Key Iraq WMD claim came from Republican operative group headed by outlaw

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

The most sensational U.S. claim driving the Iraq War was that Saddam Hussein had WMDs that "could be activated within 45 minutes". This claim was specifically made by President Bush in public appearances and disingenuously attributed to British intelligence, as if the British were independently corroborating U.S. claims.

Here is one such public speech by Bush: a national radio address on September 28, 2002:

The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.

It is now revealed that this claim that Iraq could launch a WMD attack within 45 minutes was inserted into the British intelligence dossier by American intelligence operatives. When British intelligence operatives rejected this conclusion, they were overruled by Tony Blair's administration, who insisted that the claim be a vital part of the official British intelligence dossier on Iraq.

It would be bad enough that President Bush cited a "British" intelligence dossier for information inserted by Americans and opposed by British intelligence. However, it is further revealed that the 45-minute WMD claim originated from an "unreliable defector" recruited by a U.S. puppet Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress.

The Iraqi National Congress is anything but what its name implies. This exile group was founded and supported by the U.S. via neoconservatives Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz in 1992. It is run by Ahmed Chalabi, whom the U.S. supports as a replacement for Saddam Hussein. However, Chalabi has not set foot in Iraq since 1958. Chalabi was convicted 11 years ago by Jordan on more than 30 counts of embezzlement and fraud relating to $300 million missing from a large bank he founded and ran in Amman. The former governor of the Jordanian national bank describes Chalabi as "one of the most notorious crooks in the history of the Middle East."

Chalabi is not only a crook, but he and the Iraqi National Congress are "bitterly opposed by both the State Department and the CIA" as leaders of post-war Iraq. However, he is the darling of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who are currently funding his group with hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

In short, our most explosive claim about the danger of Saddam Hussein was planted by "one of the most notorious crooks in the history of the Middle East", against the opposition of British intelligence, a man who is "bitterly opposed" by our own CIA and State Department. Tony Blair then overruled his own intelligence team and trumped up the allegation, which he cited as the official conclusion of British intelligence (when it was in fact an American allegation opposed by the British). President Bush then proceeded to claim in a national address to the American people that "according to the British government, [Hussein] could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given."

This is enough for me. I support the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, for the treason of deceiving the American people and engaging in unlawful acts of war whose primary purpose is to seize the oil assets of a foreign nation.

[Tarhog]

The WMD question has not been conclusively answered ASF. Its quite possible Hussein knew he could not survive a US military engagement and decided his best 'legacy' would be to embarass the US and inflame the Arab world 'post-engagement' by purging his weapons during the extended UN circus determined to be so critical by folks just like you. Is it disappointing and concerning we've not been able to lay hands or eyes on large nerve agent stores and other banned weapons? Yes. But if he delivered them to Syria, and points beyond Syria, its clear we won't find them overnight. And if this in fact happened, it would only underscore the danger of allowing a hostile, unstable tyrant to continue a regime with WMD's in hand.

Your argument that we went in to seize oil assets is ridiculous. We essentially owned and occupied all of Kuwait, and were a hop, skip, and a jump away from Baghdad with Hussein's forces in disarray in 1991. If the evil empire I am rapidly tiring of hearing you obsess about wanted oil, we could have taken it at any point. That is not arguable. But in your estimation, we decided it would be better to wait 10 years, trump up an imagined threat, spend billions to put massive forces in place (supposedly to go up against forces we knew up front we would easily decimate), suffer the opposition of 1/2 the world press, etc.... When we turn over the oil industry to Iraqi control in 2-3 years, I'll be looking for your unconditional apology if your location at that time allows you internet access.

Chalabi may or may not be the villian you describe. I'll confess to not trusting the guy, and I'd be hesitant to give any substantial power or status to anyone who's been 'exiled' as long as he has. If he really cared that passionately about his country, I believe he'd have been more involved in attempting to remove Hussein in the intervening years.

As far as impeachment goes, I do fault Bush for passively allowing the Aliens and the shadow government to control all aspects of US Policy, but they do have nasty little particle beam weapons pointed at the twins...can you really blame the guy. We'll have to wait until a President with real b@lls, say Hilary for example, gets in there to mount real opposition to the Venutians.

