Chicago Tribune: Judging the case for war

After reassessing the administration's nine arguments for war, we do not see the conspiracy to mislead that many critics allege. Example: The accusation that Bush lied about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs overlooks years of global intelligence warnings that, by February 2003, had convinced even French President Jacques Chirac of "the probable possession of weapons of mass destruction by an uncontrollable country, Iraq." We also know that, as early as 1997, U.S. intel agencies began repeatedly warning the Clinton White House that Iraq, with fissile material from a foreign source, could have a crude nuclear bomb within a year.

Seventeen days before the war, this page reluctantly urged the president to launch it. We said that every earnest tool of diplomacy with Iraq had failed to improve the world's security, stop the butchery--or rationalize years of UN inaction. We contended that Saddam Hussein, not George W. Bush, had demanded this conflict.

Many people of patriotism and integrity disagreed with us and still do. But the totality of what we know now--what this matrix chronicles-- affirms for us our verdict of March 2, 2003.

Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

Iraqi Chemical Stash Uncovered

Post-Invasion Cache Could Have Been For Use in Weapons

BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday.

Monday's early morning raid found 11 precursor agents, "some of them quite dangerous by themselves," a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, said in Baghdad.

...

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

...

U.S. military photos of the alleged lab showed a bare concrete-walled room scattered with stacks of plastic containers, coiled tubing, hoses and a stand holding a large metal device that looked like a distillery. Black rubber boots lay among the gear.

The suspected chemical weapons lab was the biggest found so far in Iraq, Boylan said. A lab discovered last year in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah contained a how-to book on chemical weapons and an unspecified amount of chemicals.

Chemical weapons are divided into the categories of "persistent" agents, which wreak damage for hours, such as blistering agents or the oily VX nerve agent, and "nonpersistent" ones, which dissipate quickly, such as chlorine gas or sarin nerve gas.

ABC reports Bin Laden - Saddam Link (Jan 14, 1999)

The Media Research Center has a transcript and video.

Audio download is available here.

Thanks to Roger L. Simon for the notice.

Saddam and Al Qaeda

There's abundant evidence of connections.

But there's another speech Mr. Bush still needs to give. That would be the one in which he says: I told you so--there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

The Mother of All Connections

Stephen F. Hayes & Thomas Joscelyn:

The evidence we present below, compiled from revelations in recent months, suggests an acute case of denial on the part of those who dismiss the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship.

There could hardly be a clearer case--of the ongoing revelations and the ongoing denial--than in the 13 points below, reproduced verbatim from a "Summary of Evidence" prepared by the U.S. government in November 2004. This unclassified document was released by the Pentagon in late March 2005. It details the case for designating an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an "enemy combatant."

1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994.
3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban.
4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan.
5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000.
6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition.
7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members.
8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida.
9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997.
10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels.
11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars.
13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.

Melanie Phillips's Diary: The big lie

As I have noted on innumerable occasions, none of this evidence is cast-iron. But there is so much of it, it is simply not credible that Saddam had no links with al Qaeda, even if he was not personally involved in 9/11. And as for his links with other terror outfits, this is indisputable. Saddam's Iraq was the principal training ground for Islamic terrorism.

Just One Minute Wikitorial

Tom Maguire is hosting a Wiki for rebuttals to the latest anti-war NY Times editorial. On the block: info about Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda, and the Iraqi conflict's effect on terrorism, the fight against terrorism and terrorist recruiting. See the comments for links.

See also the Iraqi WMD blog archives, and the links at right.

ABC News: U.S. Weapons Inspector Finishes Iraq Work

"After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted," wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.

"As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible."

...

Among unanswered questions, Duelfer said a group formed to investigate whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the invasion wasn't able to reach firm conclusions because the security situation limited and later halted their work. Investigators were focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria.

No information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the possibility, one addendum said. The Iraq Survey Group believes "it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."

New York Times - Iraqis Find Graves Thought to Hold Hussein's Victims

Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.

