CNN.com - New inspector won't rule out finding Iraqi WMD

In prepared testimony, the CIA's new chief Iraq weapons inspector said he does not rule out finding weapons of mass destruction, adding "we regularly receive reports, some quite intriguing and credible, about concealed caches" of weapons.

Charles Duelfer said, however, that former Iraqi senior officials -- now prisoners of U.S. forces -- are not talking.

...

Like Kay, Duelfer said that the regime was in "clear" violation of several U.N. resolutions banning WMD programs in Iraq, including the ban on certain biological research and the ban on deploying missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles with a range of more than 93 miles (150 kilometers).

Richard Clarke linked Saddam and OBL - The Washington Post

GotFoO? posts this Washington Post article from Jan 23, 1999:

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

CNN.com - Iraq war wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say

This article provides nothing but a rehash of the old debate. The UN says the war was not justified. The administration says it was because Saddam did not comply with the resolutions giving him a last chance to come clean, or else.

CNN, again, improperly quotes VP Cheney's interview with Tim Russert last March:

"We believe [Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong," Cheney said. "And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency in this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what Saddam Hussein was doing."

As I've noted before, this was clearly a misstatement that does not jive with the rest of Cheney's statements in the interview:

Cheney (later, same interview): "it’s only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons."

Cheney (earlier, same interview): "And I think that would be the fear here, that even if he were tomorrow to give everything up, if he stays in power, we have to assume that as soon as the world is looking the other way and preoccupied with other issues, he will be back again rebuilding his BW and CW capabilities, and once again reconstituting his nuclear program. He has pursued nuclear weapons for over 20 years. Done absolutely everything he could to try to acquire that capability and if he were to cough up whatever he has in that regard now, even if it was complete and total, we have to assume tomorrow he would be right back in business again."

Shame on CNN for their sloppy and/or biased reporting. They didn't even have the courtesy to tell us which Cheney interview they're referencing.

CNN.com - Ex-Bush aide: Iraq war planning began after 9/11

A second former Bush administration official is set to accuse top presidential aides, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of planning retaliatory strikes on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, despite briefings from intelligence officials explaining that Iraq likely wasn't responsible.

The accusation from Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism official at the White House until February 2003, will come first in an interview on CBS News' "60 Minutes" set to be broadcast Sunday, the network said.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill made similar accusations on "60 Minutes" in January.

Although O'Neill said the Bush administration began planning an Iraqi invasion just after taking office, Clarke said Bush's top aides immediately sought to use the terrorist attacks to levy a war against Iraq even though it appeared that al Qaeda, not Saddam, was responsible.

"They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12," Clarke said in the CBS interview that was conducted as part of the promotion for his book.

...

"Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq ... We all said, 'but no, no, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan,'" Clarke said in the interview. "And Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with [the September 11 attacks].'"

Wow... great reporting CNN. No kidding... the White House had plans to take out Iraq before 9/11? That's remarkable news, given that Bush made a tougher stance on Iraq a major part of his 2000 campaign and mentioned it in at least one Presidential debate. It's also remarkable that in the days following 9/11 the White House discussed possible enemies who might have attacked us and that our old friend Saddam Hussein came up as a possiblility. And, finally, its fascinating that Rumsfeld stopped us from going to Afghanistan because there weren't "any good targets." Oh, wait... we did go there.

So, what's the news here? Somebody wants to sell another anti-Bush book, and that's about it.

NEWSWEEK: One Year After Start Of Iraq War, Majority (57%) Says U.S. Did the Right Thing In Going To War

One year after the start of the Iraqi war, a majority (57%) of Americans says the U.S. did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq (37% disagree). Nonetheless, 36 percent say military action against Iraq has done more to increase the risk that large numbers of Americans will be killed in a future terrorist attack, (up from 28 percent in the Dec. 18-19 Newsweek poll); 30 percent say it has done more to decrease the risk of attack, 27 percent say it has made no difference.

And more than half of Americans (55%) think the administration misanalyzed or misinterpreted reports that indicated Iraq had banned weapons (up from 36% in a Newsweek poll last May), while 35 percent disagree. People are more evenly split on whether the administration purposely misled the public about evidence of banned weapons (46% agree, a record high in the Newsweek poll; 49% disagree). A majority (53%) says the amount of money the U.S. is spending for postwar operations in Iraq is too high (34% say it's about right). A majority (55%) also says the U.S. should reduce the number of military personnel in Iraq and begin bringing troops home; 27 percent say it should keep the same amount of troops, 10 percent say send more troops.