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

Originally posted by Tarhog

We essentially owned and occupied all of Kuwait, and were a hop, skip, and a jump away from Baghdad with Hussein's forces in disarray in 1991. If the evil empire I am rapidly tiring of hearing you obsess about wanted oil, we could have taken it at any point.

The 1991 Gulf War was ended when Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft convinced Bush 41 to end the war. I have never argued that that administration acted illegally or represented any kind of evil empire.

We'll have to wait until a President with real b@lls, say Hilary for example

Cheap shot, Tarhog. I voted for Reagan in 1984, Bush in 1988 and Dole in 1996. I've never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.

I realize it's inconvenient that I'm not a Democrat or a leftist / liberal, but let's try to stay within the norms of fair play, yes?

[Tarhog]

I don't view you as a Democratic or Liberal idealogue ASF, that attempt at humor was not really directed at you. As I've said numerous times, I try to stay out of most of your threads because I sense you are a good person and I don't enjoy heaping ridicule on you and piling on with the others. My primary position (and the reason I have a problem with what I view as your truly outlandish call for 'impeachment') is that we do not know what key information was or was not given the President and his key leadership at key junctures prior to 'decision time'. The biggest fallacy I hear over and over here is this idea that we have this incredible intell machine, that our government sees all and knows all. Its assumed Bush KNEW Hussein was innocent of WMD claims, and therefore fabricated other reasons to invade Iraq because we had imperialistic ulterior motives. I view this assumption as highly arrogant and irresponsible. You don't know what went on. The press doesn't know what went on. Its fair to ask 'what went on?', 'what did we really know?', etc..but I would expect information to be viewed with the same skepticism you apply to all actions of the US Government. What I see is a carte blanche assumption of truth applied to all information supporting a sinister and violent US Government, with almost no credibility or benefit of the doubt given to those running our own nation. I think it would be fair to argue that we had sketchy and imperfect information regarding the specifics of Hussein's WMD programs prior to the war. You can even argue whether the details of Iraq's WMD programs were exaggerated for political purposes. But to authoritatively argue it was all some enormous sham, that there were no WMD's, that we did it purely for oil, and that a sitting US President should be impeached based on these wild (and they are wild ASF) accusations is just nuts. And contrary to what some of my left leaning friends here believe, I'd argue the same were it Clinton or Al Gore in office. You've crossed over the line with this thread, because you're not just questioning who's pulling the strings of power, you're authoritatively stating what occurred and calling for action. Again sorry for the weak attempt at humor, nothing personal, but I believe you are overstating your case on a massive level here.

[bubba9497]

Vanishing Agents

Did Iraq really have weapons of mass destruction?

By Fred Kaplan

Posted Friday, May 30, 2003, at 11:01 AM PT

http://slate.msn.com/id/2083760/

Enough already. Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared at the Council on Foreign Relations last Tuesday and, during the question-answer period, made the usual excuses for why his team of biochem-weapon hunters hasn't yet found any. "We've only been there seven weeks," he exclaimed. "It's a country the size of California—it's not as though we've managed to look everywhere," he added.

His point has some validity but less with each day. The size of Iraq was a pertinent obstacle before the war, when U.N. inspectors had few options beyond random drop-ins on suspect sites. But now we own the place. The Pentagon's WMD-hunters can operate unhampered by Baath Party minders and sovereign niceties, so square-footage becomes almost irrelevant. Today's inspectors are like heavily armed detectives. When detectives go looking for something, they don't scour aimlessly; they follow tips, offer bribes, exert intimidation.

Let's look at those 26 former Iraqi officials—out of the 55 most-wanted playing cards—who have surrendered or been captured, and have certainly been interrogated, since the war's end. They include the vice president, the deputy prime minister, the secretary general of the Republican Guard, the army chief of staff, the minister of military industrialization, Saddam's science adviser, the head of the national monitoring directorate (who served as liaison with the U.N. inspectors), and the minister of oil (who was believed to be in charge of facilities that weaponized anthrax and other toxins).

If Iraq had been developing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, several—perhaps all—of these officials would have known about it. They could have told the U.S. interrogators where to look. Yet, it seems, they haven't muttered a clue. Is there not a single cad among them who would trade his loyalty to Saddam for a slice of Andalucian beach property? (Spain might as well donate something for its "coalition" status.)

Or could it be—big gulp—that they haven't given up the goods because there are no goods to give up?

