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• Pt. 3 of 4

12. Pretexts for Invasion: September 11 and the Road to War

The controversial presidential election of 2000 resulted in the inauguration of George W. Bush, son of the former president. The younger Bush had ample motivation to set Saddam Hussein in his cross-hairs, not only because it would bring closure to his father’s unfinished work, but it would avenge a 1993 assassination attempt on Bush Sr. in Kuwait, allegedly ordered by the Iraqi government (though recent evidence casts doubt on this connection). Further, his administration was filled with warmongering neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who openly called for the liberation of Iraq, in the hopes of ushering an era of U.S.-style democracy (i.e., plutocracy) throughout the Middle East. According to one account, Bush Jr. made his new priorities known to outgoing President Clinton just before the inauguration. He said he considered Saddam Hussein to be the primary threat, more so than the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization. (D. Schorr, Was Bush Fixated on ‘Getting Saddam’? Christian Science Monitor, 26 March 2004)

On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda proved to be the most real threat, successfully hijacking four commercial airliners and crashing three of them into New York’s World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people. The Bush administration’s response to this unprecedented terrorist threat is a story unto itself, so we will restrict our attention to the aspects pertaining to Iraq. Bush did not take long to make a connection with Saddam Hussein. As Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke would later relate, Bush had made the removal of Saddam an unquestioned top priority from the first National Security Council meeting 10 days after his inauguration. On 12 September, Clarke met with the president and some aides, and had the following exchange:

Bush: Go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.

Clarke: But Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.

Bush: I know, I know. But see if Saddam is involved. Just look. I want to know any shred.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who as a member of PNAC had called for Iraqi regime change in 1997, also had Saddam on the brain. At 12:05 p.m. on 11 September, the CIA reported to Rumsfeld an intercepted 9:53 a.m. communication from one of Usama bin Laden’s operatives in Afghanistan claiming he heard good news and that another target was still to come. This indicated knowledge of the fourth hijacked airliner, which crashed in Pennsylvania prior to reaching its target in Washington. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld regarded this communication as vague, and considered it might not mean something, so there was no good basis for hanging hat. As reluctant as he was to pull the trigger against Usama bin Laden, he was eager to look for an Iraqi connection. At 2:40 p.m., according to notes leaked to CBS News a year later, Rumsfeld sought to strike against Saddam Hussein as well as Bin Laden, though evidence only pointed to the latter, as three hijackers were by then identified as Al-Qaeda operatives. Rumsfeld ordered the military to gather intelligence and Judge whether good enough hit S.H. at same time. Not only UBL. Clearly looking to implicate the Iraqi leader as a pretext for war, Rumsfeld directed, Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.

As would later be revealed by the infamous Downing Street Memo, the U.S. and Britain plotted to invade Iraq as early as April 2002, by embarking on a series of bombing campaigns in the no-fly zones designed to provoke Iraq into providing a casus belli. A briefing paper for a British cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002 reveals that when the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April, he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change. Since regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law, it was necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action. That the British and the Americans should play the dirty game of provoking another country into war is shocking only to those unfamiliar with history, as this old trick has been a staple of Anglo-American foreign policy for over a century.

Discarding previous rules of engagement, in May U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered aircraft in the southern no-fly zone to attack Iraqi command centers and air defenses even if unprovoked. The tonnage of bombs dropped on Iraq rose sharply.

If it were not clear from the above that the U.S. was escalating its activity in order to prepare for a war it sought, the evidence in the Downing Street Memo is damning. At the aforementioned July meeting, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon

…said that the US had already begun spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The director of Britain’s foreign intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove,

reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw agreed that the Bush administration had already decided on war. The minutes of his statement record:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

Here we come to the crux of the plan. The call for the restoration of weapons inspections would serve only as a pretext for invasion. The Americans and the British knew that Iraq’s WMD capability, if it existed, was modest. The Downing Street Memo expresses concerns by the military that Saddam might use WMDs, due to their lack of knowledge of his current capability. Still, the WMD issue was a red herring, a mere excuse for war. Britain, no less than the U.S., was guilty of this cynicism.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

The restoration of inspections would enable the UK and US to link the WMD issue to regime change, their true goal. Raising the WMD issue was purely a political strategy to make the military plan palatable to the public and to other nations.

In the UK as well as the US, the urgency for invasion was in no small part motivated by the hyper-cautious mindset created after the September 11 attacks. This is candidly admitted in a memo from British Foreign Office Political Director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, dated 22 March 2002:

The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programmes, but our tolerance of them post-11 September. This is not something we need to be defensive about, but attempts to claim otherwise publicly will increase scepticism about our case. I am relieved that you decided to postpone publication of the unclassified document. My meeting yesterday showed that there is more work to do to ensure that the figures are accurate and consistent with those of the US. But even the best survey of Iraq’s WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts: the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up.

Mr. Ricketts felt that Prime Minister Blair could help shape American policy, and bring home to Bush home of the realities which will be less evident from Washington. He can help Bush make good decisions by telling him things his own machine probably isn’t.

Ricketts found American attempts to link Iraq to Al-Qaeda frankly unconvincing.

To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:

— the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for;

— it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).

We can make the case on qualitative difference only Iraq has attacked a neighbour, used CW and fired missiles against Israel). The overall strategy needs to include re-doubled efforts to tackle other proliferators, including Iran, in other ways (the UK/French ideas on greater IAEA activity are helpful here).

All the rationalizations are just excuses to gain popular support for a military campaign that is desired for other reasons. The canard that Iraq attacked its neighbor and used chemical weapons is especially flimsy, considering what we know of U.S. support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. At any rate, Iraq is hardly the only country to attack its neighbor, use chemical weapons (ask the British), or launch missiles against Israel. We should not expect these reasons to be substantial, as they serve only to mask the true objective.

Ricketts saw an opportunity for the British to re-shape the objective from the American goal of simple regime change. In his memo to Secretary Straw, he reasoned:

Military operations need clear and compelling military objectives. For Kosovo it was: Serbia out, Kosovars back peace-keepers in. For Afghanistan, destroying the Taleban and Al Qaida military capability. For Iraq, regime change does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam. Much better, as you have suggested, to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD before Saddam uses it or gives it to the terrorists. This is at once easier to justify in terms of international law but also more demanding. Regime change which produced another Sunni General still in charge of an active Iraqi WMD programmme would be a bad outcome (not least because it would be almost impossible to maintain UN sanctions on a new leader who came in promising a fresh start). As with the fight against UBL, Bush would do well to de-personalise the objective, focus on elimination of WMD, and show that he is serious about UN Inspectors as the first choice means of achieving that (it is win/win for him: either Saddam against all the odds allows Inspectors to operate freely, in which case we can further hobble his WMD programmes, or he blocks/hinders, and we are on stronger ground for switching to other methods).

Here principle and expedience seem to merge in a muddle. At first, Ricketts and Straw seem to suggest making the Iraqi WMD threat the objective only as a public relations measure. Yet they must also recognize that regime change would not be a good outcome if there were still an active Iraq WMD program, so making WMDs the objective rather than Saddam is not only good PR, but good policy. There is a concern that Bush personalizes conflicts with Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda’s Usama bin Laden, losing sight of the most important issues. If WMD is to be the central concern, UN Inspections should be given a serious chance to work.

Cynicism is interspersed throughout the memo, as Ricketts wants to avoid outcomes that would end UN sanctions, and place Saddam in a lose-lose situation. Ironically, Ricketts thinks it highly unlikely that Saddam would cooperate with inspectors, but Saddam would do precisely that. The U.S. would go to war anyway, proving that they did not regard the WMD objective as central, but were bent on removing Saddam no matter what. They could not admit this publicly of course, since there was little popular support for war based solely on regime change, and openly declaring such a crassly imperialistic motive would provoke international opposition.

In March 2002 meetings with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, UK Ambassador Christopher Meyer expressed his government’s support of regime change, and its willingness to help provide a justification for public consumption, in the form of a dossier against Saddam. While recognizing the U.S. could go it alone if it wanted to, the British diplomat recommended a strategy for drawing international support. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP [Middle East Peace Process] as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. Once again, inspections are just a trap to provoke a casus belli, and the invocation of UN Security Council Resolutions is ironic, considering the context of two countries flouting the will of the international majority. The invocation of the Arab-Israeli peace process as central to the anti-Saddam strategy is revealing.

Wolfowitz likewise seemed to see Israel as highly relevant to Iraq policy. He wanted to detail Saddam’s barbarism, including the atrocities he had committed in the 1980s. Much of this had been compiled by the first Bush administration, notwithstanding the fact that many of the elder Bush’s cabinet had aided and abetted those very crimes in the Reagan years. Strangely, Wolfowitz thought it important to destroy any notion of moral equivalence between Iraq and Israel.

Wolfowitz was convinced that there was a link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam, and even asked the British ambassador if he knew anything of the supposed Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence. We now know that Atta was not in Prague at the time, and such a meeting never occurred. Still, Saddam gave comfort to anti-Israeli terrorists, which was relevant enough for Wolfowitz.