Iraq War - 1 year anniversary - news roundup

MSNBC - Predictions off mark on Iraq war's impact

New York Post - IRAQ, ONE YEAR LATER

Apart from the speed of victory, of course, the two biggest surprises were the Coalition's failure to find weapons of mass destruction and - to some degree, offsetting that - the discovery of more mass graves than anyone ever imagined.

Weapons of mass destruction may yet turn up; as the Kay report noted, Saddam clearly had WMD programs, if not the weapons themselves.

But it now seems that the Bush administration and American intelligence were indeed misled about Saddam's stockpiles.

Then again, so were former President Clinton, Sen. John Kerry, the governments of France and Germany - and U.N. chief inspecter Hans Blix.

And maybe even Saddam himself.

New York Times Editorial - One Year After

Most Americans expected military victory to come quickly, as it did. Despite the administration's optimism about what would follow, it was also easy to predict that the period after the fall of Baghdad would be very messy and very dangerous. In that sense, right now we're exactly where we expected to be.

...

No matter what the president believed about the long-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, he would have had a much harder time selling this war of choice to the American people if they had known that the Iraqi dictator had been reduced to a toothless tiger by the first Persian Gulf war and by United Nations weapons inspectors. Iraq's weapons programs had been shut down, Mr. Hussein had no threatening weapons stockpiled, the administration was exaggerating evidence about them, and there was, and is, no evidence that Mr. Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

New York Times - Donald Rumsfeld - The Price of Freedom In Iraq

Korean freedom was won at a terrible cost — tens of thousands of lives, including more than 33,000 Americans killed in action. Was it worth it? You bet. Just as it was worth it in Germany and France and Italy and in the Pacific in World War II. And just as it is worth it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

...

In Iraq, for 12 years, through 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so. Instead of disarming — as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine did, and as Libya is doing today — Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance.

Repeatedly, he rejected those resolutions and he systematically deceived United Nations inspectors about his weapons and his intent. The world knew his record: he used chemical weapons against Iran and his own citizens; he invaded Iran and Kuwait; he launched ballistic missiles at Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and his troops repeatedly fired on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-flight zones.

Recognizing the threat, in September 2002 President Bush went to the United Nations, which gave Iraq still another "final opportunity" to disarm and to prove it had done so. The next month the president went to Congress, which voted to support the use of force if Iraq did not.

...

As the continuing terrorist violence in Iraq reminds us, the road to self-governance will be challenging. But the progress is impressive. Last week the Iraqi Governing Council unanimously signed an interim Constitution. It guarantees freedom of religion and expression; the right to assemble and to organize political parties; the right to vote; and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial. It prohibits discrimination based on gender, nationality and religion, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention. A year ago today, none of those protections could have been even imagined by the Iraqi people.

Guardian - Polish Leader Affirms Commitment in Iraq

[Poland's National Security Adviser, Marek] Siwiec said Kwasniewski's Thursday comment about being "misled" was meant to criticize intelligence failures in general, not Washington.

"It was not a complaint by Poland addressed to the United States," he said.

On Thursday, Kwasniewski told French reporters he felt "uncomfortable due to the fact that we were misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction," according to a transcript released by his press office.

He then told a separate news conference, "This is the problem of the United States, of Britain and also of many other nations."

...

"President Kwasniewski confirmed our further involvement in the Iraqi mission and that we will be there as long as needed, plus one day longer," Siwiec said.

The White House moved quickly to underline Poland's commitment, distributing a statement from the Polish embassy in Washington that cited "misinterpretations" of Kwasniewski's earlier remarks.

CNN.com - Polish leader: WMD never existed

"We were informed that weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq, that there is a probability of the existence of such weapons," The Associated Press quoted Kwasniewski as saying. "Today, this information is not confirmed."

...

In January, David Kay -- the former head of the U.S. inspection team in Iraq -- said in January that his team found no evidence Iraq had stockpiled banned weapons.