Much has been made this week of two trailers, found in northern Iraq near Mosul, that the CIA says are "mobile biological-weapon production plants." In a May 28 report, considered so significant that the administration released it to the public, the agency goes so far as to call the trailers "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological-warfare program."

The report notes that the trailers contain a fermenter, water-supply tanks, an air compressor, a water-chiller, a device for collecting exhaust gases—just the right components for an "ingeniously simple, self-contained bioprocessing system." The trailers are also "strikingly similar" to descriptions of mobile-bioweapons plants provided by Iraqi exiles who claim to have worked in them or witnessed others who did. Secretary of State Colin Powell displayed drawings, based on these descriptions, during his Feb. 5 "smoking-gun" briefing to the U.N. Security Council.

Read closely, though, the CIA report reveals considerable ambiguity about the nature of these vehicles. For example, it notes that Iraqi officials—presumably those currently being interrogated—say the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather-balloons. (Many Army units float balloons to monitor the accuracy of artillery fire.) In response to this claim, the report states:

Some of the features of the trailer—a gas-collection system and the presence of caustic—are consistent with both bioproduction and hydrogen production. The plant's design possibly could be used to produce hydrogen using a chemical reaction, but it would be inefficient. The capacity of this trailer is larger than the typical units for hydrogen production for weather balloons.

One could ask: Since when was Saddam's Iraq considered a model of efficiency?

The report concedes that U.S. officials found no traces of any bioweapons agent inside the trailers. "We suspect," it states, "that the Iraqis thoroughly decontaminated the vehicle to remove evidence." That's possible.

The report also notes that, in order to produce biological weapons, each trailer would have to be accompanied by a second and possibly a third trailer, specially designed to grow, process, sterilize, and dry the bacteria. Such trailers would "have equipment such as mixing tanks, centrifuges, and spray dryers"—none of which were spotted in the trailers that were found. The problem, the CIA acknowledges, is that "we have not yet found" these post-production trailers. Question: Is it that they haven't been found—or that they don't exist?

It could well be that the CIA is right about its inferences. Either way, these trailers—simply by being capable of producing biotoxins—constituted violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring such technology. However, we're beyond U.N. resolutions at this point. We're looking for evidence that Iraq actually did produce such weapons. From what we know so far, the trailers constitute less than airtight proof.

At his Council on Foreign Relations appearance, Rumsfeld expressed confidence that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and that we'll find the solid evidence someday. But he did seem perplexed about where they all went. "Now what happened?" he asked. "Why weren't they used? I don't know."

He mused about "several possible reasons." First, he reminded his audience how quickly the U.S. ground troops advanced through the Iraqi desert. "Now," he said, "if the speed and the way that [war] plan was executed surprised [the Iraqis], it may very well be that they didn't have time to … use chemical weapons."

This hypothesis seems exceedingly unlikely. Surely they knew that war was coming; they had, as Rumsfeld admits, "strategic warning" of the invasion (even if they lacked "tactical warning" of just when, say, the 3rd Infantry Division would reach Baghdad airport). If they had planned to use—or even contemplate using—chemical or biological weapons, there would have been plenty of time to place them on alert.

"It is also possible," Rumsfeld added, "that they decided that they would destroy [the weapons] prior to a conflict."

If this turns out to be true, it has profound implications. Under this scenario, Saddam would most likely have destroyed the weapons sometime during the Security Council's deliberations, to prevent the U.N. inspectorate from finding them and thus to keep the council from declaring Iraq in "material breach" of U.N. resolutions and, as a result, declaring war. In other words, he would have been disarming in order to avert a war. Such covert disarmament would have been foolish, clumsy, and in itself a violation. (The resolutions required Iraq to declare its weapons and all steps taken to destroy them.) Still, if this is what Saddam was doing, it might have been evidence—however stupidly kept hidden—that the inspections were working, that war was not necessary to disarm Iraq. (Of course, if the American WMD-hunters eventually do find the goods, it would confirm the view that the U.N. inspectors—with all the limitations placed upon them—never would have.)

All this speculation, of course, assumes that Saddam, who certainly had such weapons as late as 1995 (his son-in-law told us where they were, whereupon the U.N. inspectors of the day went and destroyed them), still had them in March 2003. Maybe he did, and maybe we will find out he did, but the case has yet to be made.