Secretary Wolfowitz also seemed to have a high estimation of the Iraqi National Congress defectors, and Ahmed Chalabi in particular. In retrospect, we know Chalabi was a highly unreliable source and thoroughly corrupt, yet the CIA warned of this even before the war, only to be brushed off by Wolfowitz.

Let us examine the UN Security Resolutions, which the unilateralist Americans would hypocritically invoke as a justification for war. The UK Foreign Office made such an examination, reporting to Tony Blair on 8 March 2002:

In the UK’s view a violation of Iraq’s obligations which undermines the basis of the cease-fire in resolution 687 (1991) can revive the authorisation to use force in resolutions 678 (1990). As the cease-fire was proclaimed by the Council in resolution 687 (1991), it is for the Council to assess whether any such breach of those obligations has occurred. The US have a rather different view: they maintain that the assessment of breach is for individual member States. We are not aware of any other State which supports this view.

To the surprise of no one who has witnessed American exceptionalism firsthand, the U.S. is the only country that thinks it can decide on its own whether an obligation to the UN Security Council has not been met. Such American nationalism, differing from racism in name only, regards the rest of the world as inferior in judgment, giving the U.S. the prerogative to decide for other nations over and against their will whether their interests have been violated.

Another possible rationale for war considered by the British was SC Resolution 1205, which had been invoked to justify Operation Desert Fox in 1998. This pretext was also fraught with difficulties.

The more difficult issue is whether we are still able to rely on the same legal base for the use of force more than three years after the adoption of resolution 1205 (1998). Military action in 1998 (and on previous occasions) followed on from specific decisions of the Council; there has now not been any significant decision by the Council since 1998. Our interpretation of resolutions 1205 was controversial anyway; many of our partners did not think the legal basis was sufficient as the authority to use force was no explicit. Reliance on it now would be unlikely to receive any support.

In 1998, the UK had joined the US in presuming to enforce Resolution 687 without the approval of the Security Council, though Resolution 1205 at least established that Iraq was in violation of its obligations under 687. As the memo under discussion observes, such a dubious justification would be even less convincing in 2002.

Under international law, nations may exercise the right of self-defense, reporting this exercise to the Security Council. However, the British memorandum notes, to exercise this right there must be more than a threat.

There has to be an armed attack actual or imminent. The development or possession of nuclear weapons does not in itself amount to an armed attack; what would be needed would be clear evidence of an imminent attack. During the Cold War there was certainly a threat in the sense that various States had nuclear weapons which they might, at short notice, unleash upon each other. But that did no mean the mere possession of nuclear weapons, or indeed their possession in time of high tension or attempt to obtain them, was sufficient to justify pre-emptive action.

Clearly, the later U.S. propaganda claim that Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons with hostile intent necessitated preemptive self-defense is without foundation in international law or the accepted understanding of what constitutes self-defense. The British knew this and stated so clearly, while the Americans would have no scruples about cavalierly redefining self-defense. Post-9/11 paranoia yielded speculation that Saddam might pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, yet this fearmongering did not consider that Iraq was far from being able to develop a nuclear weapon, and that its chemical and biological programs did not, of themselves constitute a justification for preemption. During the Cold War, a far greater threat existed in the nuclear-armed Soviet Union, which was often hostile in its diplomatic stance and had the ability to launch a devastating attack on a moment’s notice. Nonetheless, in the absence of an imminent attack by the Soviets, the Americans could not justify a preemptive strike as self-defense. It is absurd, then, to claim that the much less imminently dangerous Iraq situation justified preemption. Indeed, the UN Security Council had unanimously condemned Israel for its preemptive strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.

The British also considered justifying the use of force as a humanitarian intervention. This novel doctrine, invoked to justify the 1999 NATO invasion of Kosovo, had no clear legal standing, but the British position was that it should be used only when a humanitarian catastrophe is clear and well documented, and no means short of the use of force could prevent it. Even then, only proportionate measures should be taken to stop the catastrophe.

Humanitarian concerns were used to justify the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, which the British memo acknowledges were not established by UN Security Council Resolutions, contrary to public U.S. claims that they are enforcing resolutions 687 and 688. In fact, the memorandum notes, Resolution 687 does not deal with Iraq’s internal political repression, and Resolution 688 makes no provision for enforcement. Short of an imminent massive humanitarian catastrophe, there would be no basis for an attack on Iraq beyond limited self-defense of aircraft in no-fly zones.

Lacking a legal basis for invasion, the U.S. and U.K. implemented a two-pronged plan to pave the way for war. In September 2002, the U.K. would release a dossier on Iraq’s weapons programs, grossly exaggerating Iraqi capabilities in order to rally international support for an invasion. At the same time, U.S. and U.K. fighters greatly escalated their bombing campaign, in order to soften Iraqi air defenses in advance of the war.

On 5 September, 100 allied aircraft attacked the H-3 airfield in western Iraq, far from the Shi’ites they were supposedly defending. With Iraqi air defenses down, the British and Americans could leak special forces into Iraq through Jordan. Attacks on Iraqi air defenses continued, and the bombing in September tripled from August’s high rate of 14.1 tons to 54.6 tons. The U.S. and Britain were already waging war against Iraq, more than two months before they sought authorization from the UN Security Council or the U.S. Congress, and all the while telling the public they sought to avoid war except as a last resort. This aggression failed to provoke Iraq into providing a casus belli, but it did succeed in destroying Iraqi air defense systems that could not be replaced in time for the invasion. American pilots conducted practice runs, mock strikes and real attacks in southern Iraq. (New York Times, 3 October 2002) In the words of U.S. Rear Admiral David Gove, the pilots were essentially flying combat missions.

While the U.S. and U.K. were effectively conducting a war against Iraq, the British released their dossier of intelligence on Iraq’s WMD programs. The British were concerned with finding a plausible justification for the war they sought, so it was in their interest to exaggerate the weapons capability of Iraq. Thus the dossier produced extravagant claims, most notably that Iraq could build a nuclear weapon within months of receiving weapons grade material, and that it could deploy chemical and biological weapons in forty-five minutes. The report also asserted that Iraq still had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, as well as mobile weapons labs to hide their programs. These assertions are now known to be completely false, though there remains a question as to whether the dossier reflected the best intelligence of the time.

Since there had been no weapons inspectors in Iraq since the UNSCOM spying scandal of 1999, there was little direct intelligence regarding the status of Iraqi weapons programs. Western intelligence agencies increasingly relied on Iraqi agents of dubious credibility in order to gather information. The CIA and British intelligence (SIS or MI6) were unable to penetrate Saddam’s personal security forces, who protected documents from former weapons programs. There was little understanding to what degree these programs may have been reconstituted in the last three years.

Ironically, according to Iraqi accounts after the war, Saddam was convinced that his security forces had been infiltrated, and assumed that the U.S. knew that Iraq no longer had WMDs. Accordingly, Saddam sought to appease the U.S. by various means in the months before the war, believing that he could return to the good graces of the Americans. As much as Saddam publicly postured against the Americans, thereby increasing his stature in the Arab world, he also recognized the benefits of U.S. support, and sought a return to the relationship maintained in the 1980s. His American counterparts, however, had by this time held a Manichaean view of the Iraqi regime as simply evil, in contrast with Saddam’s more complex attitude toward the United States.

After the war, it was found that many of the dossier’s WMD claims were false and the supposed mobile biological weapons factories were merely for hydrogen gas production. British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly was found dead in July 2003, leading to an inquiry that exposed Dr. Kelly’s concerns that the dossier had been manipulated by Mr. Blair’s government for political ends. In particular, he had objected to the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons in forty-five minutes when he reviewed the dossier in August 2002. According to BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, Dr. Kelly attributed the inclusion of the 45-minute claim to Mr. Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell. An inquiry into the circumstances of Dr. Kelly’s death, which was either suicide or murder, led to public accusations that the government had manipulated the evidence on Iraq and then killed Dr. Kelly to silence him.

Regardless of whether Dr. Kelly was murdered, his claim that the government manipulated the dossier merits examination. Ostensibly, the dossier was to be a report provided by British intelligence (SIS/MI6), summarizing the best information that its own agents and other independent agencies had gathered. In defense of the government, MI6 chief John Scarlett secretly wrote to the prime minister (4 June 2003) that, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), he had been in charge of the drafting of the report without interference from the government.

According to Scarlett, the dossier originally was to have been a paper for public consumption on the WMD capabilities of several countries, but in mid-March 2002 it was decided to limit its scope to Iraq. A draft was sent from the Overseas and Defense Secretariat to Ambassador David Manning on the 21st, but It was decided that the moment was not right to proceed with the exercise and the paper was not released. The defense secretariat sent intelligence updates to Manning throughout the summer months, until on 3 September the prime minister announced the dossier on Iraq would be published.

