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.

CNN - Australia 'had Iraq intel failure'

Australian intelligence relied on thin and ambiguous information to assess Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a report found, but there was no evidence of political pressure "to bolster the case for war."

Washington Times: British report links al Qaeda, Baghdad

A British government report made public yesterday provides new information showing that al Qaeda terrorists had contacts with Iraqi intelligence in developing chemical arms and that the group worked with a Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist.

The special report by former top civil servant Robin Butler on British prewar intelligence found gaps in reporting on Iraq's weapons and also disclosed new details of terrorist activities of al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is leading attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

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A March 2003 British intelligence report stated that Zarqawi "has established sleeper cells in Baghdad, to be activated during a U.S. occupation of the city."

...The report also said that "al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March."

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British intelligence assessments of connections between al Qaeda and Saddam's government were similar to U.S. intelligence assessments, the report said, adding that there were "contacts between al Qaeda and the Iraqi Directorate General of Intelligence since 1998."
"Those reports described al Qaeda seeking toxic chemicals as well as other conventional terrorist equipment," the report said. "Some accounts suggested that Iraqi chemical experts may have been in Afghanistan during 2000."
The British concluded that the contacts did not lead to "practical cooperation" because of mutual distrust.
"Intelligence nonetheless indicates that ... meetings have taken place between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al Qaeda operatives," the report said. "Some reports also suggest that Iraq may have trained some al Qaeda terrorists since 1998. Al Qaeda has shown interest in gaining chemical and biological expertise from Iraq, but we do not know whether any such training was provided."

UPI - Nuclear arms reportedly found in Iraq

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The missiles wer found in trenches near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, discovered after Iraqi security captured Baath party official Khoder al-Douri, who revealed their location.

The report could not be authenticated by the interior ministry or the national security department, but the paper noted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zibari made a surprise request recently to Mohammed el-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to resume inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Iraq Interior Ministry Says Report on Nukes 'Stupid'

Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near the town of Tikrit.

A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.

WMDs never Bush's main focus: Clinton

Former president of the United States Bill Clinton says the Bush administration may have used claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for going to war against the country.

In an interview with the ABC's Enough Rope program, Mr Clinton says he believes the main concern for the administration was to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

"To shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, to make Israel feel more secure and to give America more leverage in making peace between Palestinians and Israelis," he said.

"I think that in the beginning this whole weapons of mass destruction thing for them was maybe a good way for them to get their foot in the door, but not the major issue for them."

Iraq Uranium Claim Gets Some Support

also found here and here

It was one of the first signs that the intelligence used to go to war in Iraq was wrong: White House repudiation of 16 words in last year's State of the Union speech that had suggested Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa. Yet even as two recent reports sharply criticized prewar intelligence, they also suggested President Bush's claim may not have been totally off-base.

A British report concluded that Bush's statement and a similar one by Prime Minister Tony Blair were "well-founded." In his speech, Bush had attributed the uranium claim to the British government.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report found inadequate evidence that deposed Iraqi President Saddam had been rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. It cited various reports, however, that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Thus, although Bush cited only British evidence that was determined to have been inconclusive, other intelligence files clearly contained other inconclusive evidence of the truth of the claim.

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That claim came under scrutiny after the International Atomic Energy Agency determined that documents purportedly showing Iraq buying uranium from Niger were fake. After Wilson's op-ed appeared, the White House said including the 16 words in the State of the Union was a mistake because the assertion was not well enough corroborated to merit mention in a State of the Union speech. The British have maintain consistently that their intelligence was not based on the forged documents.

But the Senate committee disclosed other intelligence suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium.

The committee cited separate reports received from foreign intelligence services on Oct. 15, 2001, and Feb. 5, 2002, and March 25, 2002. The State Department doubted the accuracy of the reports, but the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had more confidence in them.

Though Wilson reported to U.S. officials there was "nothing to the story" that Niger sold uranium to Iraq, the CIA and DIA were intrigued by one element of his trip. Wilson had said a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki, mentioned a visit from an Iraqi delegation in 1999 that expressed interest in expanding commercial ties with Niger, the world's third largest producer of mined uranium. Mayaki believed this meant they were interested in buying uranium.

The British inquiry said it was generally accepted that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999, and there was intelligence from several sources that the visit was to acquire uranium. "Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible," the report said.