To some, this does not matter. In the latest Vanity Fair, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, long the most vociferous advocate of ousting Saddam by force, is quoted as saying there were many issues that justified going to war. "For bureaucratic reasons," he says, "we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

In one sense, Wolfowitz is right. Like most public events, wars, even premeditated wars, rarely have a single rationale. But a powerful rejoinder comes from Tony Blair, the British prime minister. "I have absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction," Blair told reporters on Thursday. Asked if it matters whether they exist, Blair replied, "It matters immensely because the basis on which the war was sold to the British House of Commons, to the British people, was that Saddam represented a serious threat."

It was, of course, sold on that basis to the Congress and to the American people, too.

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

Originally posted by Tarhog

My primary position (and the reason I have a problem with what I view as your truly outlandish call for 'impeachment') is that we do not know what key information was or was not given the President and his key leadership at key junctures prior to 'decision time'.

Tarhog, the only senior administration official in the military chain of command with "plausible deniability" regarding the INC-sourced WMD claim is George W. Bush. But if you go that route, you are going to have to charge Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz with deception of the president in conspiracy to ensnare the U.S. in an illegal war. So, take your pick.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are up to their ears in league with the convicted outlaw Chalabi. Chalabi fled Jordan in 1989, and was then tried and convicted (in abstentia) by Jordanian courts in April 1992 of embezzlement and fraud. He was fined $230 million and sentenced to 22 years in prison; at that moment he became and remains a fugitive from justice.

This apparently qualified him as Cheney and Wolfowitz's man for Iraq, because they funded his founding of the Iraqi National Congress in October 1992.

Wolfowitz in the current administration then proceeded to run his own private intelligence operation (in competition with the CIA), and it appears that it was this group that took the INC-sourced WMD claim and inserted it in the British intelligence dossier, against the opposition of British intelligence and our own CIA.

You can't seriously argue that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz believed these claims or thought the INC or Chalabi had any credibility whatsoever. The only question is whether George Bush was deceived along with the American public by the fraudulent claims of this conspiracy to justify war.

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

Just to put the credibility of Chalabi in perspective, consider that there are probably only a handful of people in history who have been convicted by the courts of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars and whose court-sanctioned fine was $230 million or greater.

Chalabi is objectively one of worst white-collar criminals in history. Any testimony by him in any court of law would be instantly and rightly discredited. He wouldn't be allowed to support a criminal case of purse-snatching.

Within months of his conviction in 1992, this man who hasn't been in Iraq since the 1950s was handpicked by Cheney and Wolfowitz as the rightful opposition leader to Saddam Hussein. Despite the vehement opposition of the State Department and CIA, he has been backrolled by the U.S. with millions of our taxpayer dollars and fronted as our preferred "democratic" leader of Iraq. And the bankrolling of Chalabi seems to have bought the single most explosive and persuasive argument for the war against Iraq: that Hussein was "45 minutes" from being able to attack with WMDs.

If you defend the actions of this administration with regard to this claim, you are arguing that our government has the right to make up anything it wants, sponsor infamous fugitives from justice, and justify entire acts of war and the slaughter of tens of thousands based on intelligence claims it knows to be uncredible.

[fansince62]

tarhog...you are right on several accounts...

first and foremost...this hysteria on the part of some has become tiresome and rather boring....

- there is no primary evidence of the outlandish charges being levied

- there is no direct knowledge on the part of those making the claims

- there is every evidence of selective memory: there is no disputing the "independent" numbers collected by UN inspectors on chembio weapons during the 1990s that are now unaccounted for. not having found them does not equate to they magically never existed. given the line of thought here, I'm surprised that there haven't been posts to the effect that the UN inspectors manufactured these numbers

- the Chalabai probe is interesting in that, given that he has not assumed any seat of power, it really reflects a political attack on Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz in advance of any elections because they happen to support this man - not for any wrong-doing. it's doubly amusing, given that there are legions of leaders in other parts of the Middle East who far exceed this man's crimes, but do not seem to draw fire. It does raise an interesting hypothetical, suppose Chalabai, warts and all, is the best candidate for promoting US interests AND leading Iraq. Beyond the pure joy in attacking Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz (and indirectly Israel) could this be yet another objective these attacks? (undercutting the chances for success or advancing American interests).