Over the next few days discussions took place between David Manning, Alastair Campbell, myself and our respective teams about the appropriate structure for the dossier. At meetings on 5 and 9 September it was agreed that this should cover the history of Iraq’s WMD programmes, the history of the inspection process, an account of current capabilities and an account of the nature of the regime to include its record of severe human rights abuse. The purpose was to present a more detailed account of Iraqi capabilities to be placed in a wider context. Unlike the previous drafts, it would refer specifically to intelligence material. It was agreed that since this would now be an intelligence-based document I , as JIC Chairman, rather than OD Secretariat would be in charge of the process.

With responsibility shifted from the defense secretariat to British intelligence, a revised document was drafted. Representatives from the intelligence agencies consulted with relevant experts in two meetings of two to three hours each. Scarlett notes that representatives from the No 10 (Danny Pruce) and FCO Press Offices (John Williams, Paul Hamill and James Paver) were involved. However, regarding the 45-minute claim, Scarlett insists that it was not suggested by No 10, but came from a line of reporting judged to be reliable and was consistent with standing JIC judgements.

In short, British intelligence claimed full responsibility for the assessment of Iraqi weapons capabilities. The historical and human rights chapters of the dossier, which were not intelligence-based, were drafted separately by the Foreign Office. The foreword was drafted by Prime Minister Blair. Part 1, which pertained to weapons intelligence, was submitted to the Joint Intelligence Commission for their approval on 19 September. The final draft was then sent to Alastair Campbell on 20 September. Scarlett and his staff remained in charge of the final publication, including signing off the printer’s proof on 23 September.

Assuming Scarlett’s account is accurate, Kelly’s account of Alastair Campbell’s meddling may be explained by the supposition that Mr. Campbell did not add the 45-minute claim, but merely opposed Dr. Kelly’s attempt to have it removed. Frustrated by this opposition, Dr. Kelly inferred an exaggerated sense of Mr. Campbell’s influence over the dossier.

Why was the intelligence on Iraq so inaccurate? Though the Hutton inquiry effectively closed the door on any scrutiny of British prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet would become quite outspoken on how American intelligence was acquired and presented to the government. After the war, Tenet would be heavily criticized as prewar estimates of Iraqi capabilities proved to be completely false. In public interviews, Tenet defended his prewar assessments even as others in the Bush administration attempted to discredit him.

Tenet clearly believed in the prewar assessments of Iraqi capabilities, as he tried to defend them even as late as 2004. By then, his chief adviser on Iraq, David Kay, had resigned, and was giving public interviews declaring that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles prior to the invasion. Tenet, defending prewar intelligence, admitted that after the end of UNSCOM inspections, he had to rely in part on dubious informants. In particular, two high-level informants in Iraq had claimed that production of biological and chemical weapons was ongoing. (CIA Chief Defends Iraq Intelligence, Associated Press, 5 February 2004) Evidently, these sources had misinformed him, possibly intentionally.

David Kay, in public interviews, confirmed that the CIA had relied heavily on information from Iraqi defectors. This erroneous intelligence, coupled with the false inference that materials unaccounted for by UNSCOM remained extant stockpiles, led to a highly exaggerated estimation of Iraqi capability. This assessment confirmed what the administration already tended to believe.

As postwar inspections proved that Iraq had no WMD, the Bush administration attempted to blame Tenet, a Clinton appointee, for misleading them into war. They leaked to the journalist Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) a conversation where Tenet told the president that the case for WMDs in Iraq was a slam dunk. When Woodward’s book Plan of Attack was published in the summer of 2004, Tenet became the scapegoat for the war. As we have seen, the Bush administration was long committed to regime change regardless of the WMD issue, a fact that would be proven when, contrary to all expectations, Saddam Hussein readmitted inspectors to Iraq.

13. Saddam’s No-Win Scenario: Iraq Admits Inspectors

It is understandable that Western intelligence on Iraq would be highly inaccurate in mid-2002, since Iraq had been closed to weapons inspections for more than three years. However, the tensions created by Anglo-American sabre-rattling in September prompted the international community to seek a diplomatic solution to avert war, and pressure increased on Saddam Hussein to re-admit weapons inspectors.

In 1999, shortly after the UNSCOM spying scandal, the UN Security Council established a new weapons inspection commission called UNMOVIC, as mentioned previously. At first, former UNSCOM chief Rolf Ekeus was nominated to head the commission. However, the Russians and the French objected to this selection, so ultimately the Swedish diplomat and former head of the IAEA Hans Blix was chosen.

UNMOVIC at first was a weapons inspections commission without any actual inspections to conduct. The first three years of its existence was spent analyzing the data collected by UNSCOM and planning inspection methods for when it would return to Iraq. By February 2002, UNMOVIC had 180 trained experts ready to serve in Iraq on its behalf.

The first real duties of UNMOVIC came in May 2002, when Security Council Resolution 1409 was passed. This resolution authorized the sale to Iraq of any goods not proscribed by Resolution 687, subject to the review of UNMOVIC and IAEA experts. Although military goods were still strictly prohibited, this resolution represented a broad consensus by the international community that the sanctions ought to be relaxed in order to make civilian goods available to Iraqis and alleviate the humanitarian crisis. It is no accident that this softening of the sanctions regime was followed by increased belligerence by the U.S. and U.K., designed to provoke an Iraqi military response.

As discussed previously, the Anglo-American alliance had resolved that the Iraqi regime should be toppled, regardless of its cooperation with weapons inspections. The military strikes were designed to force the Ba’athists into a no-win scenario: either they refuse to admit inspectors, in violation of the Security Council, or they admit inspectors, in which case violations would also be found. Either way, a justification for continued sanctions would be maintained.

What no one seriously expected is that the Iraqi regime would fully cooperate with weapons inspections. This was due to the uncritically held belief in the West that Iraq had revived its chemical and biological weapons programs. Cooperation came grudgingly, but it did come, and in the process, the entire WMD myth justifying the war would fall apart.

In August 2002, after President Bush had already made up his mind on military action, Secretary of State Colin Powell persuaded him to push for inspections, in order to garner international support for U.S. policy. This was over the objections of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, who did not wish to bother with the UN at all, according to the Downing Street memo. Nevertheless, the Bush administration would hypocritically claim to be defending UN resolutions when in fact it was only concerned with pursuing its own unilateral policy. This would become increasingly clear in the months that followed.

In early September, the Bush administration began a media blitz making the case for strong action against Iraq. On the 7th, Bush met with Tony Blair and falsely claimed in public that the IAEA had said in 1998 that Iraq was six months away from a nuclear weapon. No such report was issued then or any other year. On the 8th, Condoleeza Rice claimed that Iraq had tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes that were only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. There was in fact no evidence that these tubes, which the Iraqis claimed to be for missiles, had dimensions suitable for use in centrifuges. Despite the lack of any real evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, Rice infamously warned: We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Others in the Bush administration fear-mongered just as recklessly. Dick Cheney claimed that Iraq had been aggressively developing nuclear weapons over the last fourteen months. Increasingly, we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities. He also referred to the infamous aluminum tubes. Donald Rumsfeld claimed that Iraq was two to six years away from possessing nuclear capabilities. Colin Powell found that weapons inspections were of limited usefulness, because once defectors came out, they told us more information than the inspectors ever had found. Of course, this additional information turned out to be completely wrong.

The Bush administration had little use or respect for weapons inspectors, so it is unsurprising that they paid little heed to Scott Ritter, who conservatively estimated that 90% to 95% of Iraq’s chemical stockpiles were destroyed under UNSCOM. This meant that virtually all of Iraq’s WMD capability, if any, would had to have been developed since 1998, in the last five years. There was nothing but dubious testimony in evidence of this. The manufacture of chemical or biological weapons, he noted, releases gases that could be detected by satellite, and any advanced nuclear weapons program would emit detectable gamma radiation.

Former UN under-secretary-general Count Hans von Sponeck told Scotland’s Sunday Herald (8 September 2002) that he believed the West was lying about Iraq’s weapons programs. He recalled that the Al-Dora and Fallujah factories, suspected of having been chemical weapons plants, were comprehensively trashed by order of UNSCOM. He visited the wrecked site in 1999 and again in July 2002, belying claims that they had resumed chemical and biological weapons production. It should be emphasized that the intelligence claims about Iraq’s weapons programs were repeatedly contradicted by weapons inspectors before the invasion.

On the 12th of September, President Bush addressed the U.N., recapitulating Iraqi violations of Security Council resolutions. He made the following demands of the Iraqi government:

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.

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.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi’a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others—again as required by Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues as required by the Security Council resolutions.

If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

The most serious grievance was the first, as only this could suffice to justify the pre-emptive invasion that Bush sought. The other grievances, though serious, did not have any SC Resolution support as a basis for military action. Iraqi support of terrorism was hardly greater than that of Syria and other Arab regimes. The Al-Qaeda connection had already been discredited by then, though Rumsfeld's advisor Richard Perle was still claiming that Saddam Hussein had met with Mohammed Atta before the September 11 attacks. Even so, Perle maintained, The main objective of the American administration is to avoid weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands. (Times of India, 8 September 2002)

The Iraqis correctly perceived that the WMD issue was the greatest concern of the international community, so foreign minister Naji Sabri promptly sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 16 September. Stunningly, the Iraqi government agreed to allow the return of the United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq without conditions. The Americans responded coolly, stating in a White House press release:

This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime’s compliance with all other Security Council resolutions. This is a tactical step by Iraq in hopes of avoiding strong UN Security Council action. As such, it is a tactic that will fail. It is time for the Security Council to act.

In other words, the U.S. did not believe the Iraqis would really cooperate with inspectors, and even if they did, the U.S. would seek military action regardless. At that time, the Americans were pushing for a Security Council resolution that would provide a pretext for invasion that was lacking in Resolution 687. Russia, by contrast, welcomed the Iraqi decision and saw it as an important step toward ending the sanctions.

Faced with the real danger of losing international support for authorization of military force, the U.K. published its dossier on Iraq on 24 September 2002. This intelligence report contained some alarming claims, particularly regarding Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons program. It said that Iraq was one to two years away from building a nuclear weapon if it could obtain weapons-grade material, and that indeed the Iraqis had tried to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa. They had also tried covertly to acquire technology and materials which could be used in the production of nuclear weapons.

We now know that these claims were utterly false, but even at that time it was known that the British had stretched the truth considerably. The claim of a one to two year period to build a nuclear weapon was utterly implausible. Iraq’s nuclear program had been disbanded by 1994, and their nuclear scientists and engineers now lived in poverty. (Imad Khadduri, Iraq’s nuclear non-capability, 21 November, 2002) Even with an active nuclear program and physical plant, such a timetable would have exceeded the performance of other countries that had developed atomic bombs. The allegation that Niger considered selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq was based on a single report, found by the U.S. State Department in early 2002 to have been a dubious and unsubstantiated claim, not to mention physically impracticable. This did not prevent both the British and the Americans from continuing to use the Niger claim as late as March 2003.

The British dossier also distorted the assessments of the Joint Intelligence Commission in order to strengthen the case for war. The JIC assessment repeatedly emphasized that intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs since 1998 was limited and that much of the report was based on judgment and assessment. The dossier, by contrast, spoke with certitude of what we know and characterized the intelligence as extensive, detailed, and authoritative. Where the JIC assessment judged it possible that Saddam would use WMDs against the Shi’ites, the dossier said that he had plans to use them. The full extent of this distortion would not become clear until Lord Butler’s report in 2004, but even in 2002 some of the dossier’s characterization of intelligence was challenged.

Most of the dossier simply rehashed what the Americans and British had already alleged in the weeks and months previous. Thus it changed relatively few opinions about the war, at least among political figures and journalists. The BBC and the Washington Post, among others, published the views of dissenters who challenged the evidence and demanded that assessments of weapons capabilities be made by inspectors, not the U.S. and British governments. This opportunity would come soon, as weapons inspectors finally obtained full access to Iraq.

On 30 September and 1 October, UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei, Director of the IAEA, met with an Iraqi delegation led by General Amer Al-Sa’adi in Vienna. They discussed the practical arrangements necessary to resume weapons inspections. The Iraqis provided a backlog of declarations of dual-use equipment as required by Security Council Resolution 715 (1991). Blix and El-Baradei reported to the Security Council on the outcome of these talks. On 8 October, the two chiefs sent a letter to Al-Sa’adi listing their understanding of the requirements, and Iraq confirmed its acceptance on 10 October and 12 October.

The terms of the 8 October letter were made binding on Iraq in Security Council Resolution 1441 on 8 November. The resolution censured Iraq’s past and current failure to comply with weapons inspectors, and recalled that… …its Resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area.

The resolution further stated that Resolution 687 imposed obligations on Iraq as a necessary step for achievement of its stated objective of restoring international peace and security in the area. This language, which was adopted from a US/UK draft, would give the Anglo-American allies a pretext for the use of military force without obtaining a new Security Council authorization. Resolution 660, which authorized the first Gulf War, would also authorize any peacekeeping operation made necessary by Iraq’s failure to comply with Resolution 687. The terms by which Iraq was to comply with that resolution was set out in the appended letter from Blix and El-Baradei. Iraq would provide full cooperation to weapons inspectors from UNMOVIC and the IAEA, even at presidential sites, and inspections were to resume within forty-five days. If Iraq failed to comply, the UK and US would have their pretext for war.

Against all expectations, Iraq would comply with Resolution 1441 to the general satisfaction of UNMOVIC and the IAEA. On 13 November, the Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Saberi Ahmed confirmed Iraq’s intention to comply. Dismissing American and British claims of Iraq WMDs as baseless fabrications, he noted that Iraq had already agreed to inspections on 16 September (before the British dossier was published). Although the letter protests at some of Resolution 1441’s language deploring Iraq's non-compliance, it continues:

We hereby ask you to inform the Security Council that we are prepared to receive the inspectors within the assigned timetable.
...
We are eager to see them perform their duties in accordance with the international law as soon as possible.
...
It will then become the lawful duty of the Security Council to lift the blockade and all the other unjust sanctions on Iraq.
...
The SC will be compelled before the public opinion and the law to activate paragraph 14 of its resolution No. 687, by applying it to the Zionist entity [Israel], and then, to all the Middle East region, to make it a region void of mass destruction weapons.
...
Therefore, through you, we reiterate the same words to the Security Council: Send your inspectors to Iraq to make sure of this, and everyone will be sure, if their way of conduct is supervised so that it becomes legal and professional, that Iraq has not developed weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical, or biological, as claimed by evil people. The lies and manipulations of the American administration and British government will be exposed, while the world will see how truthful and adequate are the Iraqis in what they say and do.
...
The fieldwork and the implementation will be the decisive factors that will reveal whether the intentions were really for the Security Council to make sure that Iraq is void of those alleged weapons, or whether the whole thing was nothing but an evil cover by those who were behind the resolution who have no scruples to utter debased slander and to tell lies to the public opinion including to their own peoples.
...
The final word and reference will still be resolution No.687 with its obligations on both the Secretary general and Iraq, along will the code of conduct agreed upon in the agreement signed by the Secretary-General in New York on 16th September, 2002, and the press statement of Hans Blix and ElBaradei in Vienna in 30/9- 1/10/2002.

Some of the Iraqi bluster would turn out to be justified, as there indeed would prove to be no WMDs in Iraq, while the American and British allegations would be utterly discredited. The foreign minister noted that the binding documents were Resolution 687 and the agreement with Blix and El-Baradei. As long as Iraq complied with these, there would be no more pretext for sustaining the sanctions, much less invading Iraq. The letter pokes at American and British hypocrisy with its oblique reference to the nuclear weapons possessed by Israel, a country that has done much to threaten the peace and security of the Middle East. Naturally, if the British and Americans were more concerned with the well-being of the Middle East than with dominating it, they would subject Israel to the same nuclear non-proliferation standards.

On 18 November, Blix and El-Baradei arrived in Baghdad with an advance team of about thirty people. Technical personnel restored the former base of operations for UNSCOM and IAEA, which was now to be known as the Baghdad Ongoing Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Centre (BOMVIC). The two directors met with Iraqi officials to discuss implementation of inspections, and stressed the importance of a full declaration of materials possessed. This was to be submitted by 8 December to UNMOVIC and IAEA. They also requested responses to questions and comments on the backlog of declarations submitted in October.

On 25 November, Dr. Blix briefed members of the Security Council on his Baghdad visit. That same day, the first team of UNMOVIC inspectors arrived in Iraq. The first inspection was scheduled for 27 November, well in advance of the forty-five-day deadline. On 7 December, Iraq submitted its declaration, which was essentially the same in content as what been submitted in 1996, but with some explanation of previously unaccounted precursors for chemical warfare agents.

14. The Case for War Weakens

The Iraqis proved to be far more cooperative with UNMOVIC than they had been with previous inspection teams. Inspectors were granted immediate access to any site, including presidential sites, at any time, and the Iraqis offered their own resources to facilitate the inspection process. Dr. Blix reported to the Security Council on 9 January 2003:

Evidently if we had found any ‘smoking gun’ we would have reported it to the Council. Similarly, if we had met a denial of access or other impediment to our inspections we would have reported it to the Council. We have not submitted any such reports.
...
The absence of ‘smoking guns’ and the prompt access which we have had so far and which is most welcome, is no guarantee that prohibited stocks or activities could not exist at other sites, whether above ground, underground or in mobile units.

On the other hand, the absence of dramatic finds is no indication that the inspections have been futile. After four years without international inspections a steadily increasing number of industrial, administrative, military, scientific and research sites are again being opened for inspections under the authority of the Security Council. The transparency is increasing—but does not exclude dark corners or caves.

Let me conclude: the prompt access/open doors policy that has been pursued so far by Iraq vis-à-vis the inspectors is an indispensable element of transparency in a process that aims at securing disarmament by peaceful means. However, prompt access is by no means sufficient to give confidence that nothing is hidden in a large country with an earlier record of avoiding disclosures.

Although the Iraqis had been fully cooperative in providing the inspectors prompt and complete access to all sites, this did not suffice to prove that there was nothing hidden. Iraq’s December declaration asserted that there were no more prohibited weapons in the country, but Blix insisted that it was not enough for Iraq to rely on the absence of incriminating evidence.

A person accused of the illegal possession of weapons may, indeed, be acquitted for lack of evidence, but if a state, which has used such weapons, is to create confidence that it has no longer any prohibited weapons, it will need to present solid evidence or present remaining items for elimination under supervision. Evidence can be of the most varied kind: budgets, letters of credit, production records, destruction records, transportation notes, or interviews by knowledgeable persons, who are not subjected to intimidation.

I have not asserted on behalf of UNMOVIC that proscribed items or activities exist in Iraq, but if they do, Iraq should present them and then eliminate them in our presence. There is still time for it.

If evidence is not presented, which gives a high degree of assurance, there is no way the inspectors can close a file by simply invoking a precept that Iraq cannot prove the negative. In such cases, regrettably, they must conclude, as they have done in the past, that the absence of the particular item is not assured.

Blix suggests some possible means by which Iraq might prove its innocence, and argues that a state seeking international confidence should not be held to the standard of an individual defending himself from a crime. Blix does not claim that the Iraqis are hiding prohibited weapons or activities, but simply demands that they present any exonerating evidence promptly and proactively, or he cannot close their case.

In his press briefing on the same day (9 January 2003), Dr. Blix took a position of cautious neutrality, neither accusing Iraq of non-compliance nor declaring cooperation to be complete. He did not try to influence the debate on whether to give Iraq more time, simply saying, I think that it is for the Council to decide what patience they have. Still, he declared his belief that, Inspections can be undertaken with full Iraqi cooperation. We can finish (our work) under 1284 within a year. I believe that is still the case. If not, we cannot.

The inspectors had difficulty getting Iraqis to agree to be interviewed in private or outside of Iraq. Still, Blix believed that interviews were fruitful:

We do carry out a lot of interviews as we go into installations, whether military or civilian, whatever, we carry out a lot of interviews and we get a lot of information. And frequently minders are present. Interviews with minders present are not useless, they were not in the past, and they are not useless now.
...
We are ready to use the options we can, and at the same time we cannot force any individual to speak if he doesn’t accept that. We cannot force anybody to go abroad or force them to defect.

Although the Bush administration would seize upon the lack of private interviews outside Iraq as evidence of non-compliance, Dr. Blix understood that the UN had no right to coerce an individual to speak on those terms. In this as in other areas, the Bush administration had a weak grasp of human rights.

On 27 January, Dr. Blix delivered his 60-day report to the Security Council, as required by Resolution 1441. In this report, he would state that Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance—not even today—of the disarmament, which was demanded of it, a quote that was seized upon by war advocates as evidence of non-compliance. Let us examine what Dr. Blix said in its full context.

Dr. Blix began his report by recapitulating the history of Security Council resolutions on Iraq. In particular, he noted that Resolution 687 called for declarations of WMD and long range missiles, followed by verification of these declarations by UNSCOM and the IAEA. These organizations would then supervise the destruction of the prohibited weapons programs.

Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance—not even today—of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. [Emphasis added]

Viewing the emphasized quote in its full context, we see that Blix is not accusing Iraq of non-compliance, but observes that Iraq is submitting to inspections only grudgingly, under international pressure. In contrast with South Africa, which voluntarily renounced WMDs and welcomed inspections, the Iraqis relinquished their WMD programs only under duress. Their failure to genuinely accept disarmament means only that they would prefer to be permitted to develop WMDs, not that they are actually hiding such programs.

Blix then recounted the hide-and-seek game in the early nineties when the Iraqis tried to hide the extent of their past weapons programs, causing the verification process to take much longer than expected. Still, much disarmament was accomplished in that period:

The implementation of resolution 687 (1991) nevertheless brought about considerable disarmament results. It has been recognized that more weapons of mass destruction were destroyed under this resolution than were destroyed during the Gulf War: large quantities of chemical weapons were destroyed under UNSCOM supervision before 1994. While Iraq claims—with little evidence—that it destroyed all biological weapons unilaterally in 1991, it is certain that UNSCOM destroyed large biological weapons production facilities in 1996. The large nuclear infrastructure was destroyed and the fissionable material was removed from Iraq by the IAEA.

As discussed previously, chemical weapons and their precursors were destroyed in the early nineties without protest by the Iraqis. With the biological weapons facilities, however, there was some resistance, as these had been converted to civilian use. The Iraqis tried to hide the former use of these facilities in order to spare them from destruction. In no case were stockpiles of biological agents found. At any rate, by 1996, Iraq’s WMD capability was eliminated. Still, to Blix, three questions remained: 1) how much might remain undeclared and intact from before 1991, and possibly thereafter; 2) what, if anything, was illegally produced or procured after 1998, when the inspectors left; and 3) how it can be prevented that any weapons of mass destruction be produced or procured in the future.

Blix correctly remarked that the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998, for Iraq did not expel them, but UNSCOM withdrew in anticipation of the US bombing campaign, and they were not permitted to return because of the spying scandal. Resolution 1284, recognizing that much disarmament was accomplished, yet there still were key remaining disarmament tasks, offered suspension of sanctions in return for Iraqi cooperation. Still, when a new organization, UNMOVIC, ostensibly more independent of the U.S., was created, the Iraqis did not permit them to enter for three years.

Resolution 1441 (2002) was adopted on 8 November last year and emphatically reaffirmed the demand on Iraq to cooperate. It required this cooperation to be immediate, unconditional and active. The resolution contained many provisions, which we welcome as enhancing and strengthening the inspection regime. The unanimity by which it was adopted sent a powerful signal that the Council was of one mind in creating a last opportunity for peaceful disarmament in Iraq through inspection.

Recognizing the urgency of UNMOVIC’s mission, Blix gave his assessment of Iraq’s cooperativeness. In this regard, he made an explicit distinction between cooperation on process and cooperation on substance. The Iraqis were highly cooperative in matters of process:

Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable. Our inspections have included universities, military bases, presidential sites and private residences. Inspections have also taken place on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest, on Christmas day and New Years day.

Although his assessment of Iraqi cooperation on process was generally positive, Blix did encounter some problems. The Iraqis suspected that UNMOVIC inspectors would commit acts of espionage similar to those of UNSCOM. For this reason, Iraq attempted to impose conditions on the use of U-2 surveillance, until finally relenting in February. The Iraqis claimed that the inspectors were asking questions not related to WMD, essentially accusing them of spying, to which Blix took offense. There also were public demonstrations against the inspectors, accusing them of spying. Blix suspected these protests were actively supported by the government.

Dr. Blix explained what he meant by cooperation on substance:

The substantive cooperation required relates above all to the obligation of Iraq to declare all programmes of weapons of mass destruction and either to present items and activities for elimination or else to provide evidence supporting the conclusion that nothing proscribed remains. Paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002) states that this cooperation shall be active. It is not enough to open doors. Inspection is not a game of catch as catch can. Rather, as I noted, it is a process of verification for the purpose of creating confidence. It is not built upon the premise of trust. Rather, it is designed to lead to trust, if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items.

A deficiency in substantive cooperation meant failure to declare all WMD programs or to provide evidence that nothing proscribed remained. Blix believed that the Iraqis had not fully accounted for their past weapons programs, and had not adequately demonstrated that nothing remained. It is not the job of inspectors to try to find this evidence; the Iraqis are supposed to voluntarily produce it. As we now know from hindsight, they simply had no further evidence to offer. Unfortunately, due to the secretive nature of the programs, much had been destroyed without adequate documentation.

Blix maintained that Iraq’s December 2002 declaration did not address the key remaining disarmament tasks in the final UNSCOM report of January 1999 and the Amarim report of March 1999.

These reports do not contend that weapons of mass destruction remain in Iraq, but nor do they exclude that possibility. They point to lack of evidence and inconsistencies, which raise question marks, which must be straightened out, if weapons dossiers are to be closed and confidence is to arise. They deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq rather than being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.

As a concrete example of an unresolved issue, Blix noted that the VX Iraq formerly possessed may have been of higher purity than previously declared, or may have even been weaponized at one point. Not all of the VX precursor chemicals were adequately accounted.

Further, there was an apparent discrepancy in Iraqi claims about chemical munitions consumption. An Iraqi Air Force document indicated…

…that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.

War apologists made much of the discovery of a small number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad. Most neglected to mention that these were empty warheads. Iraq claimed that these were overlooked among a batch of 2,000 stored during the Gulf War. Due to this discovery of empty warheads, Iraq made proactive efforts to find other unaccounted rockets.

During my recent discussions in Baghdad, Iraq declared that it would make new efforts in this regard and had set up a committee of investigation. Since then it has reported that it has found a further 4 chemical rockets at a storage depot in Al Taji. I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.

Again, there is no evidence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. All that was found was a few empty warheads and a small quantity (one liter) of chemical precursor, and this with the help of the Iraqis themselves.

The Iraqis claimed to have unilaterally destroyed 8,500 liters of anthrax in the summer of 1991. They were unable to provide evidence of the quantity produced or destroyed. Blix demanded convincing evidence that this destruction took place. This presents an epistemic problem: if no records of the destruction were made in 1991, how could the Iraqis produce evidence now? There would be no way to physically prove what quantity was destroyed.

Further, Iraq’s December 2002 declaration did not include some 650 kg of bacterial growth media which it had reported to the Amorim panel in February 1999. For some reason, the Iraqis deliberately omitted these media, renumbering the other pages. Blix noted that this amount of media could, in principle, be used to produce 5,000 liters of anthrax, a point seized upon by Powell. However, this would also require amounts of anthrax for the media to act upon. Bacterial growth media admits of diverse uses, including legitimate medical and scientific use.

Blix professed neutrality on the question of whether Iraq possessed weapons until the outstanding questions were resolved.

Our Iraqi counterparts are fond of saying that there are no proscribed items and if no evidence is presented to the contrary they should have the benefit of the doubt, be presumed innocent. UNMOVIC, for its part, is not presuming that there are proscribed items and activities in Iraq, but nor is it—or I think anyone else after the inspections between 1991 and 1998—presuming the opposite, that no such items and activities exist in Iraq. Presumptions do not solve the problem. Evidence and full transparency may help.

As mentioned earlier, Iraq agreed to proactively search for empty chemical munitions. Yet Blix asked: Why not extend the search to other items? Declare what may be found and destroy it under our supervision? The answer, as we now know, is that the Iraqis knew that they never had anything besides chemical weapons in the first place. Biological weapons would degrade if not maintained, and nuclear facilities are too large and complex to be hidden. Still, Blix proposed this remedy:

Find documents. When we have urged our Iraqi counterparts to present more evidence, we have all too often met the response that there are no more documents. All existing relevant documents have been presented, we are told. All documents relating to the biological weapons programme were destroyed together with the weapons. However, Iraq has all the archives of the Government and its various departments, institutions and mechanisms. It should have budgetary documents, requests for funds and reports on how they have been used. It should also have letters of credit and bills of lading, reports on production and losses of material.

Blix considered the possibility that Iraqis were hiding documents in private homes. One inspection found in the private home of a scientist, a box of 3,000 pages of documents, much of it relating to the laser enrichment of uranium. The Iraqis claimed that this was an isolated incident, but Blix warned, Any further sign of the concealment of documents would be serious.

If the Iraqis were unable to produce documents, Blix suggested that Iraq ought to find individuals who could testify about the extent of the weapons programs and their dismantlement. Iraq provided a list of merely 400 names of people who had worked in the prohibited weapons programs, in contrast with the over 3,500 names known to UNSCOM from various sources. At my recent meeting in Baghdad, the Iraqi side committed itself to supplementing the list and some 80 additional names have been provided. UNMOVIC asked for interviews in Baghdad with 11 of these 480 individuals.

The replies have invariably been that the individual will only speak at Iraq’s monitoring directorate or, at any rate, in the presence of an Iraqi official. This could be due to a wish on the part of the invited to have evidence that they have not said anything that the authorities did not wish them to say. At our recent talks in Baghdad, the Iraqi side committed itself to encourage persons to accept interviews in private, that is to say alone with us. Despite this, the pattern has not changed. However, we hope that with further encouragement from the authorities, knowledgeable individuals will accept private interviews, in Baghdad or abroad.

Notwithstanding these concerns, Blix spoke confidently about the achievements of UNMOVIC so far.

In the past two months, UNMOVIC has built-up its capabilities in Iraq from nothing to 260 staff members from 60 countries. This includes approximately 100 UNMOVIC inspectors, 60 air operations staff, as well as security personnel, communications, translation and interpretation staff, medical support, and other services at our Baghdad office and Mosul field office. All serve the United Nations and report to no one else.

Furthermore, our roster of inspectors will continue to grow as our training programme continues—even at this moment we have a training course in session in Vienna. At the end of that course, we shall have a roster of about 350 qualified experts from which to draw inspectors. A team supplied by the Swiss Government is refurbishing our offices in Baghdad, which had been empty for four years. The Government of New Zealand has contributed both a medical team and a communications team. The German Government will contribute unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance and a group of specialists to operate them for us within Iraq. The Government of Cyprus has kindly allowed us to set up a Field Office in Larnaca.

All these contributions have been of assistance in quickly starting up our inspections and enhancing our capabilities. So has help from the UN in New York and from sister organizations in Baghdad. In the past two months during which we have built-up our presence in Iraq, we have conducted about 300 inspections to more than 230 different sites. Of these, more than 20 were sites that had not been inspected before. By the end of December, UNMOVIC began using helicopters both for the transport of inspectors and for actual inspection work. We now have eight helicopters. They have already proved invaluable in helping to freeze large sites by observing the movement of traffic in and around the area. Setting up a field office in Mosul has facilitated rapid inspections of sites in northern Iraq. We plan to establish soon a second field office in the Basra area, where we have already inspected a number of sites.

Mr. President, we have now an inspection apparatus that permits us to send multiple inspection teams every day all over Iraq, by road or by air. Let me end by simply noting that that capability which has been built-up in a short time and which is now operating, is at the disposal of the Security Council.

These are the words of a man who is confident in UNMOVIC’s increasing capabilities, and in what they have accomplished in a short time. Though frustrated at times with a lack of Iraqi proactiveness in providing substantive evidence, Blix was encouraged by developments following his recent meeting in Baghdad. In order to resolve remaining disarmament issues, Iraq would have to provide documentation, or encourage individuals to fill documentary gaps with their testimony. The Iraqis had already established commissions of inquiry to locate missing materials. Blix did not claim to know if Iraq had stockpiles or not, or if they simply lacked documentation of their destruction. He knew the Iraqis took an innocent until proven guilty attitude, but he demanded positive evidence that the weapons had been destroyed in the amounts declared. Still, as of late January, despite extensive surprise inspections, UNMOVIC yielded no evidence that Iraq had re-armed itself with WMD since 1998.

15. The Inevitable War: Powell’s Hard Sell

In spite of Iraq’s unprecedented level of cooperation with weapons inspections, the Bush administration sought to make the specious argument that Iraq was in violation of Resolution 1441, so member states would be authorized to use any means necessary to restore peace to the region. It was disingenuous, to say the least, to argue that Iraq’s degree of compliance with UNMOVIC was jeopardizing regional security. The only threat of war was that caused by military buildup by the United States and Britain; Iraq was not threatening her neighbors in any way. Apparently disconnected from the reality of Iraq’s cooperation with UNMOVIC, President Bush declared, The game is up, as if Saddam were playing the same cat-and-mouse games of the 1990s. Bush needed to promote this falsehood in order to justify the invasion, for Iraq’s cooperation with inspectors would strip the U.S. of its fig-leaf casus belli. To make the case that Iraq was not compliant with Resolution 1441, he sent Colin Powell to give a public presentation before the UN in February. This presentation would become infamous for its alarmism and mendacity.

Many commentators critical of the war have given Gen. Powell a free pass, characterizing him as a dutiful soldier forced to give a case he did not know was full of false evidence. In fact, we have seen that long before February 2003, Powell was an active promoter of an Iraqi invasion, not a reluctant warrior by any means. His press interviews, a matter of public record, repeatedly downplayed the effectiveness of weapons inspections, while reiterating the obviously false party line that war was sought only as a last resort. When Iraq made overtures to the UN in August 2002 regarding the resumption of inspections, Powell responded:

There is no need for further clarification or discussion of a comprehensive approach. The approach is clear and spelled out in appropriate UN Security Council resolutions. Inspections aren’t the issue; disarmament is the issue. Making sure that they have no weapons of mass destruction and they did what they said they were supposed to do, but we know that they haven’t, at the end of the Gulf War. (Press Briefing in Manila, 3 August 2002)

This Iran-Contra veteran was no stranger to double-dealing. He knew the administration was set on a regime change policy at least since early 2002, and that the UN route, pursued over the objections of Condoleeza Rice, was designed to grant legitimacy to the invasion. Gen. Powell never articulated a scenario where Iraq could satisfy the U.S. In fact, his comments above set an impossible criterion: Iraq must not merely submit to inspections, but it must destroy weapons it does not have.

This theme of disarmament would dominate the last month before the war, as the Bush administration would categorically insist that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, the results of the inspections notwithstanding. The public would be asked to trust secret U.S. intelligence over the firsthand testimony of the inspectors. This intelligence would be presented at the now infamous briefing Gen. Powell gave before the UN on 5 February 2003.