However, Iraq's interim foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, told CNN he was not yet ready to close the book on the matter.

"Saddam Hussein had so many ways to hide those weapons, to conceal them," Zebari said.

"And over the last decade or so, he played cat and mouse games with inspectors, with everybody else, and he and his regime have not denied that they had those weapons -- that they had developed them.

"I think there is some time to establish that truth and the full truth about the fate of these weapons."

Yahoo! News - Poland 'taken for a ride' over Iraq's WMD: President

In a first sign of official criticism in Poland of the US-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that his country had been "taken for a ride" about the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in the strife-torn country.

"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride," Kwasniewski said Thursday.

...

He said he was disappointed by the new Spanish government's threat to withdraw its 1,300 soldiers.

"We cannot alter our mission to stabilize Iraq to one to destabilize the country," he said.

"Passiveness will lead us nowhere," he added.

Jonah Goldberg: Linking Al-Qaida and Iraq

A salient question:

As it becomes increasingly clear that al-Qaida was responsible for the horrific attacks in Madrid, one question keeps popping up: If there's no link between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, why did al-Qaida blow up those trains?

Howard Dean makes the same connection:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said yesterday that President Bush's decision to send troops to Iraq appears to have contributed to the bombing deaths of 201 people in Spain.

Oh, wait... maybe he doesn't:

"That was what they said in the tape," Dean said. "They made that connection, I'm simply repeating it."

This is hypocrisy... if Al Qaida can be linked to Saddam now, why is it a stretch to say they were linked a year ago, when Saddam was still actively harboring and funding terrorists?

To wit

"The administration simply did not tell the truth about Iraq. The debate is not about whether we should fight terrorism. I supported the war in Afghanistan. . But fighting Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism." - Howard Dean

AP - A Vindicated Hans Blix Returns to U.S.

"It was a reaction to 9/11 that we have to strike some theoretical, hypothetical links between Saddam Hussein and the terrorists. That was wrong. There wasn't anything," he said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.

Has Blix ever heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Has he heard about the Al Qaida videotapes found just north of Baghdad? The terrorist training at Salman Pak? The undisputed intelligence in the Feith memo?

And he disagreed that the war had made the world a safer place.

"Sorry to say it doesn't look that way. If the message was to terrorists that we are willing to take you on, then that has not succeeded. In Iraq, it has bred a lot of terrorism and a lot of hatred to the Western world," he told an audience of 1,200 at NYU.

"Disarmament by war and democracy by occupation are difficult prospects."

...

Blix said he had been convinced for years that the Iraqis were hiding weapons of mass destruction but began having doubts when intelligence provided by the United States and other countries wasn't producing results. He blamed an over-reliance on defectors and a refusal on the part of the White House to consider the possibility that the intelligence was wrong.

Reuters: Majority of Iraqis See Life Better Without Saddam

Almost half (49 percent) of those questioned believed the invasion of their country by U.S. and British troops was right, compared with 39 percent who said it was wrong, the poll commissioned by the BBC and other broadcasters found.

Some 57 percent said that life was better now than under Saddam, against 19 percent who said it was worse and 23 percent who said it was about the same.

Iraqi people appeared optimistic about the future, with 71 percent saying they expected things to be better in a years time, six percent predicting it will be worse and nine percent the same.

...

Asked what political system they believed was needed in their country, 86 percent said they wanted democracy...

Opinion was evenly split on whether the invasion of Iraq. The poll found that 41 percent believed that the invasion humiliated Iraq while 42 percent said it liberated the country.

CNN.com - Document raises concern about U.S., Spain relations

A document written by a senior al Qaeda figure last December and obtained exclusively by CNN revealed the terrorist group was focused on splitting Spain from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq.

But won't we be fine without Spain as long as we have the IAEA (see below)?

CNN.com - U.S. displays nuclear equipment seized in Libya

Claiming one victory in the fight against weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials on Monday displayed a few examples of the tons of nuclear weapons gear retrieved from Libya.

...

Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Washington that his agency also deserved credit for disarming Libya.

...

Gadhafi publicly gave up his weapons of mass destruction programs in December under pressure from the United States and Britain. U.S. and allied agents seized a ship carrying thousands more centrifuge parts bound for Libya in October.