- the American public wasn't deceived. as pointed out previously, overwhelming support continues despite the promulgation of these accusations. the purveyors of self-hatred miss the point altogether - this isn't an academic exercise about preserving a dictator in power while continuuing to fund humanitarian visits to Iraq which politely ignore the real atrocities. This was about the exercise of power in an increasingly unstable and dangerous world.

- there is a profoundly disgusting anti-semitism behind all of this

And that raises the truly interesting part: the American people, with exceptions in Atlanta and California, continue to support the President because they know instinctively that the right thing was done. They know that Iraq under Hussein figured critically in the dynamic of terrorism in the Middle East. They know he held chembio weapons. They know he allowed Iraq to be used as a waypoint for itinerant terroists. They know he invaded one country and launched weapons into another. They know he tortured, mutilated and murdered millions. They know Iraqi agents were dispersed globally and were interacting with revolutionary movements. They know he at one time was attempting to develop a nuclear capability. They know he sent students abroad to study the technologies required to engineer chembio weapons.

The American people aren't deluded because of some massive cover-up. And the folks crying the loudest are guilty of some of the grossest moral equivocating imaginable.

Finally, there continues to be an absence of any credible alternative plans whatsoever by those opposed to unfolding events in the Middle East. They did not speak out before. And, even today, they have no concept at all about what should be done. They have no history other than an unbroken string of diplomatic failures....and ever escalating numbers of dead Americans. Their motives should be placed under the proverbial microscope (and by implication the information/argument they advance): how much of what they offer is motivated by hatred of country and hatred of Bush?

[aREDSKIN]

Hello they're right here!!

Reuters

Saturday, May 31, 2003; 7:15 PM

By Mike Pea****

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted on Sunday that Britain and the United States would unearth evidence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and make it public before long.

In an interview with Britain's Sky Television at a Russia-European Union summit, Blair said he had already seen plenty of information that his critics had not, but would in due course.

Snip........

WMD proof 4 those in doubt

[Yomar]

Maybe they have some proof, but saying you have proof is not the same as showing that you have proof.

[Larry]

there is a profoundly disgusting anti-semitism behind all of this

Gee, I must be dense, because I don't see any evidence to support this charge (which you make twice). Could you please point it out to me?

[fansince62]

go back and review some of the threads vis who controls the media, the true intentions of "the cabal"...and you'll get the drift of what I'm driving at. I'm not alone in this observation.....

you aren't dense by any means....just selective......

[Kilmer17]

My question to the doubters-

What else where those mobile labs used for?

What else were those chemical warheads used for?

What else causes chemicals to be present in the Tigris and/or Euphrates?

Why do you discount the statements by Iraqi scientists who say they knew of the weapons and in some cases helped destroy them days bfore the war started?

Im as frustrated as anyone that we havent found an actual weapon. But I realize it takes time, and Im smart enough to understand that proof of weapons is just as scary as an actual weapon and still justifies our actions.

[JimboDaMan]

Kilmer, I’m taking a “wait and see” attitude on this.

We obviously overstated the extent of the WMD threat Saddam presented. The President repeatedly insisted Saddam not only had an active WMD program but that the Iraqis were capable of mounting an attack with them given 45 minutes notice.

That apparently turned out to be incorrect. That’s not to say there was no such program. Certainly at some point he had some capability. Whether those programs had been discontinued, whether the weapons he once had have been destroyed, whether he ever had the kind of immediate threat we claimed, those things are still to be determined. But the specter of Saddam with his evil, stubby finger hovering over the “destruct” button was somewhat exaggerated.

There was an analysis piece in the Post Outlook section a few weeks back discussing how Saddam was attempting to walk a WMD tightrope. His strategy was to be deliberately ambiguous as to his intent and capabilities in an attempt to have his cake and eat it too. He could try to hold off the US by claiming all WMD had been destroyed and development programs ceased. But by not showing proof, he could continue to carry the big stick in his region since nobody knew for sure.

Obviously he lost that gamble. But its possible that this could explain why we have mobile labs and warheads but no actual weapons. We still simply don’t know, and won’t know until we’ve visited all the sites.

I’m still bothered by one thing. If he did have this capability, why didn’t he use it? What gain was there for him in holding back?