AP - Panel: Agencies 'Dead Wrong' on Iraq WMDs

In a scathing report, a presidential commission said Thursday that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear threats posed by many of its most dangerous adversaries.

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined 74 recommendations and said that President Bush could implement most of them without action by Congress. It urged Bush to give broader powers to John Negroponte, his choice to be the new director of national intelligence, to deal with any challenges to his authority from the CIA, Defense Department or other elements of the nation's 15 spy agencies.

It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.

The report was the latest tabulation of intelligence shortfalls documented in a series of investigations since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 against the United States. Numerous investigations have concluded that spy agencies had serious intelligence failures before the attacks.

...

The report implicitly absolves the administration of manipulating the intelligence used to launch the 2003 Iraq war, putting the blame for bad intelligence directly on the intelligence community.

"The daily intelligence briefings given to you before the Iraq war were flawed," it said. "Through attention-grabbing headlines and repetition of questionable data, these briefings overstated the case that Iraq was rebuilding its WMD programs."

...

Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the failures were widespread.

"I don't think you can blame any one person, although the buck does stop at the top of every one of these agencies," Skelton said. "But quite honestly, the fault is spread out across all the agencies."

The commission was formed by Bush a year ago to look at why U.S. spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, one of the administration's main justifications for invading in March 2003.

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the report said. "This was a major intelligence failure."

The main cause was the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, it said, and serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.

AP: New WMD Report to Address Iraq Errors

A presidential commission investigating weapons of mass destruction is highly critical of U.S. intelligence agencies' performance on Iran, North Korea and Libya and attempts to lay out what went wrong on Iraq, according to individuals familiar with the findings.

None of the 15 agencies is expected to be singled out as doing an exemplary job of collecting or assessing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. The report from the nine-member panel led by Republican Laurence Silberman and Democrat Charles Robb is expected next week.

"I don't get the impression that one [agency] is better than the other," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and a member of the commission.

...

Individuals familiar with the report, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the commission devoted significant time to dissecting what went wrong on the Iraq intelligence, including many issues that have been examined by internal government investigations and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The commission, for instance, has reconsidered the issue of aluminum tubes. A National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in October 2002 said that most intelligence agencies believed that Iraq's "aggressive pursuit" of high-strength aluminum tubes provided "compelling evidence" that the Saddam Hussein's regime was reconstituting its uranium enrichment effort and nuclear program.

In its report last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the Energy Department was more accurate in its assessment that Iraq sought the tubes for a conventional rocket program, not a nuclear program.

The Silberman-Robb commission also closely examined U.S. capability to understand the weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, programs of Libya, North Korea and Iran.

Libya has agreed to give up its efforts to develop such weapons of mass destruction and dismantle those it has. Iran and North Korea, however, remain significant hot spots for the United States. Intelligence operatives and analysts are not expected to get glowing marks on their abilities there.

Based on Bush's direction, the commission looked at the merits of creating a new intelligence center devoted to tracking WMD proliferation, as written in the intelligence overhaul law passed in December.

...

In contrast to the Sept. 11 commission, the WMD commission's work has been done largely behind closed doors, with only brief press releases about witnesses who appeared provided to the public.

McCain said he's learned much about the intelligence agencies and how they interact now and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. He said he's gotten an understanding of the value of "human intelligence" — or traditional spying — and that the report was worth the $10 million Congress dedicated to it.

"I think questions had to be answered as to why we were so wrong," McCain said, referring to faulty intelligence on Iraq. "We needed to have recommendations as to how to prevent something like this from ever happening again."

Final drafts of the commission's report are now being circulated among the intelligence agencies for declassification. Historically, they have tried to use that process to keep secret some of the most embarrassing or critical details of investigative findings.

It's unclear how much of this report, which is expected to run hundreds of pages, will be available to the public. Commission spokesman Larry McQuillan said commissioners intend to release as much as possible.

N.Y. Times: Iraq Had WMD 'Stockpiles' in 2003

At Newsmax:

In a stunning about-face, the New York Times reported Sunday that when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003, Saddam Hussein possessed "stockpiles of monitored chemicals and materials," as well as sophisticated equipment to manufacture nuclear and biological weapons, which was removed to "a neighboring state" before the U.S. could secure the weapons sites.

The U.N.'s Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission [UNMOVIC] "has filed regular reports to the Security Council since last May," the paper said, "about the dismantlement of important weapons installations and the export of dangerous materials to foreign states."

"Officials of the commission and the [International] Atomic Energy Agency have repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to report on what it knows of the fate of the thousands of pieces of monitored equipment and stockpiles of monitored chemicals and materials."

Last fall, IAEA director Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed that "nuclear-related materials" had gone missing from monitored sites, calling on Iraqi officials to start the process of accounting for the missing stockpiles still ostensibly under the agency's supervision.

Quoting Sami al-Araji, Iraq's deputy minister of industry since the 1980s, the Times said:

"It appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away."

Calling the operation "sophisticated," Dr. Araji said the removal effort featured "cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," adding, "They knew what they were doing."

The top Iraqi defense official said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's WMD program.

Dr. Araji said that if the equipment had left the country, its most likely destination was a neighboring state.

The United Nations, worried that the nuclear material and equipment could be used in clandestine bomb production, has been hunting for it throughout the Middle East, largely unsuccessfully, the Times said.

the North Korea nuke factor, by Stanley Kurtz on NRO

We've just received an incredibly powerful reminder of why we went to war with Saddam Hussein. No, I'm not talking about the election. Iraq's election was an epochal event, and it certainly did bear out one of the key reasons for invading Iraq. But I am talking about today's front page story in The New York Times confirming the likelihood that Libya received materials for its nuclear program from North Korea. The core reason for our invasion of Iraq was to prevent Saddam from developing a nuclear bomb. While our troops did find nuclear facilities in Iraq, they were far less developed than our intelligence had led us to believe. Yet now it turns out that the danger of Saddam Hussein obtaining nuclear weapons was greater than we believed, not less. Our best estimates at the time was that Saddam might be able to develop a nuclear weapon in about five years, give or take a couple of years. There was also the danger that things were more advanced than that. Now it appears that had he not been taken out, Saddam could have obtained nuclear materials from North Korea and easily jump-started his program. Worse, if North Korea has already produced, or will soon produce, numerous finished nuclear weapons, there is the possibility that it will sell finished weapons to terrorists and rogue states. Had Saddam been left in place, he might easily have been able to buy a finished nuke from the Koreans within a shorter time-frame than Kenneth Pollack worried that he could develop nukes on his own. After all, we already know that Saddam purchased missiles from the North Koreans. So this evidence that North Korea has already crossed the red line of exporting nuclear material is a huge development. It shows that the war in Iraq was absolutely justified. It also shows that the axis of evil is really an axis–they cooperate. More important, the Korea news shows that we've still got a terrible problem with WMDs and terror. The Democrats' attempt to discredit this war has been deeply mistaken. The truth is, the war was a first and necessary step to avert the terrible nuclear danger we still face.

Iraq Watch - Accounting for Iraqi Weapons

This November, Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military found chemicals and bomb-making literature at two houses in Fallujah. One residence housed a chemical and bomb-making factory, while the other contained bomb-making and chemical-weapon material, including ammonium nitrate and military explosives used to make roadside and vehicle bombs. The chemical labs contained directions on how to make anthrax and the blood agent hydrogen cyanide.

Forces also discovered a large cache of weapons in and around a mosque in Fallujah. Small arms, artillery shells, heavy machine guns, antitank mines, mortar systems, rocket-propelled grenades, recoilless rifles and parts of surface-to-air weapons systems were among the items found.

These revelations came in the wake of a report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), released on October 6 on the status of Iraq's mass destruction weapon programs, and amid concerns about the looting of key material at unguarded weapon sites across Iraq.

Mr. Duelfer's report -- and his subsequent testimonies -- presented a mountain of detail about Saddam's weapon efforts. Among his key findings were:

* Iraq had no stockpiles of illicit weapons nor any active program to make such weapons.