DRUDGE - Gibson Doubts Bush's WMD Claims in Radio Interview

In a wide-ranging hour-long interview with FOXNEWSABCRADIO's Sean Hannity, PASSION OF THE CHRIST director Mel Gibson says he now has 'doubts' about President Bush and re-election... MORE... In the interview, set to air on Tuesday , Gibson says of Bush: 'I am having doubts, of late. It mainly has to do with the weapons [of mass destruction] claims'... MORE...

Update: This story now has a better link, but there is nothing new to report.

CNN.com - Administration: WMD or no WMD, war worthwhile

CNN offers two different versions of this story, here and here.

From the first version:

"I think it's perfectly proper to reserve final judgment until we've been able to go through that process, run down those leads and see what actually took place," Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saddam never lost his intention to have weapons of mass destruction and he had the capability and infrastructure to build them.

From the second:

A U.S.-led army invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, after the Bush administration argued that Iraq was concealing stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons program and long-range missiles in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions. Saddam's government collapsed April 9, when U.S. troops entered Baghdad. U.S. troops captured the fugitive leader in December near his hometown of Tikrit.

No stockpiles of banned weapons have been found, despite an intensive search -- and David Kay, the former head of the U.S. search effort, said in January that such stockpiles were unlikely to turn up.

...

Powell, who delivered the administration's case against Iraq to the United Nations in February 2003, said the United States had presented "the best information we had -- nothing that was cooked.

"It reflected the view of the intelligence community, the United Kingdom's intelligence community, intelligence communities of many other nations," he said. "And it was consistent with reporting from the United Nations over time. So we had solid basis for the information we presented to the president, the intelligence community presented to the president, and for the decisions that the president made."

Reuters - U.S. Officials Defend Iraq War on Anniversary, by Tabassum Zakaria

One year later, U.S. officials steadfastly defended the decision to go to war against Iraq, saying on Sunday that Saddam Hussein had posed an "urgent" threat more dangerous than North Korea, even though weapons of mass destruction have not yet been found.

"I do believe it was the right thing to do and I'm glad it's done," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

...

"I believe to this day that it was an urgent threat," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. "This could not go on and we are safer as a result because today Iraq is no longer going to be a state of weapons of mass destruction concern."

...

Since the war, the administration has shifted its emphasis to human rights abuses by Saddam's regime and away from the elusive unconventional weapons that have not surfaced.

"No more mass graves are being filled," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

"And we have taken this country that has been so brutally oppressed by a dictatorial leader and put it on a path to democracy," he said.

Powell made a public case for taking action against Iraq at the United Nations last February with a presentation that included pieces of intelligence suggesting Baghdad had banned weapons.

He said he had used the best intelligence available at that time.

"And so we may not find the stockpiles. They may not exist any longer. But let's not suggest that somehow we knew this," Powell said on ABC's "This Week."

Administration officials now say regardless of whether banned weapons are found, Iraq had posed a threat because it had the intent to produce such weapons.

CNN.com - Bomb claim overshadows Spain poll

The Socialists, which have pledged to bring home Spanish troops from Iraq if they win Sunday, would benefit if al Qaeda or another Islamic group were found to be responsible because of their opposition to the war, analysts said.

So, Spain's anti-war party would benefit if Al Qaeda is shown to be fighting with Saddam Hussein's regime? Wouldn't that give reason to support the US position?

CNN.com - Terror could sway Spanish poll

Aznar -- who is not standing for re-election as prime minister -- was a strong supporter of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a stance which some believe has made Spain a target for al Qaeda terrorism.

...

Opinion polls show a majority of Spaniards did not support the decision to invade Iraq.

...

Political observers are predicting a victory for the ruling conservative Popular Party over the main opposition Socialist Party.

...

The Socialists have pledged to withdraw all 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq should they win office on Sunday.

...

a man appearing in a videotape claiming to be a military spokesman for al Qaeda in Europe says the terror group is behind Thursday's 10 coordinated bombings.

He says:

"This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world and specifically in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And there will be more, God willing."