The Senate committee also described various reports about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from French, British and unidentified foreign governments.

An internal CIA memo from June 17, 2003, said, "We no longer believe there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad."

AP - Intelligence report: Jordanian radical seeded Baghdad with sleeper cells ready to attack U.S. forces

British intelligence received reports ahead of the Iraq war saying Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi seeded Baghdad with ''sleeper cells'' to attack U.S.-led forces, and that he may have received chemical and biological weapons from northern Iraq.

The information, released as part of a review of British intelligence, comes as the Iraqi government said Thursday that it sees signs of increasing coordination in the insurgency between al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups and the remains of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

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Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of pro-Taliban fighters possibly linked to al-Qaida fled the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 and made their way to northern Iraq, where they linked up with Ansar al-Islam, a local group that controlled a small enclave on the Iranian-Iraqi border, according to intelligence reports and analysts.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have been part of that group and to have had a role in the running of Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq during 2002.

U.S. and British aircraft pounded the Ansar base, which was within the Kurdish zone, for days at the start of the Iraq war before U.S. and allied Kurdish forces entered the area.

Before the war, U.S. officials said they had evidence that Ansar had tested chemical and biological weapons at the site. The new British intelligence report notes the same thing.

U.S. forces later searched the area for traces of poisons and toxins but there were no reports of any chemical or biological weapons found. It is not clear if the toxins and poisons were destroyed in the attack.

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''We have learned there is a kind of escalating coordination between remains of Saddam's regime and al-Qaida elements such as al-Zarqawi,'' [Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi said in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.

Daily Times: 'Saddam Hussein had link with Al Qaeda'

Saddam Hussein had links with terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal and groups connected to Al Qaeda, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said on Wednesday.

"The record of Saddam shows very well his connections to international terrorists, like Carlos and Abu Nidal," Allawi told BBC radio. "We know for sure that he had established links with chieftains in Sudan, to work closely with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda style organisations," he said.

Knight Ridder Gets It Wrong, by Stephen Hayes

...By Wednesday, Knight Ridder had posted a correction. "President Bush's comments about terrorism were incorrectly reported in that saying the president insisted there was an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The president suggested that such a link existed, but didn't explicitly make that connection."

The correction is incorrect. The president never even "suggested that such a link"--the referent is an "operational link"--existed.

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How many terrorist groups have "established formal relationships" with their state sponsors? State sponsors often--but not always--prefer to keep their terrorist connections loose and informal so that they might avoid detection, deniability being a major goal of states that use terrorists to do their dirty work.

The Senate Intelligence Committee language is important for another reason: Documents from the Iraqi Intelligence service do suggest an "established relationship," just not "an established formal relationship." A report in the June 25, 2004, New York Times, was based on an internal Iraqi Intelligence document: When bin Laden left the Sudan in 1996, according to the Iraqi Intelligence document, Iraqi Intelligence began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of [bin Laden's] current location." The report also indicates that bin Laden "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative" and that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

The Iraqis themselves, then, talked about the connection with al Qaeda in terms of the "relationship" and "cooperation." At the same time, bin Laden was reluctant to formalize the relationship.

Does the lack of an "established formal relationship" preclude cooperation? Not according to bin Laden. The same internal Iraqi Intelligence document reports that bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia.

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the Senate Intelligence Committee report, based on CIA findings, concludes not only that the Iraqi regime "certainly" knew of Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad, but also that Zarqawi and his network were "operating" in the Iraqi capital and in northern Iraq.These facts were left out of the Knight Ridder story...

The New Groupthink, by William Safire

The salient news in the Senate Intelligence Committee report is this: all you have been hearing about "he lied to us" and "they cooked the books" is a lot of partisan nonsense.

The 511-page Senate report concluded this: Nobody in the White House or the Pentagon pressured the C.I.A. to change an intelligence analysis to conform to the judgment that the world would be a safer place with the monstrous Saddam overthrown.

Ah, second-guessers say, but what about "groupthink"? Before Gulf War I, the consensus held that Saddam was five to 10 years away from producing a nuclear bomb, but when we went in, we discovered that his W.M.D. were less than six months away.

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Today, as Election Day approaches, groupthink has swung back again, to this: Saddam not only had no terror weapons, but he had little or nothing to do with Al Qaeda — therefore, our liberation of Iraq was a waste of lives and money.

