Washington Times - Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iraq War Summary, Part II

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

1. to rid a sworn enemy of his WMD programs

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

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

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

5. to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kausfiles - Boots on ground, foot in mouth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NRO - Disappearance & Blame, by Andy McCarthy

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

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

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

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

MSNBC - Vast explosives cache reported missing in Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CNN.com - Zarqawi charged in Jordan attack plot

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

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

Scotsman - Saddam bankrolled Palestinian terrorists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bush concedes, Lindlaw editorializes.

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

Washington Times - Saddam paid off French leaders

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

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

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

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

AP - Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War

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

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

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

Washington Times - Saddam worked secretly on WMDs

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

Comments from "Bob"

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

Do I, Bob?

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for playing, try again.

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

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

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

Key Findings

Volume 1

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


Volume 2

Delivery Systems
Nuclear

Volume 3

Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program
Biological Warfare
Glossary and Acronyms

NRO - BBC & WMD, by Cliff May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These mysteries remain.

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

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

...

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

...

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

CNN.com - Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq

CIA: Saddam intended to make arms if sanctions ended

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

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

...

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

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

Weekly Standard - Unasked and Unanswered

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

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

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

...

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

Washington Post: Report discounts Iraqi arms threat

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

...

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

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

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

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

...

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

...

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

...

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

CNN.com - Cheney, Edwards stretch findings and facts

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

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

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

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

CIA Report Finds No Conclusive Zarqawi-Saddam Link

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

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

CNS News - Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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