Here's a summary of the attack from Neil Boortz:

Unless you have been living under a rock, by now you have heard what happened. 10 backpack bombs exploded within a 15-minute span, starting at about 7:40am yesterday aboard commuter trains. Police also detonated three more bombs. A stolen van was found near Madrid containing seven detonators and an Arabic tape with Koran verses on it. The Spanish government initially pointed the finger at a separatist group, but then a letter was faxed to Reuters by an Al-Qaeda-backed group. They referred to the attack as "operation death trains." The attack occurred 911 days after September 11th. Another letter was faxed to the Associated Press office in Cairo warning that America was next. That's right; Al-Qaeda says America is next.

USATODAY.com - Sons of Saddam had fled to Syria

Two sons of Saddam Hussein escaped to Syria after the U.S. invasion of Iraq a year ago but were ultimately expelled by the Syrian regime, former and current Bush administration officials say.

Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, said his government "categorically denies" letting Saddam's sons into Syria. He said similar charges made in the past turned out to be wrong and "evaporated into thin air."

The U.S. account was provided by one former and two current U.S. officials who have detailed information about Saddam's sons' travels. One was involved in the U.S. invasion, and the other two have direct knowledge of U.S. diplomatic exchanges with Syria's government. They asked not to be named.

...

One current U.S. official said it was possible that the two men crossed in and out of Syria several times before they were finally expelled, traveling with a small number of aides and bribing border guards to gain entry.

Question - are there Iraqi WMD stockpiles in Syria? I don't guess we'll ever know for sure.

CNN.com - Tenet defends Iraq intelligence

Another tidbit:

Tenet said that besides key intelligence findings, his agency also believed that Saddam made a continuing effort to deceive the world about this weapons and that it was possible he could surprise them with something.

Wash Times: Tenet warns of al Qaeda's 'spectacular attacks' plans

Here's a part of Tenet's testimony that Knight Ridder left out:

Mr. Tenet said the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda included "contacts, training and safe haven," as well as help for al Qaeda collaborator Abu Musaab Zarqawi, his role in the assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and operations in Baghdad.

U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq

U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently made a startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with radioactive warning signs.

Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that the missiles are indeed radioactive.

...

The Russian-made missiles are more than 6 feet long. Each carries 1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a high explosive warhead.

The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be a nuclear warhead...

...

The discovery of the uranium-laced R-60 missiles illustrates the difficulty that coalition troops have in trying to dispose of the billons of dollars of Iraqi weapons left behind after the second war.

The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed because the uranium-laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.

Army bomb-disposal experts have gathered up all the R-60 missiles found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily guarded location.

The R-60 has a very small 6-kilogram (13.2-pound) explosive warhead. The R-60 missiles supplied to Iraq by Russia contained uranium in their warheads to assist the small explosive charge in destroying targeted aircraft.

Russian weapons designers added the uranium belt to the missile in order to knock-out western aircraft using the dense metal as a way to punch through heavily armored sections of U.S. made jets.

U.S. troops also found a small number of advanced R-60M warheads at the site. The R-60M missiles are equipped with an advanced laser destruct system that detonates the warhead when it passes close to a target aircraft.

In addition, U.S. troops uncovered several large air-to-surface Kh-28 missiles, NATO code-named AS-9 Kyle.

The Kh-28 is a Russian-made, anti-radar, air-to-surface missile with a top speed of more than 2,000 miles an hour.

The missile is approximately 19.5 feet long, 17 inches in diameter, has a wingspan of 5.5 feet and weighs more than 1,500 pounds. It carries a conventional 340-pound high-explosive warhead and has a range of 54 miles.

U.S weapons experts are also handling the Kh-28 missiles carefully, but not because of its electronic radar-seeking warhead.

The Kh-28 is powered by a liquid-propellant propulsion system that consists of a fuel tank and an oxidizer tank. The oxidizer is a dangerous chemical known as "red fuming nitric acid" or IRFNA. Each missile carries approximately 20 gallons of IRFNA.

The oxidizer is considered to be highly dangerous and a possible carcinogen. U.S. Air Force disposal squads dismantled a Kh-28 found after the 1991 Gulf War using full Hazmat suits and special anti-chemical gear.

Again, U.S. forces are taking great care in the disposal of the missiles for fear of exposing coalition troops and local civilians to hazardous chemicals such as the oxidizer found in the Kh-28 missiles.

Knight Ridder: CIA director disputes Cheney assertions on Iraq, by Jonathan Landay

Here's an interesting article on CIA Director George Tenet's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program.

...

Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that he didn't believe the White House misrepresented intelligence provided by the CIA.

The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar intelligence consensus that Saddam had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.

...

Tenet admitted to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat, that he had told Cheney that the vice president was wrong in saying that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam had a biological weapons program.

Cheney made the assertion in a Jan. 22 interview with National Public Radio.

Tenet said that U.S. intelligence agencies still disagree on the purpose of the trailers. Some analysts believe they were mobile biological-weapons facilities; others think they may have been for making hydrogen gas for weather balloons.

Levin also questioned Tenet about a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, in which Cheney cited a November article in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as "the best source of information" on cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida.

The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon intelligence cell, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest Pentagon official and a key proponent of the war.

"Did the CIA agree with the contents of the Feith document?" asked Levin.

"Senator, we did not clear the document," replied Tenet. "We did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document."

Tenet, who pointed out that the Pentagon, too, had disavowed the document, said he learned of the article Monday night, and he planned to speak with Cheney about the CIA's view of the Feith document.

So, three months passed before Tenet even heard of the article? And do the two agencies disagree with the point behind the memo or just the way it was presented?

Here the article takes a sharp, editorial turn:

In building the case for war, Bush, Cheney and other top officials relied in part on assessments by the CIA and other agencies. But they concealed disputes and dissents over Iraq's weapons programs and links to terrorists that were raging among analysts, U.S. diplomats and military officials.

They also used exaggerated and fabricated information from defectors and former Iraqi exile groups that was fed directly into Cheney's office and the Pentagon. Those groups included the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close to hawks around Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House, but who was distrusted by the CIA and the State Department.

Is this what passes for objective news reporting these days? Those are very serious charges, and not supported by evidence. Does Knight Ridder really stand behind this slander?

AP - Top Iraq Nuke Scientist Seeks UN Probe

The father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program denied Monday that Saddam Hussein tried to restart his atomic activities, but acknowledged Iraq tried to conceal its banned weapons operations before destroying them 13 years ago.

Jafar Dhia Jafar, speaking publicly for the first time since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad, also called for a U.N. probe of what its inspectors knew before the U.S.-led invasion. Inspectors "reached total conviction" that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons yet failed to convey that to the Security Council because of U.S. pressure, he said.

"Reports of the United Nations to the Security Council should have been clear and courageous," Jafar said.

Before the invasion last March, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and his nuclear counterpart Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that in four months of searching, their teams found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction or programs to build them, and needed more time to make a definitive conclusion.

Asked to respond to Jafar's claims, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said ElBaradei was forthright to the Security Council. She rejected the idea that investigators were absolutely convinced Iraq had no weapons program.

...

At the time, U.S. officials insisted Saddam was developing a nuclear weapons program. After the war, U.S. inspectors also found no signs of a revived program. Still, David Kay, the chief U.S. inspector who resigned in January, contended last October he found "evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons." That evidence has not been made public.

...

"Saddam Hussein issued orders in July 1991 for the destruction of all banned weapons, in addition to the systems to produce them. It was carried out by the Special Republican Guard forces," the scientists said in their paper.

USATODAY.com - President lauds Iraqi constitution

[President] Bush also said Tuesday's suicide bombings of Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala, which killed at least 181, were the work of both supporters of the former Saddam Hussein regime and foreign terrorists. He pointed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with al-Qaeda links, as "one of the terrorist leaders," suggesting he was to blame for the attacks.

AP - Blix: Blair Lacked 'Critical Thinking'

Blix told The Guardian newspaper that he was not accusing Blair of acting in bad faith, but said that the prime minister relied heavily on intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

...

Blair, the closest ally of President Bush in the Iraq conflict, cited Saddam's pursuit of banned weapons as the main justification for taking Britain to war. No such weapons have been found so far.

AP - Experts: Russia Helped Iraq With Missiles

Weapons-hunters in Iraq have found evidence that experts from Russia and other countries helped with Iraq's missile programs, but it is unclear whether those countries' governments played any role, U.S. officials said Friday.

...

any such assistance would violate the prewar U.N. sanctions that prohibited foreign weapons aid to deposed President Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the officials said. They provided no details on what was discovered or the nature of the technical help.