Herein lies the fault of the U.S. position: it is not that the intelligence was faulty; it is that the Bush administration refused to allow even for the possibility that the intelligence might be mistaken. This is inexcusable because (1) the intelligence agencies themselves acknowledged this possibility, and (2) denying this possibility enabled Bush to issue an impossible ultimatum: Iraq must destroy weapons it does not have. This is a blatantly unjust cause for war; one might as well demand that the Iraqis should square the circle or build a perpetual motion machine. Since the ultimatum is impossible to meet, it effectively amounts to a declaration that the United States will invade no matter what. Thus the war is utterly without cause, legitimate or otherwise.

This uncritical assumption that Iraq must be concealing weapons underlies practically all of Powell’s testimony. A corollary of this assumption is that the inspections are ineffective, as they have failed to locate a substantial cache of weapons after more than two months. Throughout his testimony, Powell sought to show that the Iraqis had been successfully deceiving the inspectors. To this end, he cynically falsified evidence and exaggerated his own certitude, knowing that after the war, the rationales would all become moot and he could fall back on the bromide that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.

Powell relied on intercepted Iraqi communications to show that Iraq had been hiding prohibited items from the inspectors. A conversation recorded on 26 November 2002 between an Iraqi colonel and a general indicates they knew Mohamed El Baradei was arriving the next day. Powell uses this as evidence that Iraqi espionage knew when and where inspections would occur, but it was a matter of public record that inspections would begin on 27 November. The conversation continues:

COL: We have this modified vehicle.
GEN: Yeah.
COL: What do we say if one of them sees it?
GEN: You didn’t get a modified… You don't have a modified…
COL: By God, I have one.
GEN: Which? From the workshop…?
COL: From the al-Kindi Company
GEN: What?
COL: From al-Kindi.
GEN: Yeah, yeah. I’ll come to you in the morning. I have some comments. I’m worried you all have something left.
COL: We evacuated everything. We don’t have anything left.

As translated, the conversation seems incriminating. However, as Bob Woodward reports a meeting between Powell and his chief aide Richard Armitage, context was lacking.

It was suggestive, and potentially incriminating, but what he was talking about was not clear. No one could tell from this intercept or any other intelligence. An alternative explanation was that the colonel and the general just wanted to make sure they had complied. Powell decided to use it because it involved senior officials and the “evacuated” quote seemed strong. [Woodward, Plan of Attack (2004), p. 299.]

The Arabic word translated as evacuated can also mean vacated. The conversation could alternatively be interpreted as meaning that the colonel had emptied out everything in his facilities, but could not find any prohibited items. There is nothing nefarious in searching for prohibited items in advance; in fact, the Iraqis were expected to proactively search for such items rather than passively let the inspectors do all the work. The dual use vehicle, apparently unknown to the general before this conversation, would require explanation as to its actual use. There is enough here to arouse suspicion, but nothing overtly incriminating.

Another conversation cited by Powell, dating to mid-January 2003, seems much more incriminating: And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there. Here the transcript has been falsified for Powell’s presentation. The original transcript of the recording states simply: And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas. The expressions clean out and Make sure there is nothing there were complete fabrications.

In another tape recorded conversation from early 2003, two Republican Guard officers have a brief exchange where the superior officer tells a Captain Ibrahim to Write this down.

COL: Remove.
CAPT: Remove. [Repeats instructions]
COL: The expression.
CAPT: The expression.
COL: Nerve agents.
CAPT: Nerve agents.
COL: Wherever it comes up.
CAPT: Wherever it comes up.
COL: In the wireless instructions.
CAPT: In the instructions.
COL: Wireless.
CAPT: Wireless.

Powell claimed this conversation proved the Iraqis possessed nerve agents, but this is not a necessary conclusion. Nonetheless, it seems at the least that the Iraqis were suppressing information. The expression nerve agents appeared in some wireless instructions. Powell found it curious that the Colonel should insist on the correction that they are wireless instructions, but in Arabic, the adjective comes after the noun, so the Captain did not omit anything, but had not gotten the last word. Still, the gist is that the Iraqis are not to even use the expression nerve agents in their wireless transmissions. This is not the same as falsifying documents, though it suggests that they would have reason to talk about nerve agents. Again, this is serious grounds for suspicion, but nothing incriminating.

Powell makes the argument that inspections will never work, because the Iraqis are not acting in good faith. He says documents have been hidden in scientists’ homes, and hard drives have been hidden. Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Ba’ath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council? Powell is essentially arguing that every individual Iraqi scientist and manager must fully volunteer all information in order for inspections to work. Of course, if such a fantastic level of cooperation and good will could be expected, inspections would be superfluous. Either way, inspections are useless.

Satellite images, according to Powell, could be used to identify illicit weapons programs. Among his fanciful assertions: Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers. The truck you also see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong. Contrary to what these confident assertions would indicate, satellite evidence as interpreted by the Americans was notoriously unreliable. Steve Allinson, a UN inspector during the months before the war, said decontamination vehicles turned out to be fire trucks. Supposed biological weapons trucks turned out to have no traces of any illicit substance.

Although hundreds of UNMOVIC inspections had not yielded any chemical weapons cache, Powell confidently claimed, Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. This estimate, as we now know, was overstated by about 100 to 500 tons. There were no stockpiles at all.

While faulty intelligence is certainly forgivable, Powell’s claim of certitude can hardly be characterized as anything but a lie. He told the UN: My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. In reality, his own intelligence staff had advised him that many of the claims in his presentation were highly dubious. State Department intelligence memos from late January and early February flagged the following evidence as weak or highly questionable: Qusay Hussein had ordered items removed from presidential palaces. Files were being driven around in cars. A missile brigade was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads with biological weapons to various locations. Decontamination vehicles were often dual use water trucks. Weapons experts were kept under house arrest. Unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with spray tanks are an ideal method for biological weapons attack. All of these dubious claims were included in Powell’s presentation as if they were established facts. Powell’s chief of staff Larry Wilkerson recalled that shortly after the speech, He had walked into my office musing and he said words to the effect of, I wonder how we’ll all feel if we put half a million troops in Iraq and march from one end of the country to the other and find nothing. (CNN, 21 August 2005) Powell knew the evidence was far from certain, but he lied to the world anyway.

Some of the most blatant deceptions were in Powell’s testimony regarding Iraq’s supposed nuclear program. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program. In fact, the physical remnants of the program, which had ended by 1991, was destroyed under international supervision, and the IAEA verified that there was no program as late as 1998. The former head of the Iraqi WMD program, Hussein Kemal, defected in 1995 and testified that Iraq disbanded its illicit weapons programs. Since returning to Iraq in 2002, the IAEA conducted further inspections without finding any evidence of a resumed program. Powell does not mention these facts, but instead proceeds to exaggerate the capabilities of the Iraqi nuclear program, past and present.

Once again, Powell portrays weapons inspections as ineffective. In 1991, he says, inspectors examined Iraq’s primary nuclear weapons facilities and found nothing. However, defector information later revealed that there had been a substantial nuclear weapons program there. This is a weak argument against inspections, which naturally could only prove that a program no longer existed, not that it had never existed in the past. Powell further speculates: If Saddam had not been stopped; Iraq could have produced a nuclear bomb by 1993. This claim was made by a minority of experts in 1992, based on the supposition that Iraq could obtain foreign weapons-grade uranium and focus its efforts on a crash program to produce a device in the shortest amount of time. In reality, the odds of acquiring weapons-grade uranium from a foreign power were remote, and Iraq in any case sought to enrich uranium domestically. It had only succeeded in making a few grams of highly enriched uranium by 1991. Further, Iraq’s nuclear program was multifaceted, so resources were spread across different projects. Under this strategy, a device could not be completed before at least three years had passed, according to the majority of experts. According to the latest Iraqi design, the device would have been about a ton. It would have taken considerably longer, at least another two years, for Iraq to develop a sufficient arsenal to make testing feasible.

Having exaggerated the capacity of the original Iraqi nuclear program, Powell could now claim, He [Saddam] has a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design. Powell neglects to mention that this bomb design was far from fully developed, and the abandoned project was far from complete. Thus it is incorrect for him to claim that Saddam only lacked fissile material to complete a weapon. His scientists had never completed development of a device, and had been years away from that goal when production was stopped.

In order to produce enriched uranium, Saddam would need centrifuges. This led to the most outrageous claim of all: Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after inspections resumed. In fact, experts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory advised that these tubes could not be used for uranium enrichment. They were thick, heavy, and guaranteed to leak, so they would have failed as part of a centrifuge. Houston Wood, one of the consultants at Oak Ridge, reached this conclusion as early as 2001. Yet now, two years later, Powell says, There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. This claim is patently false, for as Wood later commented, Most experts are located at Oak Ridge and that was not the position there. In fact, he did not know anyone in academia or foreign government who would think otherwise. I don’t know a single one anywhere. (Rebecca Leung, The Man Who Knew, 60 Minutes, CBS, 4 Feb. 2004)

Powell further claimed that the tubes were too strong to be used as rockets, but this was in direct contradiction with what he had been advised in a State Department memo on 3 February:

Our key remaining concern is the claim that the tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds US requirements for comparable rockets. In fact, the most comparable US system is a tactical rocket—the US Mark 66 air-launched 70mm rocket—that uses the same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has specifications with similar tolerances. Note that the Mk 66 specifications are unclassified, and the Department is planning to share them with the IAEA.