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Strange, considering how the nation's interest is riveted on this week's report on our Iraqi intelligence mistakes, how little interest was shown in the Senate Intelligence Committee's extensive report on the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, which cost the lives of 17 American sailors.

The committee's staff director tells me that the 35-page document was disseminated to the intelligence community, but was never made public by Bob Graham, a Democrat who was chairman then. No reporter agitated for a copy until I just did.

If the committee was sharply critical of the C.I.A. in 2002, why wasn't the public alerted to the failures that led to the Cole bombing — and why wasn't action taken to shake up the place then?

BBC - Clinton for post-9/11 Iraq action

Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided.

The former US president told the BBC that UK intelligence on the activity of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was more "aggressive" than Washington's.

He added that the world was right to demand weapons inspections in 2002.

But he said war could have been avoided if the UN had passed a resolution threatening military action.

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The former president told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that before the war everyone had thought that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles.

He said that while containment of Iraq was working the situation regarding Saddam Hussein was different after the 11 September attacks.

"The issue was not whether he would use [weapons of mass destruction] but whether he was likely to give them away or have them stolen," he said. "That's why the world supported inspections."

Reuters: Kerry Didn't Read Iraq Report Before Vote -- Aides

Democratic candidate John Kerry, whose campaign demanded to know on Wednesday whether President Bush read a key Iraq intelligence assessment, did not read the document himself before voting to give Bush the authority to go to war, aides acknowledged.

NY Times - Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar Intelligence

The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.

Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.

The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it eliminated references to dissent within the government about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.

UN Admits Saddam Had WMD, by Alphapatriot

Yet another under-reported story that masks reality: last week the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) -- that group of Inspector Clouseaus who were stumbling around Iraq before the war while losing the game of hide-and-seek with Saddam's henchmen -- gave a briefing to the U.N. Security Council about the movement of Iraqi WMD out of the country before, during and after the war...

Iraq's Chemical and Biological Weapons Capacity, by Alex Knapp

I'm getting a little tired of the "no WMD in Iraq" stuff, because it's a complete misrepresentation of the findings of the Iraq Survey Group to date. So let's have a little history review, shall we?

The Butler Report

Jonah Goldberg offers the following links: Butler report download | summary, and the following selections from within:

We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the government's dossier, and by extension the prime minister in the House of Commons, were well founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush's state of the union address of 2003 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well founded.

and

Even now it would be premature to reach conclusions about Iraq's prohibited weapons. Much potential evidence may have been destroyed in the looting and disorder that followed the cessation of hostilities. Other material may be hidden in the sand, including stocks of agent or weapons. We believe that it would be a rash person who asserted at this stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological or chemical agents, or even of banned missiles, does not exist or will never be found. But as a result of our review, and taking into account the evidence which has been found by the ISG and debriefing of Iraqi personnel, we have reached the conclusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime:

a) Had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons programme, when UN inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted.

b) In support of that goal, was carrying out illicit research and development, and procurement, activities, to seek to sustain its indigenous capabilities.

c) Was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted under relevant United Nations security council resolutions, but did not have significant - if any - stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them.

Elsewhere...


AP - Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws

Iraq had no stockpiles of useable chemical or biological weapons before the war, and British intelligence relied in part on "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" sources in deciding to join the U.S.-attack to oust Saddam Hussein, an official inquiry reported Wednesday.

Reuters - UK Probe Raps Flawed Iraq War Intelligence

Prime Minister Tony Blair was cleared on Wednesday of tricking Britain into invading Iraq but drew heat in a report for relying on pre-war intelligence ridden with flaws.

"We found no evidence to question the prime minister's good faith," Lord Butler said after releasing his report that damned Britain's justification for waging war against Baghdad.

While Blair placed undue weight on thin intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weaponry, Butler told reporters there was "no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead."

CNN - Iraq WMD claims 'seriously flawed' / Spy chief should keep job, says report

An official inquiry into the quality of British intelligence used to justify the Iraq war has found that some of the sources were "seriously flawed."

However, former senior civil servant Lord Butler said there was no evidence of deliberate distortion or culpable negligence by the spy services.

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report, by Dan Darling

Here's an analysis of the Senate report with an emphasis on what it says about Iraqi ties to terrorism.

MIT: Searchable Senate Intelligence Report

A searchable, text version of the Senate Intelligence report.

Report On The U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq (pdf)

Click headline above to download the full report in PDF.

