Wilson:

No WMDs have been found, there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

Tell that to the Polish troops who found munitions containing cyclosarin or the two U.S. soldiers who were treated for exposure to sarin after finding a 155-mm shell filled with the nerve agent. Tell that to Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi scientist who unearthed nuclear weapons components in his backyard.

CNN - Retired general pushes for more U.S. spies

Franks, who retired last summer four months after the United States invaded Iraq, reportedly expresses his shock at not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and disappointment that more foreign troops were not a part of the war effort.

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Franks, 59, said many Middle Eastern leaders, including Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, told him that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had, and planned to use, weapons of mass destruction.

Franks states that in January 2003, Mubarak told him, "Saddam has WMD-biologicals, actually, and he will use them on your troops." He also accuses former White House counterterrorism director Richard Clarke of failing to provide him with "a single page of actionable intelligence" and of engaging in "mostly wishful thinking."

CNN - GOP releases Kerry video

Caption:

Members of the Republican response team show a video they say shows Sen. John Kerry's changing position on Iraq.

National Review - Boogie to Baghdad / What the 9/11 Commission says about Iraq and al Qaeda, by Byron York

The report says bin Laden appears to have reached out to Saddam Hussein:

There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's efforts at this time to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to stay clear of Bin Ladin.

Since Saddam wasn't interested, the report says, nothing came of the contacts. But by the next year, Saddam, struggling under increasing pressure from the United States, appeared to have changed his mind, and there were more talks:

In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative. In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.

The meetings went on, the report says, until Iraq offered to formalize its relationship with al Qaeda:

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States.

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National-security adviser Sandy Berger suggested that the U.S. send just one U-2 flight, but the report says Clarke worried that even then, Pakistan's intelligence service would warn bin Laden that the U.S. was preparing for a bombing campaign. "Armed with that knowledge, old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," Clarke wrote in a February 11, 1999 e-mail to Berger. The report says that another National Security Council staffer also warned that "Saddam Hussein wanted bin Laden in Baghdad."

Weekly Standard - Only Connect, by Stephen F. Hayes

the commission's final report presents a much more complicated picture. It cites repeated "friendly contacts" and details numerous high-level meetings between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda terrorists. It demolishes the claims of former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke that there was "no evidence" of Iraqi support for al Qaeda--in part by publishing excerpts of internal White House emails in which Clarke himself directly makes an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The final report also amends the staff statement in two important ways, finding only no "collaborative operational relationship" and specifying that these contacts did not indicate "that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

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But the report contains several gaping holes with respect to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Its overview of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center makes no mention of Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who has admitted mixing the chemicals for that attack. And in seeking to rule out any Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, the panel allowed its conclusions to race ahead of the available evidence by relegating the intriguing story of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi present at a key 9/11 planning meeting, to a single, dismissive footnote.

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OTHER PARTS of the report and the public statements of commissioners do, however, broaden the public understanding of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. Taken together, they render laughable the arguments of those who still maintain there was "no connection."

Of particular interest are assessments of the Clinton administration and former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, whose credibility is reaching Joe Wilson lows. It was Clarke who famously declared on March 21, 2004: "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda. Ever."

The report notes that the Clinton Justice Department included the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in its spring 1998 sealed indictment of Osama bin Laden. That indictment came before the al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa--after which numerous Clinton officials cited an Iraqi connection to the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, destroyed by the United States in response to those al Qaeda attacks.

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According to the 9/11 Commission report, quoting from an email from Clarke to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on November 4, 1998:

This passage led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was "probably the direct result of the Iraq-al Qida (sic) agreement". Clarke added that VX precursor traces found near al Shifa were the "exact formula used by Iraq."

New Republic - Iraq'd / Case Pretty Much Closed, by Spencer Ackerman

In light of the 9/11 Commission's findings--similar in this respect to what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found earlier this month--the options left available to those who argue for a link are few. They can successfully argue that the Commission reaffirms contacts, conversations and points of mutual interest between Iraq and Al Qaeda throughout the 1990s. (The CIA has done so all along through this debate.) What they can't successfully do is make the jump to say that those contacts, conversations and points of mutual interest had much significance.

CNN - 9/11 panel: Al Qaeda planned to hijack 10 planes

The commission's report says bin Laden "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to [Saddam] Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan.

"The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda."

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994.

Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded.

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the report said.

"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied" any relationship, the report said.

The panel also dismissed reports that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic on April 9, 2000. "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

The report said that Atta was in Virginia on April 4 -- evidenced by video that shows him withdrawing $8,000 from an ATM -- and he was in Florida by April 11 if not before.

The report also found that there was no "convincing evidence that any government financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11" other than the limited support provided by the Taliban when bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan.