and on the Bush/Blair spin on the growing fiasco:CAMP DOHA, Kuwait, Aug. 1 — There is a bold and entirely plausible theory that may account for the mystery over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein, the theory holds, ordered the destruction of his weapon stocks well before the war to deprive the United States of a rationale to attack his regime and to hasten the eventual lifting of the United Nations sanctions. But the Iraqi dictator retained the scientists and technical capacity to resume the production of chemical and biological weapons and eventually develop nuclear arms.
Mr. Hussein's calculation was that he could restart his weapons programs once the international community lost interest in Iraq and became absorbed with other crises. That would enable him to pursue his dream of making Iraq the dominant power in the Persian Gulf region and make it easier for him to deter enemies at home and abroad.
"This is the leading theory," said Gary Samore, director of studies at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former nonproliferation expert on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.
American intelligence experts are still in Iraq trying to determine the status of Mr. Hussein's weapons programs, so it is premature to be too categorical about what they will find. What the theory offers, however, is a new way to make sense of the testimony of captured Iraqi officials who claim that weapons stocks were eliminated, Mr. Hussein's pattern of grudging and partial cooperation with United Nations weapons inspectors and his longstanding ambitions in the region.
If true, it means that the Iraqi threat was less immediate than the administration asserted but more worrisome than the critics now suggest. And it means the decision to use military force to pre-empt that threat was not an urgent necessity but a judgment call, one that can be justified as the surest way to put an end to Iraq's designs but still one about which ardent defenders of the United States' security can disagree.
It is already clear that much of the recent debate over Iraq's weapons programs has been too simplistic. In recent months, the discussion of Iraq's intentions seems to have oscillated from one extreme to another. Iraq was described by hawks before the war as a nation that was an imminent threat to the United States, bristling with chemical and biological weapons, or C.B.W., as intelligence agencies call them. Now the administration's critics seem to suggest that the absence of weapons stocks means that the Saddam Hussein regime had somehow abandoned its goal to be an assertive regional power.
[Vym note: Strawman. I certainly read a lot of critic articles and I never once saw the suggestion that Iraq had done anything like abandoning it's goal to be a regional power]
Neither portrait seems accurate. Certainly, the portrait of Iraq that was initially put forward by the Bush administration appears to have overstated the immediacy of the danger. In building its case for pre-emptive military action, the White House suggested that Iraq had weapon stocks and could provide them to terrorists, who could use them to attack the United States. But American intelligence concluded that Mr. Hussein was unlikely to conspire with terrorists to attack America and would do so only if his regime was threatened. It now seems virtually certain that Iraq did not have the stocks to provide weapons of mass destruction, despite the Bush administration's repeated contention that it believes it will find them.
"Baghdad, for now, appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. against the United States," says the declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons program, which was prepared in October. "Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions."
Some of the technical analysis behind the White House charges was also challenged in the estimate. President Bush suggested in February that Iraq could launch drones with germ weapons from ships at sea and use them to attack the United States. While much of the American intelligence community supported that assessment, there was one notable exception: the intelligence arm of the United States Air Force, which has a real claim to expertise in this area since the Air Force has experience in operating advanced drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles.
"The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, U.S. Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing U.A.V.'s primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (C.B.W.) agents," the declassified version of the estimate notes. "The small size of Iraq's new U.A.V. strongly suggests a primary role for reconnaissance, although C.B.W. delivery is an inherent capability."
But while the White House presented the most alarming interpretation of the available intelligence, it is important to note that the dominant view within the American intelligence community was that Iraq in fact had stocks of poison gas, was continuing its effort to make germ weapons and desired to become a nuclear power. This was not a view that was intended only for public consumption. It was a strongly held assessment within the American military community.
The failure to uncover weapon stocks also does not mean that Iraq's hands were clean. Important questions remain. Why did Iraq only grudgingly accede to inspections under the threat of military invasion if it had nothing to hide? And why did it restrict access to its weapons scientists?
[Vym note: It didn't restrict access to its weapons scientists. They were available for interviews, including unattended interviews]
David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is involved in the American effort to unravel the mystery over Iraq's weapons programs, told Congress on Thursday that American intelligence specialists were making progress. He said that the Iraq Survey Group, which the administration has established to investigate the issue, will not present its findings until it has three types of evidence: multiple Iraqi sources, documents and physical proof.
In the meantime, a plausible theory is that the Iraqi dictator was trying to strike a subtle balance between averting a war and preserving Iraq's military options for the future. Destroying the stocks would deprive the United Nations Security Council of a reason to authorize military action to oust the regime, he calculated. But Mr. Hussein continued to believe that the programs were essential to his strategic ambition to dominate the Persian Gulf and to his efforts to fend off internal and external challenges to his rule.
The Shiites were well aware that Mr. Hussein's forces had gassed the Kurds and had more to fear from a regime armed with weapons of mass destruction than one that no longer possessed such stocks. Or so the theory goes.
It is possible, of course, that Mr. Hussein might have concluded he could accomplish those ends simply by maintaining a sense of ambiguity over his weapons efforts and not continuing the programs themselves. Some notable specialists, however, believe that Iraq was keeping open the option of getting back into the weapons game.
Robert J. Einhorn, a former top State Department official on weapons proliferation, says his hunch was that Mr. Hussein had been trying to preserve a "rapid reconstitution capability."
Amatzia Baram, an Israeli expert on Iraq and Mr. Hussein, has reached a similar conclusion. The Saddam Hussein regime, he said, seems to have ordered the destruction of its weapons stocks while retaining its cadre of nuclear scientists and forbidding them to leave the country.
"Was it only to retain his deterrence or also to keep the option for nuclearization later on?" Mr. Baram asks. "I think both. Saddam without a regional ambition is a reformed man, and I don't think he was reformed."
and a prediction of what will happen:Blair and Bush join forces to spin away weapons issue
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Raymond Whitaker in London
03 August 2003
The British and US governments are drawing up a controversial new strategy to convince the public that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction - an admission that they have so far failed to make a convincing case.
The "big impact" plan is designed to overwhelm and silence critics who have sought to put pressure on Tony Blair and George Bush. At the same time both men are working to lower the burden of proof - from finding weapons to finding evidence that there were programmes to develop them, even if they lay dormant since the 1980s.
In press conferences on either side of the Atlantic on Wednesday, the Prime Minister and the President both conceded that to maintain trust, they would have to prove their pre-war claims on WMD. "In order to placate the critics and cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence," Mr Bush said. "And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons programme."
Mr Blair said that "people need to know that what we did in Iraq was right and justified. That's a case we have to not just assert, but prove over time, both in relation to weapons of mass destruction and in relation to the improvement of Iraq. I think a lot of people will make up their minds on the basis of the evidence."
But the Prime Minister gave a clear signal of the strategy by adding: "There has always been something bizarre about the notion that Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction." His critics say that is beside the point: the question is whether the US and Britain can prove their claims that he still had them in sufficient quantities to pose an imminent threat to the world.
Officials say that WMD information is being collected and collated to create a "big impact". Both Downing Street and the White House are said to have learnt tough lessons from the experience of February's "dodgy dossier" on Iraq and the false claims about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
"Instead of just putting out pieces of a jigsaw and expecting people to see the picture, they are waiting until they have more pieces," said one official involved in the project. "They want to get it right." The authorities had learnt not to put out piecemeal information without proper verification, he added.
A presentation could be made as soon as September, with the aim of providing a boost to Mr Blair ahead of the Labour Party conference at the end of the month, and to Mr Bush as the presidential campaign gathers steam. Officials speak confidently of the hard evidence they claim has been gathered in Iraq since Saddam was ousted three months ago.
The Bush administration has brought in a former UN weapons inspector, David Kay, as civilian chief of the Iraq Survey Group, the military- intelligence unit that is heading the hunt for WMD. Last week, having given evidence to closed-door sessions of the US Senate's armed services and intelligence committees, Mr Kay outlined the strategy. "We do not intend to expose this evidence until we have full confidence that it is solid proof," he said. "The American people should not be surprised by surprises. We are determined to take this apart and every day we're surprised by new advances that we're making."
It is not clear how the evidence would be unveiled, though some have suggested it could be similar in scope to the presentation the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made to the UN Security Council last February. Parts of that seemingly convincing exercise were later found to have relied on highly questionable evidence, however, and one official predicted the new presentation would be a "sober assessment".
Mr Kay told the committees that progress of the survey group had been slow, despite claims by the administration before the war that it had intelligence that would lead them to weapons sites. Interrogations of the regime's top scientists have not led to dramatic discoveries, although he claimed they were giving valuable information.
"It's going to take time," Mr Kay said after one hearing. "The Iraqis had over two decades to develop these weapons. And hiding them was an essential part of their programme. We're not close to a conclusion yet."
John Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the intelligence committee, said: "I remain cautious about whether we're going to find actual WMD. Not just a programme, but the very extensive weapons - ready for attack - that we all were told existed."
Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's WMD claims, said Mr Kay had nothing of substance to tell the committees. "His job is not to tell the truth - it's to provide political cover for the President. He was brought back from Iraq not because he has anything relevant to say, but because the President needs to buy time. There is nothing of substance in anything he has said."
Question: There's a sense here in this country, and a feeling around the world, that the U.S. has lost credibility by building the case for Iraq upon sometimes flimsy or, some people have complained, nonexistent evidence. And I'm just wondering, sir, why did you choose to take the world to war in that way.
Bush: ....In order to placate the critics and the cynics about the intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons program.
A weapons program? That's not what Bush before the war had said he believed that Saddam possessed. Back then, he referred to "massive" stockpiles of WMDs maintained by Hussein (who could at any moment slip one of his WMDs to his close friends in al Qaeda). A program is much different from an arsenal. A program might include research and development but not production. In fact, that increasingly seems to be what was going on in Iraq. A number of former officials of the Hussein government have claimed since the war that Hussein had ordered the continuation of a covert R&D effort but had not instructed his WMD teams to manufacture actual weapons. The goal apparently was to be ready to roll if UN sanctions were lifted or if Hussein found himself at war with a regional foe, say Iran. A weapons program under Hussein's control would have eben worrisome, but not as immediately troubling as the existence of weapons that could be used or transferred. If the assertions of these Iraqis turn out to be true, that would suggest that the inspections-and-sanction campaign against Iraq had succeeded in constraining and containing Hussein.
In responding to this question, Bush was rewriting history--which he frequently accuses his critics of doing--and lowering the bar. It presumably will be far easier for the WMD hunters in Iraq to uncover evidence of weapons programs than of actual weapons. If they do locate proof of covert R&D projects, Bush, no doubt, will say, Told you so. But no, he did not. He said weapons. He said it over and over. What was the evidence stockpiles existed? Where is the evidence now?