New York Times summary: Excerpts From Two Senators' Views About Prewar Assessments of Iraq

BBC - Blair's Iraq evidence 'confusing'

Two former intelligence officers have cast doubts over Tony Blair's use of evidence in the run-up to war in Iraq.

...Dr Brian Jones, a retired top Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) official, told BBC's Panorama he was "confused" by Mr Blair's evidence in the Hutton Inquiry.

...Mr Blair told the inquiry there was "a tremendous amount of information and evidence coming across my desk as to the WMD and programmes associated with it that Saddam had".

But Dr Jones, a critic of the government's Iraq dossier, told Panorama: "Certainly no-one on my staff had any visibility of large quantities of intelligence of that sort."

He said how no-one knew what chemical or biological agents had been produced since the first Gulf War in 1991.

Spy Chiefs 'Retract WMD Intelligence'

Spy chiefs have retracted the intelligence behind Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq posed a "current and serious" threat, it was reported tonight.

The Prime Minister's case for war was supposedly based on evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and was trying trying to produce more.

But MI6 has since withdrawn the assessment underpinning that case, a senior intelligence source has told BBC1's Panorama.

The rare step amounts to an admission that it was fundamentally unreliable, according to The Observer which reveals details of the interview.

Washington Post: Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission

Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

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Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

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The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June.

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Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

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According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

AP: Senate Report Offers Backing for Claim Iraq Sought Uranium in Africa

A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

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French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerien officials, the report said.

Wilson told the committee that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki reported meeting with Iraqi officials in 1999. Mayaki said a businessman helped set up the meeting, saying the Iraqis were interested in "expanding commercial relations" with Niger - which Mayaki interpreted as an overture to buy uranium, Wilson said.

a photo from Iraq

Click image for full view.

Reuters: Iraq Confirms U.S. Has Removed Nuclear Material

Iraq's interim government confirmed Thursday the United States has removed radioactive material from Iraq, saying ousted dictator Saddam Hussein could have used it to develop nuclear weapons.

Weekly Standard - The Unvarnished Facts, by Stephen F. Hayes

Carl Levin distorts and exaggerates intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The Bush administration was careful with its words, the Michigan senator is not.

MSNBC - Full text: Conclusions of Senate's Iraq report

the Senate Intelligence Committee report's conclusions on pre-war intelligence failures in Iraq, as released

NRO Corner: The Intelligence Committee's Report, by Michael Ledeen

what gets me is that it has now become part of the conventional wisdom that Iraq did NOT have WMDs. None at all. Not hardly ever, that is. So when, say, Polish soldiers find some, "coalition authorities" are quick to say, nah, that doesn't count, that's older stuff. As if old WMDs weren't real.

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my own experience has been that the CIA really doesn't want to find WMDs in Iraq. Others tell me emphaticaly that the CIA team virtually never leaves the Green Zone. And Rumsfeld has handed over total authority on WMDs to CIA, so Pentagon people in Iraq can't go explore leads (talk about a bad decision!)...

And before the war started you may recall that I said Iraq was shipping WMDs to Syria and Iran, and remember that a couple of weeks ago the government of Sudan publicly asked the Syrians to take back their WMDs.

In short, I believe there were WMDs, and the issue is, what happened to them?

If you don't believe that, you will have to explain how every major intelligence service in the world agreed there were WMDs. Do you think Ahmad Chalabi duped the Israelis? The Russians? The French?

Give me a break

CNN.com - Report slams CIA for Iraq intelligence failures

In a highly critical report issued Friday, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, told reporters that intelligence used to support the invasion of Iraq was based on assessments that were "unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

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"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Roberts said.

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Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the leading Democrat on the panel, said that "bad information" was used to bolster the case for war.

"We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now," the West Virginia Democrat said.

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Roberts listed several points emphasized in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that were "overstated or "not supported by the raw intelligence reporting," including:

# Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

# Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.

# Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle, probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents.

# The research, development and production of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program was active and that most elements were larger and more advanced than they were before the Persian Gulf War.

He also said the intelligence community failed to "accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to policymakers."

...

"The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure," Roberts said.

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Roberts also called intelligence failures before the war "global" and not confined to the United States.

WaPo: U.S. Faulted for Leaving Tons of Uranium in Iraq

Nuclear experts yesterday questioned a decision by the Energy Department to leave in Iraq nearly 400 tons of natural uranium that could be enriched for a nuclear weapon or used to build a radioactive "dirty bomb."