It is clear that Powell was not merely a dutiful soldier reporting what he was told to say. He went out of his way to falsify evidence, knowing that once the invasion of Iraq was authorized, arguments over its justification would become academic.

The aluminum tubes, in fact, were most likely intended for artillery, as State Department analysts had told Powell months earlier. This use would account for their extra smooth interior and exterior surfaces, which Powell claimed to find so suspicious. He also noted that the Iraqis sought to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams, and to buy machines that could balance gas centrifuge rotors. Naturally, he neglected to mention other possible uses, so we were left to assume that medium-sized magnets are evidence of a nuclear program.

Powell also discussed Iraq’s long-range missile capabilities. The Al-Samoud II’s had the potential to exceed the 150 km limit, but still had a range much less than 200 km. If the Iraqis intended to violate the limit, they could have easily done so by a much greater amount, given their technological know-how; after all, Scud missiles had ranges up to 700 km. Indeed, Powell claimed that numerous intelligence reports indicated Iraq still had a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles… with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers. When the well regarded State Department analyst Greg Thielmann heard the Scud claim, he recalled, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Thielmann had the highest security clearance, and could see all the intelligence from the CIA and Department of Defense, yet he knew nothing of any evidence of Scud missiles. (Rebecca Leung, The Man Who Knew, 60 Minutes, CBS, 4 Feb. 2004)

Not satisfied with the threat of this secret cache of Scuds, Powell further speculated that the Iraqis were developing rockets with a range well over 1000 km. He offered no solid evidence, other than the size of an engine test stand identified on a satellite photo from April 2002. He added, And you can see from this map, as well as I can, who will be in danger of these missiles. The map in question (see figure) showed Israel, Turkey, Egypt, the Caucasus, Saudi Arabia and several Gulf states in missile range. Powell avoided mentioning Israel by name, though that is the primary strategic ally of the U.S. in that region. Perhaps he hoped to win the sympathy of other nations in the area if they realized their countries were in danger. As a telling sign of how weak the intelligence was recognized to be at the time, most of the supposedly endangered nations either opposed the war outright or distanced themselves from it.

Powell tried to conjure a further menace of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being used as surrogate long-range missiles. According to Iraq’s declaration, these UAVs had a range of 80 kilometers. However, on 27 June 2002, the U.S. detected one that went 500 kilometers non-stop on autopilot in a race track around in a circle. This made possible this fine piece of scaremongering by Powell: Iraq could use these small UAVs which have a wingspan of only a few meters to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or if transported, to other countries, including the United States. In fact, most weapons experts found UAVs a far from optimal method of delivering biological agents. Even so, Powell invites us to imagine the ridiculous picture of Iraqis somehow managing to secretly transport a plane across the Atlantic, and then flying it over the U.S. to wage germ warfare. Certainly, if transported, a pea shooter has the range of an ICBM, and, if transported, a UAV could deliver biological agents to the moon, but if you have that capability, why bother with a small plane?

Having concocted a vast arsenal of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Powell proceeded to stoke fears that they might pass these weapons on to terrorists. To this end, he cited every contact between the Iraqi government and groups using terrorist tactics. Most of these contacts were with Palestinian terrorists who opposed Israel. As was typical for a U.S. government official, Powell turned a blind eye to Israeli war crimes while harshly condemning Palestinian guerrillas as terrorists. The U.S. at one time or another has listed every Palestinian guerrilla group as a terrorist organization, while Israel is given a free hand to bomb civilian areas, beat protesters, and confiscate land without a word of American criticism. The idea that an enemy of Israel is necessarily an enemy of the U.S. was uncritically held by many neoconservatives in the Bush administration, and Powell now made use of this confusion to equate support of Palestinian groups with support for a terrorist attack on American or European soil.

Apparently, we were to believe that Saddam would sponsor a terrorist attack in the U.S. or Europe simply because he supported Palestinian guerrillas and gave money to the families of suicide bombers. If this justifies the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. ought to turn its sights on the entire Middle East, for the Palestinian movement, vicious tactics and all, enjoys immense popular and official support throughout the Arab world. It is incongruent to single out Iraq for supporting Palestinian guerrillas, though it is true that Saddam could do this more flamboyantly than most other Arab leaders, as he no longer depended on American aid.

Strangely, Powell held the Iraqi regime responsible for the actions of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, though he acknowledged it operated in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq. No matter, Powell claimed, for this organization had only the appearance of independence. In fact, Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq. In 2000 this agent offered al Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept al Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today. The logic here is difficult to follow. First, Powell acknowledges that the northern Kurdish areas are outside of Saddam Hussein’s control. Then he avers that the Iraqi government effectively runs Ansar al-Islam, the organization that controls that region. So does Iraq control that region or not? If it is capable of dictating terms to Ansar al-Islam, should it not be able to bring the region under overt government control? Again, we are asked to accept intelligence that does not even make basic sense.

In fact, Iraq gave safe haven not to Al-Qaeda in general, but only to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Palestinian terrorist who was in Afghanistan in 2000. As Zarqawi had a high profile in the Palestinian movement, it is only natural that Iraq would protect him. Again, Powell deliberately conflates support for the ruthless tactics of the Palestinian movement with indiscriminate support of terrorist groups in general, including Al-Qaeda. Since Al-Qaeda is an inchoate umbrella organization, virtually all major Arab terrorist groups, including those from Palestine, will be at least nominally affiliated with it. On this tenuous basis, an Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda is based. We should not be surprised, for at this time, Arab Americans were persecuted for donating to Palestinian charities that had any ties to Hamas or other terrorist groups, while the U.S. gave billions of dollars of aid for Israel to wage war against civilians. It is in this context that an assassin trained by Zarqawi murdered a U.S. diplomat, Lawrence Foley, in Amman, Jordan.

The ethics of Iraqi support for Palestinian terrorism is hardly defensible, but the issue at hand is whether such support posed an existential threat to the United States and the world. Powell does not make a credible case that Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to organizations such as Al-Qaeda. The best evidence he can give is from a senior Al-Qaeda detainee at Guantanamo Bay, who spoke of…

…Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdullah Al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdullah Al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

The detainee’s testimony is problematic not only because it was likely obtained under torture at Guantanamo, but also because it fails to establish a direct link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Nonetheless, it would seem that an Iraqi militant was at least able to establish a successful relationship with Iraqi officials, though we do not know that the Iraqis actually helped them acquire chemical weapons. Powell’s attempt to establish a relationship between the Iraqi government and Al-Qaeda was undercut by the leak of a UK Department of Defence document on 5 February 2003. It said, Any fledgling relationship [between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda] foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.

If there was dishonesty and disingenuity in Powell’s presentation so far, at least it could hide behind secret government intelligence. More breathtaking was his chutzpah in condemning Saddam’s war crimes in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration’s support of his regime was long a matter of public record. Powell said:

Saddam Hussein’s use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century’s most horrible atrocities; 5,000 men, women and children died.

His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to ’89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of some 2,000 villages. He has also conducted ethnic cleansing against the Shiite Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs whose culture has flourished for more than a millennium. Saddam Hussein’s police state ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced disappearance cases than any other country, tens of thousands of people reported missing in the past decade.

This feigned outrage is utterly shameless. If Powell was truly concerned about the gassing of the Kurds, perhaps he might have said something when he was in the Reagan administration, which continued to support the Iraqi regime in this period. Only fifteen years later does he see fit to invoke this atrocity as a justification for war, rather than at the time when he could have made a difference. Was he then unaware of the Reagan administration’s support of Iraq, yet trusted with knowledge of the Iran arms-for-hostages deals? At least he refrained from mentioning Iraqi war crimes against the Iranians; the irony would have been unbearable.

To conclude his presentation, Powell returned to the central myth that Iraq still failed to cooperate with inspections, even as the inspectors were in fact making notable progress. The U.S. wanted war immediately, so it was necessary to deny the inconvenient reality of Iraqi cooperation.

Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued defiance of this council.

The reality was quite the opposite, as Iraq had given unprecedented levels of cooperation, and was now allowing U-2 surveillance. The inspections were not yielding any weapons of mass destruction, though hundreds of random inspections had already been conducted. Since the Bush administration was not willing to consider even the possibility that they could be mistaken, they assumed that the weapons must exist. Therefore the failure to find weapons meant Iraq was hiding them and being uncooperative. Iraq would be invaded unless it could present weapons it did not have. This manifest injustice is the result of the thoroughly uncritical thinking of the Bush administration.

Continue to Part IV

© 2009 Daniel J. Castellano. All rights reserved. http://www.arcaneknowledge.org