MSNBC (Now Scrubbed From Site) - Violence, turnover thwart CIA in Iraq

This article was published yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to blog it before it was erased:

File not found.

Our Web servers cannot find the page or file you asked for.

The link you followed may be broken or expired.

Update: This article was originally published in the Washington Post:

The CIA has rushed to Iraq four times as many clandestine officers as it had planned on, but it has had little success penetrating the resistance and identifying foreign terrorists involved in the insurgency, according to senior intelligence officials and intelligence experts recently briefed on Iraq.

CNN.com - Kennedy: Tenet explanation needed on Iraq / Flap continues over absence of WMD

CIA Director George Tenet must explain why he waited until last month to "set the record straight" that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United State in the months leading up to the war, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Friday.

Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said Tenet must explain why he never corrected President Bush and others in the administration when they warned of a nuclear threat building in Iraq.

"Where was the CIA director when the vice president was going nuclear about Saddam going nuclear?" said Kennedy in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. "Did Tenet fail to convince the policy-makers to cool their overheated rhetoric? Did he even try to convince them?"

Kennedy, a persistent and vigorous Bush critic, said the administration distorted and manipulated the intelligence, when "the only imminent threat was the November congressional election."

AP - Americans in Iraq Struggle Over Threat

There is a growing consensus among senior American officials that while Saddam Hussein loyalists remain a threat to the U.S. effort to stabilize Iraq, the most lethal enemy is now a shadowy, hard-to-define web of foreign terrorists and Islamic extremists.

Reuters - Bush, Blair Misled by Intelligence on Iraq - Blix

George Bush and Tony Blair, perhaps fired by a religious conviction they were battling evil, were seduced by unproven intelligence reports of Iraq's illegal weapons, former chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix says.

In a book, excerpts of which Britain's Guardian newspaper published on Saturday, Blix says that in the run-up to war, the British prime minister and envoys of the U.S. president seemed convinced by the information from their intelligence agencies.

CNN.com - Blair warns of WMD terror threat

"September 11 did not create the threat Saddam posed. But it altered crucially the balance of risk as to whether to deal with it or simply carry on, however imperfectly, trying to contain it," Blair said.

Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Friday the Iraq war was illegal, raising fresh concerns over the UK attorney general's advice on the use of military action.

In an interview in The Independent newspaper, Blix said a U.N. resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force should have been adopted to justify the conflict.

"I don't buy the argument the war was legalized by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions," he told the British newspaper.

CNN.com - General: Expect more violence in Iraq

Intelligence links militant to this week's bombings, he says
CNN's Jane Arraf, Barbara Starr and Brad Wright contributed to this report.

Links between Zarqawi and former members of Iraqi intelligence services under Saddam Hussein's regime have been uncovered, a U.S. military official said Thursday, leading to the assessment the two elements have collaborated in recent attacks.

"We now know these links exist," the official said. "The ball moved forward in the last couple of weeks."

Who is this "official," and why does the source go unnamed? Why is this information buried in paragraph 10?

Detroit Free Press - No proof found to link Al Qaeda with Hussein

BY WARREN P. STROBEL, JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND JOHN WALCOTT

Senior U.S. officials now say that there never was any evidence that Hussein's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terror network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.

Do the meetings have to be "regular" for the link to be legit?

...The structure of the letter, experts said, suggested Zarqawi considered himself an independent operator and not a part of bin Laden's organization.

The structure suggested that, huh? So a letter from a terrorist in Iraq asking Al Qaida for help is now, somehow, evidence that there is no connection?

Scotsman.com: Bush Should 'Come Clean' on Wmd Intelligence - Kay

The former chief US weapons inspector today urged President George W Bush to admit that pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “wrong.”

In his first British newspaper interview, David Kay said he believed the US had lost the credibility of its intelligence following the failure to find stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq.

He told The Guardian: “It’s about confronting and coming clean with the American people, not just slipping a phrase into the state of the union speech. [Bush] should say: ‘We were mistaken and I am determined to find out why’.”

The Australian: Parties agreed on WMD report

Everyone is lamenting the intelligence failure that all agencies all over the world thought Iraq had more WMDs than it apparently did have. Yet all through the 1990s the intelligence failure was exactly the reverse, under-estimating – before 1991 – Iraq's nuclear weapons program and failing to detect its biological weapons program.