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Although low-enriched uranium can be made usable for a bomb much faster, the "natural uranium is still dangerous and could be used in a nuclear weapons program or sold to somebody that would misuse it," said David Albright, a nuclear analyst and former weapons inspector in Iraq.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency kept Iraq's uranium under seal in storage facilities for more than a decade before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, but the storerooms were looted when Baghdad fell several weeks later.

The IAEA was allowed back into Iraq to help clean up the facility, and it urged U.S. officials to protect Iraq's former weapons sites from further looting.

But in recent months, radioactive equipment and Iraqi weapons components have been showing up in scrap yards and ports in Europe and the Middle East.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, has unsuccessfully lobbied the White House to let international inspectors return to Iraq. He is now discussing the matter with Iraqi authorities. Before the war, ElBaradei reported that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program, despite assertions to the contrary by the Bush administration, which went to war to remove weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons have not been found.

WaPo: In Valedictory, Tenet Defends CIA From Past, Present Critics

This morning, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is to release an extensive report about the intelligence failures preceding the war in Iraq and, according to officials who have seen the report, will portray prewar assertions about Iraq's weapons as almost entirely false. By all accounts, the report will harshly criticize the CIA and its prewar statements -- now largely discredited -- about Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

Tenet said last month that he is resigning for personal reasons, but the timing is broadly seen as related to the intelligence debacle in Iraq and the campaign season debate about whether the Bush administration exaggerated the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

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Yesterday, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) released an unclassified version of a statement Tenet made in March at a committee hearing in which he dismissed an allegation that Cheney has promoted tying Iraq to al Qaeda.

Asked about the allegation that Sept.11, 2001, hijack leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Tenet said that "we are increasingly skeptical" and that there is no "credible information" that such a meeting occurred. Cheney originally said the meeting was "pretty well confirmed"; as recently as last month, he said "we just don't know" if the meeting occurred.

...

Today's committee report will fault Tenet and the CIA for relying too heavily on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and for the weakness of its human contacts in Iraq. The nearly 500-page document will also say there is no evidence to support the claim that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials.

CNN.com - Senate panel to release report on prewar intelligence

You have to really be looking to find this one, hidden on a page buried three levels down in CNN. From the AP:

A Senate report on intelligence failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq, to be released Friday, will conclude that analysts were not pressured to change their views to support arguments for the attack, congressional and other officials said.

But some intelligence analysts did tell the committee they felt a need to emphasize one piece of evidence over another -- a form of pressure, several Democratic lawmakers will point out in an "alternative view," according to a Democratic congressional aide.

...The Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some lawmakers think a hawkish atmosphere encouraging an Iraq invasion contributed to an environment of pressure that analysts operated in. While analysts told the committee they didn't literally feel pressured, some said that they felt they needed to emphasize certain information, the aide said.

Apparently, an anonymous Republican aide was unavailable for comment.

New York Times - Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence, By DOUGLAS JEHL

Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.

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The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.

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The Senate report, the result of more than a year's work by the panel's staff, is the first of three to be issued this summer that are expected to be damning of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. The presidential commission on the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to release its final report this month, while Charles A. Duelfer, who is heading what has been an unsuccessful effort to find illicit weapons in Iraq, is expected to report in August or September.

US Newswire - U.S. Removes Iraqi Nuclear and Radiological Materials; Joint Operation Conducted with U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced today that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have completed a joint operation to secure and remove from Iraq radiological and nuclear materials that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.

"This operation was a major achievement for the Bush Administration's goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists," Secretary Abraham said. "It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons."

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Twenty experts from DOE's national laboratory complex packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1000 highly radioactive sources from the former Iraq nuclear research facility.

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The nuclear research complex, now under the responsibility of the Iraq Ministry of Science and Technology, was once a central institution for Iraq's nuclear weapons program before being dismantled in the early 1990s, following the first Gulf War.

U.S. Removes Iraqi Nuclear and Radiological Materials

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced today that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have completed a joint operation to secure and remove from Iraq radiological and nuclear materials that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.

“This operation was a major achievement for the Bush Administration’s goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists,” Secretary Abraham said. “It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons.”

Twenty experts from DOE’s national laboratory complex packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1000 highly radioactive sources from the former Iraq nuclear research facility. The DOD airlifted the material to the United States on June 23 and provided security, coordination, planning, ground transportation, and funding for the mission.

Due to safety and security issues surrounding the removed materials, the U.S., consistent with its authorities and relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions, took possession of, and removed the materials to ensure the safety and security of the Iraqi people.

DOE also repackaged less sensitive materials that will remain in Iraq. Radiological sources that continue to serve useful medical, agricultural or industrial purposes were not removed from Iraq.

The low enriched uranium will be stored temporarily at a secure DOE facility and the radiological sources will initially be brought to a DOE laboratory for further characterization and disposition.

The International Atomic Energy Agency was advised in advance of the U.S. intentions to remove the nuclear materials. Iraqi officials were briefed about the removal of the materials and sources prior to evacuation.

The nuclear research complex, now under the responsibility of the Iraq Ministry of Science and Technology, was once a central institution for Iraq’s nuclear weapons program before being dismantled in the early 1990s, following the first Gulf War. The complex was also the consolidation point for highly radioactive sources collected by the Department of Defense with assistance by employees of the Ministry of Science and Technology within Iraq over the last year.

CNN - Blair: WMD may never be found

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq, but he insisted former leader Saddam Hussein posed a threat to "the wider world."

"We know that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we know that we haven't found them," Blair told a committee of lawmakers Tuesday.

"I have to accept we have not found them, that we may not find them.

"But what I wouldn't accept is that (Saddam) was not a threat and a threat in WMD terms," Blair said.

"Whether they were hidden or removed or destroyed even, the plain fact is that he was in breach of United Nations resolutions," he said.

Both Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush used Iraq's alleged weapons program as their primary reason for invading the country, but so far the Iraq Survey Group has yet to turn up any stockpiles of the illicit weapons.

Blair said evidence uncovered by the Iraq Survey Group showed "that [Saddam] had the strategic capability (and) the intent" to use WMD.

New York Times - C.I.A. Held Back Iraqi Arms Data, U.S. Officials Say, by James Risen

The Central Intelligence Agency was told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that Baghdad's programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned, but the C.I.A. failed to give that information to President Bush, even as he publicly warned of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons, according to government officials.

The existence of a secret prewar C.I.A. operation to debrief relatives of Iraqi scientists -- and the agency's failure to give their statements to the president and other policymakers -- has been uncovered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The panel has been investigating the government's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons and plans to release a wide-ranging report this week on the first phase of its inquiry. The report is expected to contain a scathing indictment of the C.I.A. and its leaders for failing to recognize that the evidence they had collected did not justify their assessment that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons.

C.I.A. officials, saying that only a handful of relatives made claims that the weapons programs were dead, play down the significance of the information collected in the secret debriefing operation. That operation is one of a number of significant disclosures by the Senate investigation. The Senate report, intelligence officials say, concludes that the agency and the rest of the intelligence community did a poor job of collecting information about the status of Iraq's weapons programs, and that analysts at the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies did an even worse job of writing reports that accurately reflected the information they had.

...

While the Senate panel has concluded that C.I.A. analysts and other intelligence officials overstated the case that Iraq had illicit weapons, the committee has not found any evidence that the analysts changed their reports as a result of political pressure from the White House, according to officials familiar with the report.

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The possibility that Mr. Tenet personally overstated the evidence has been investigated by the Senate panel, officials said. He was interviewed privately by the panel recently, and was asked whether he told President Bush that the case for the existence of Iraq's unconventional weapons was a "slam dunk."

In his book about the Bush administration's planning for the war in Iraq, "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward reported that Mr. Tenet reassured Mr. Bush about the evidence of the existence of Iraq's illicit weapons after Mr. Bush had made clear he was unimpressed by the evidence presented to him in a December 2002 briefing by Mr. McLaughlin. "It's a slam-dunk case!" Mr. Tenet is quoted as telling the president.

In his private interview with the Senate panel, Mr. Tenet refused to say whether he had used the "slam-dunk" phrase, arguing that his conversations with the president were privileged, officials said.

In hindsight, the Senate panel and many other intelligence officials now agree that there was little effort within the American intelligence community before the war to question the basic assumption that Mr. Hussein was still seeking to produce illicit weapons. Evidence that fit that assumption was embraced; evidence to the contrary was ignored or seen as part of a clever Iraqi disinformation campaign.

