Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs had deteriorated into only hopes and dreams by the time of the US-led invasion last year, a decline wrought by the 1991 Gulf War and years of international sanctions, the chief US weapons hunter found.
And what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the US or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel.
PHOTO: AP
The report of weapons hunter Charles Duelfer was presented Wednesday to US senators and the public in the midst of a fierce presidential election campaign in which Iraq and the war of terror have become the overriding issues.
The report chronicles the decay of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after its defeat in the Gulf War. By the late 1990s, only its long-range missile efforts continued in defiance of the UN; even then, Iraq's ballistic and cruise missile designs had not proceeded far past the drawing board. Saddam's other plans would have to wait until he was free of the sanctions and free of international attention.
US President George W. Bush's spokesman said the report justified the decision to go to war. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Bush defended the decision to invade.
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," the president said in a speech in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
A spokesman for his opponent, Senator John Kerry, said the report "underscores the incompetence of George Bush's Iraq policy."
"George Bush refuses to come clean about the ways he misled our country into war," Kerry spokesman David Wade added.
"In short, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger," said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group drew on interviews with senior Iraqi officials, 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence to conclude that Iraq destroyed its undeclared chemical and biological stockpiles under pressure of UN sanctions by 1992 and never resumed production.
The US-led invasion pushed one of Iraq's leaders into seeking chemical weapons to defend the country. But it doesn't appear that Saddam's son Uday located any.
Iraq ultimately abandoned its biological weapons programs in 1995, largely out of fear they would be discovered and tougher enforcement imposed.
"Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level," according to a summary of Duelfer's 1,000-page report.
And Iraq also abandoned its nuclear program after the war, and there was no evidence it tried to reconstitute it.
Saddam's intentions to restart his programs were never formalized.
"The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," the summary says. "Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policymakers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them."
Duelfer's findings contradict most of the assertions by the Bush administration and the US intelligence community about Iraq's threat in 2002 and early last year. The White House had argued that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and production lines and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
‘NO SECURITY RISK’: The Railway Bureau reassured the public that the technicians’ activities were limited to technical guidance and did not involve sensitive systems The Railway Bureau yesterday said it had invited eight Chinese technicians to assist with an airport MRT construction project. The bureau issued the confirmation after an Internet user said Chinese nationals had entered the construction zone of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal 3 project. They asked why “individuals from an enemy state” were allowed access to such a major national infrastructure project, which raised serious concerns over Taiwan’s industrial safety, sensitive systems and information security. The bureau’s Northern Region Engineering Branch Office said subcontractor Taiwan Handle Industrial Co (台灣手把工業) of the Taoyuan airport MRT’s “Contract No. CU05 Project A14 Station Civil, MEP &
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
The nation’s usually punctual high-speed rail system yesterday was hit by major disruptions after all scheduled services were canceled and replaced with three hourly trains offering only non-reserved seating, affecting more than 200,000 passengers. Preliminary findings indicate the disruption was caused by a faulty power module in a track switch control cabinet, Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) said, adding that as a full system inspection could only be conducted after operations end for the day, a decision on whether normal service would resume today would be announced before the first train departs. During a routine inspection early yesterday, a switch signal abnormality
RSS