* Iraq did, however, maintain a breakout potential, that is the capability and know-how to rebuild WMD after sanctions were lifted.

* Iraq did not live up to its U.N. obligations. U.N. violations included undeclared equipment, materials and laboratories, procurement, and work on long-range missiles and drones.

* Escaping sanctions was Saddam's foremost goal, after regime survival, and Iraq worked actively at this task -- with great success.

* Years of inspections and sanctions succeeded in causing Iraq to abandon its weapon programs and in causing the progressive decay of its infrastructure for making more weapons, especially nuclear weapons.

* Yet sanctions and inspections were untenable over time -- sanctions had eroded greatly and Iraq developed a vast procurement network with which to circumvent them.

* This network included many entities and tarnished the reputations of many countries -- among them Belarus, China, Lebanon, France, Jordan, Poland, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, not to mention U.S. firms not named due to the Privacy Act. These entities helped Iraq make $11 billion in clandestine profits, as well as find and procure banned items.

* The ISG cannot yet determine if any WMD-related items crossed the border in the traffic to Syria and others in early 2003, but Duelfer's judgment is that no "militarily significant stocks" existed or were transferred.

* Evidence was systematically destroyed before the ISG could get in, but actual WMD items may not have been destroyed at that time.

* The ISG's remaining tasks are: to examine a new stash of documents and investigate new leads on potential hide sites.

On Nuclear Weapons:

* There is no evidence Iraq sought uranium in Niger or elsewhere after 1991.

* Iraq did try to keep nuclear scientists together. Some of these had retained documents and technology, but this did not amount to an active program.

On Biological Weapons:

* No evidence of mobile labs was found.

* Iraq destroyed most of its stocks in the early 1990s and abandoned its program by 1995.

* There is no evidence of ongoing BW work, but there is more uncertainty in BW than any other weapon program.

* Iraq retained some limited seed stock.

* There was no evidence of smallpox stock.

On Chemical Weapons:

* Iraq retained no stockpile or production program, but much dual-use equipment remains in Iraq.

* Iraq had a real breakout capability, and the timeline was shortened by skimming from the oil-for-food program, which helped Iraq rebuild its dual-use infrastructure.

* Iraq could have produced significant stocks of mustard agent in three to six months, and nerve agent within two years.

On Missile/Delivery Systems:

* Iraq violated the U.N. limit on missile range (150 km) with the Al Samoud 2 missile, and it had "plans or designs for three long-range ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers, and for a 1,000 km cruise missle." None of these latter missiles was in production, and only one went beyond the design phase.

* Iraq also used SA-2 components, which was expressly forbidden by the United Nations.

* Iraq seemed to draw a line between this missile work and what it deemed WMD-relevant activity; it did not work on warheads. It did work on propulsion, fuel and guidance.

* Iraq probably did not retain any Scuds after 1991.

* Iraq was buying components and technology for its missile efforts in contravention of sanctions, especially after the 1998 departure of U.N. inspectors. In particular, Iraq received missile help from or negotiated with North Korea, Russia, Poland, and Serbia/Montenegro.

* Iraq had done work on UAVs that also violated the 150 km range limit, but there was no evidence these were for use with mass destruction weapons.

CNN - Official: U.S. ends search for WMD in Iraq - Jan 12, 2005

U.S. inspectors have ended their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in recent weeks, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN.

...Charles A. Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group's search for WMD in Iraq, has returned to Iraq and is working on his final report, the official said.

..."The hunt for WMD will continue under whatever authority is in charge, right now the Iraqi interim government," he said.

In October, Duelfer released a preliminary report finding that in March 2003 -- the United States invaded Iraq on March 19 of that year -- Saddam did not have any WMD stockpiles and had not started any program to produce them.

The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended the country's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.

The report found that Iraq worked hard to cheat on United Nations-imposed sanctions and retain the capability to resume production of weapons of mass destruction at some time in the future. (Full story)

"[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted," a summary of the report said.

See also: Washington Post: Search for Banned Arms in Iraq Ended Last Month.