...

"There was nothing definitive about it," the spokesman said. "No useful information was collected from the family members, and that's why it wouldn't have been disseminated."

The agency's handling of intelligence on biological weapons has also drawn Congressional criticism. In fact, the C.I.A. relied heavily on four Iraqi defectors to reach its conclusion that Iraq had developed mobile biological weapons laboratories.

But one defector, an Iraqi scientist, said he had been working on a technical program known as a "protein slurry," and that his work was unrelated to biological weapons. He said he did not know of any other biological weapons activity under way in Iraq.

WaPo: Chemicals Not Found in Iraq Warheads

Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.

The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122-milimeter rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals." The statement came just hours after two senior Polish defense officials told reporters in Warsaw, based on preliminary reports, that the rocket rounds contained deadly sarin and that actions by the Polish unit in Iraq kept them from being purchased by militants fighting coalition forces.

Yesterday's coalition release also said that two other 122-milimeter rounds, found by the Poles on June 16 with help from an Iraqi informer, tested positive for small quantities of sarin but were "so deteriorated" that they would have had "limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces."

TM: "What part of "not found" don't I understand?"

The Poles' discoveries generated renewed talk that prewar claims about Hussein's stock of unconventional weapons might yet prove true. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, for example, told an interviewer on Wednesday that the Polish defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, told him about the weapons last weekend at the NATO meeting in Turkey. Though Rumsfeld made it clear he had no personal knowledge of test results, he said that the Poles "believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons -- sarin and mustard gas."

Szmajdzinski told Polish radio that the rockets and mortars had probably been hidden from United Nations inspectors. "Our predictions and reports that Saddam Hussein did not come clean with a large sum of weapons, artillery shells and of weapons of mass destruction were proven true," he said. "Some of those warheads were old, but it could not be ruled out some could still be used."

Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, told Fox News on June 24 that "some" old sarin and mustard rounds have been discovered in scattered places, demonstrating "that the Iraqi declarations were wrong at least in . . . amount."

...

In January 2003, U.N. inspectors discovered a dozen old 122-milimeter rockets that chief inspector Hans Blix described at the time as "designed to carry chemical weapons." Iraq later turned up several more, and all were destroyed. Blix later said he was not sure whether Iraq mentioned them in the 12,000-page weapons declaration it submitted in December 2002.

FOX: Polish Troops Find Sarin Warheads

Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.

"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."

Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.

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The warheads all contained cyclosarin, multinational force commander Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek said.

"Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable," Bieniek told Poland's TVN24 at the force's Camp Babylon headquarters.

"If these warheads, which were still usable, were used on a military base like Camp Babylon, they would have caused unforeseeable damage."

Boston Globe: Warheads containing nerve agent found in Iraq, Polish Defense Ministry says

Polish troops have found two warheads in Iraq believed to contain a deadly nerve agent, but it is not clear what period the weapons came from, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

The two warheads were found in early June in a bunker in the area controlled by Polish forces, and they tested positive for cyclosarin, a substance many times stronger than sarin, the ministry said in a statement.

...

Another dozen were found later in June and were being tested in Baghdad and the United States, he said.

BBC: Troops 'foil Iraq nerve gas bid'

Gen Dukaczewski said the shells had been purchased in June after individuals contacted officials in its military zone in south-central Iraq.

"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," he said.

"An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."

The general said the ammunition had been buried in order to avoid it being discovered by UN weapons inspectors.

They were located in a bunker in the Polish sector, but officials refused to reveal their exact whereabouts.

The former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein produced cyclosarin in the 1980s to fight Iran but was bound by UN resolutions following the 1991 Gulf War to destroy stocks and cease production.

However, inconclusive searches by inspectors led the US to accuse Saddam Hussein of failing to surrender chemical and biological weapons and were cited as one of the reasons for the US-led invasion in 2003.

In May this year, an artillery shell apparently filled with sarin exploded at a roadside near Baghdad but caused no serious injury.