Scotsman.com - Fourth Inquiry over Iraq War

Lord Butler’s review of intelligence on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction is the fourth inquiry to be held into events surrounding last year’s war.

But unlike previous investigations by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee and former law lord Lord Hutton, it will focus not on politicians’ judgments on the war, but on the reliability of the intelligence they were given.

Former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler has said that he intends to concentrate more on the structures, systems and processes by which Britain’s intelligence services gather and analyse information than on the actions of individuals in the run-up to war.

The independent review was announced by the Government on February 3, shortly after the publication of the Hutton Report, which cleared ministers of distorting intelligence on Iraqi WMD to bolster the case for war.

Sydney Morning Herald: Westpac denies financing Saddam's WMDs

Westpac Banking Corp has angrily rejected claims by United States Gulf War veterans that it was among banks which financed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's purchase of chemical weapons.

In a writ lodged in the US courts, more than 100,000 Gulf War veterans claim they have suffered injury as a result of exposure to chemical weapons during the 1991 conflict.

BBC - Al-Qaeda denial - statement excerpts

Al Qaeda denies having a role in the "anti-Shia explosions" in Iraq, with this letter:

The Americans are trying to attribute these actions to the mujahideen of al-Qaeda who have inflicted pain and suffering on the United States in Iraq and elsewhere. The United States wants to distort the image of the mujahideen.

And we are today telling all Muslims that we disassociate ourselves from this action and disassociate ourselves from what the Shia Muslims worship other than Allah.

So that our aims are clear to everyone, we are striking the American crusaders and their allies. We are striking the Iraqi police, the agents and lackeys of the United States and the club with which it is striking the mujahideen in Iraq.

We are striking the agents of the United States in the council of unbelief that is called the Governing Council and the Sunnis and Shias in their orbit.

The letter ends with:

Come on, rise with your brother mujahideen against the idol of the age, the United States...

My question is, does the BBC hope they succeed?

Limbaugh: Saddam Had WMDs, Where Are They?

Get this: Iraq, they now say, had no weapons of mass destruction after 1994. You must look at this in a whole bunch of different ways but primarily, let's just take this as accurate for hypothetical purposes. That means that Bill Clinton's missile launch did not take out any WMDs as he hoped to get people to think when he made that statement not too long ago.

If Iraq hasn't had any WMD since 1994, you have a tough time laying this singularly at the feet of George W. Bush. Many people using the same intelligence Bush did, bought it and believed it, including Senator Kerry. Go back to 1998, as we've done over and over and the quotes are there - what Clinton said, what Daschle said, what Kerry said, everybody. They all voted for it anyway with Bush in the White House.

CNN.com - Deadly attacks rock Baghdad, Karbala

What's the story here? A terrorist in Iraq (gasp!) killed Muslim Iraqis on "the holiest Shiite Muslim day of the year."

The devastating strikes come weeks after the coalition found a letter apparently written by Zarqawi to al Qaeda in Afghanistan calling for strikes against Shiites to keep the insurgency alive and taking credit for other attacks.

So we have Baath Party, Sunni, Al-Qaida terrorist causing trouble with Iraqi citizens as the country transitions into a new democracy. The difference between the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan? I don't see one.

USATODAY.com - U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994

A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document.

What is the "significance" threshold? Did the UN resolutions specify a certain number necessary before the weapons program could be classified as a violation?

Kay reported in October that his team found "dozens of WMD-related program activities" that Iraq was required to reveal to U.N. inspectors but did not. However, he said he found no actual WMDs.

...The common findings:

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant.

No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles.

Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the U.N. inspection teams, said in an interview that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq since the war undercuts administration criticism of the U.N.'s search before the war.

No, the criticism wasn't of failure on the part of the UN search team but rather on the lack of pressure on Hussein's regime to actually comply with the resolutions. Hans Blix testified that there was not full compliance, and there was not full disclosure under Hussein's regime. The criticism was about the process and the unwillingness in the UN security council to enforce the resolutions. Inspections did not work because the inspectors were there to verify the regime's compliance with the full support of the Iraqi government; the UN inspectors were not intended or equipped to find Hussein's hidden programs on their own.