DoD News: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Roger Hedgecock, Newsradio 600 KOGO

Q: Secretary Don Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. A couple of other issues I want to get to were weapons of mass destruction and the Supreme Court rulings. And so quickly, on the weapons of mass destruction, obviously, the opposition to the administration says we should never have invaded. The Bush administration lied about the WMD, never found any, never were any, etcetera, etcetera. Now, I'm reading recent reports in fairly easily accessible published accounts that Syria is holding the weapons of mass destruction or some of them, that others were destroyed, that others might still be hidden in Iraq, etcetera. What is the status on WMD? And if Syria is holding any of them and you guys know about it, how come we haven't heard about it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, let me respond this way. The decision to go to war was a concern on the part of, first, the president, then the Congress of the United States and ultimately the United Nations that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, had used them on his neighbors in Iran and had used them on his own people in Iraq -- chemical weapons -- that he was known to have various other WMD programs and that he was required by the United Nations over a period of some 17 resolutions to file a declaration declaring what he had. And everyone agreed he had filed a fraudulent declaration as to what weapons of mass destruction he had. The debate as to whether to go to war was not whether or not he'd filed a fraudulent declaration. Everyone agreed to that. The only question was should you give him another chance, should you wait and go 18 resolutions or 19 resolutions, another five years or however many.

Now what's actually happened? Right now you have the Iraqi Survey Group, which is a multinational group that's out there reviewing documentation and looking at suspect WMD sites. I was with the Polish minister of defense this weekend in Istanbul, Turkey at the NATO Summit. And in the course of that, he pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across -- I've forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 -- warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas.

Now these are weapons that we always knew Saddam Hussein had that he had not declared and they have tested them and I have not seen them and I have not tested them, but they believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons -- sarin and mustard gas -- quite lethal and that is a discovery that just occurred within the last period of days. If you think about -- most people remember the image of where Saddam Hussein was captured in that hole -- that pit that he was living in. That pit, that hole in the ground was probably big enough to hold chemical and biological weapons sufficient to kill tens of thousands of people. And therefore, it is not hard to hide things in a country the size of California. It's quite easy to hide things. In fact, we finally found a bunch of jet aircraft that they've buried underground.

In answer to your question on Syria, there have been a lot of intelligence speculation and rumors and chatter about the fact that Saddam Hussein may have placed some of his weapons of mass destruction in Syria prior to the start of the war. Until that can be validated and proved, you'll find people in the administration not talking about it.

CNN.com - Transcript of Saddam proceeding

Among the charges against him - "Intended killing by using chemical weapons in Halabjah."

Larry Elder: Iraqi optimists versus U.S. pessimists

What about those purported non-existent links between terrorism, al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Some of the press enthusiastically reported that the 9/11 commission found no "link" or "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the commission -- only charged with investigating the 9/11 attacks -- actually said, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States (emphasis added)."

About connections between al Qaeda, terrorism and Saddam, The New York Times recently wrote: "Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990s were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq."

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, in his new book, "The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America," explores many Iraq/al Qaeda links, including:

"The al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in the late 1990s linked to both al Qaeda and Iraq as a front for producing chemical weapons -- according to the testimony of six senior Clinton administration officials...

"Photographs . . . placing Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, a suspected Iraqi intelligence operative, at key planning meetings with al Qaeda members for the bombing of the USS Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks . . .

"Official records . . . prove that Saddam's regime harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack -- the first al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil . . ."

What about the Jordanian interception of 20 tons of chemicals, including VX and sarin, brought in from Syria by an al Qaeda cell? Remember, former weapons hunter David Kay said, "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 program." Terrorism expert John Loftus said that the terrorists caught entering Jordan probably intended to kill as many as 80,000. "Syria does not make VX nerve gas," says Loftus, "only Saddam Hussein did." Loftus also said, "There's no doubt these guys confessed on Jordanian television that they received the training for this mission in Iraq."

Former Clinton CIA Director R. James Woolsey believes that Iraqi WMD-related material "probably" entered Syria months before the war. Woolsey also notes that Iraq admitted making 8.5 tons of anthrax, which -- reduced to powder -- could fill a dozen easily portable suitcases, and that "Iraq's ties with terrorist groups in the '90s are clear . . . with a decade of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, including training in poisons, gases and explosives. There was no need to show that Iraq participated in 9/11 . . . describing occasional cooperation of the sort that is well chronicled was quite sufficient."

What about the discovery in Iraq of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) tipped with sarin gas, and another with mustard gas? What about Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent public statement that he warned the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein intended to attack America! "After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times (emphasis added) received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing 'terrorist acts' on the United States . . ." said Putin. "This information was passed on to our American colleagues."