Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals in his new book that he urged a US military strike on a suspected chemical weapons site in northern Iraq in 2003, and that he wanted the attack timed to coincide with former US secretary of state Colin Powell’s address to the UN Security Council making the case for war.
In his memoir, Known and Unknown, Rumsfeld wrote that the Joint Chiefs of Staff supported a strike, based on what Rumsfeld called extensive, but not conclusive CIA evidence that the site housed an underground facility for testing chemical weapons. He called it a “fairly sizeable terrorist operation.”
The prewar attack never happened, although the site was struck in the opening days of the war that former US president George W. Bush launched in March 2003, about six weeks after Powell’s UN speech.
Photo: EPA
The US never found substantial evidence of an active Iraqi program to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but Rumsfeld believed that the site near the Iranian border presented the best chance to prove they existed before the war began.
“For whatever reason, the administration never made public these facts about an active WMD production facility run by terrorists in Iraq,” Rumsfeld wrote.
He said he made his recommendation to Bush at a Feb. 3, 2003, National Security Council meeting in which Powell sketched out the presentation he was to make at the UN two days later.
Rumsfeld quotes himself as telling the meeting: “We should hit Khurmal during the speech, given that Colin will talk about it.”
Khurmal is the name of a village near the site. Powell objected.
In his UN presentation, Powell described it as “Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal.” Rumsfeld said Khurmal was operated by Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni militant group with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian extremist who later led the Iraq branch of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Rumsfeld wrote that he wanted to attack the site before Powell finished his presentation in New York, because otherwise the site would be abandoned.
Had Powell not stood in the way, in Rumsfeld’s view, the Bush administration might have gained conclusive evidence that Iraq had an active WMD site.
“As expected, shortly after Powell’s speech was delivered, many of the terrorists fled Khurmal,” he wrote.
A reporter who visited the site a few days after Powell’s speech found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children, but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing. Much of the site was destroyed by US cruise missile strikes at the outset of the invasion.
Micah Zenko, a political scientist at the Council on Foreign Relations, extensively researched US planning for a military strike on Khurmal in 2002 and detailed it in his book, Between Threats and War. He said in an interview that he was unaware that Rumsfeld had advocated bombing the place while Powell was at the UN.
By that time, the Khurmal camp had been largely empty for months, Zenko said.
The Rumsfeld memoir covers the full span of his 78 years, from growing up in a small town outside Chicago, his Navy days, his years in Congress, a string of staff jobs in the Nixon White House, his first tour as defense secretary under former US president Gerald Ford, a period as a business executive and his return to the Pentagon in January 2001.
He is the only person to have served twice as defense secretary; he is also the youngest to have held the job and the oldest.
To promote and expand on the book, Rumsfeld established a Web site that contains a select group of his official papers. Some required declassification at his request.
Rumsfeld said he chose documents that are “of particular historical interest” or are related to the events that he describes in the book.
Without knowing the full contents of the papers it is impossible to know whether Rumsfeld included only documents that support his version of events or omitted unflattering items.
Additional secret documents from his years at the Pentagon will be declassified and reviewed for public release, he said. On his Web site he wrote that deciding to release certain papers was difficult.
“These documents were not designed with an eye to history as part of an authoritative archive,” he wrote.
He said he chose to release them “warts and all,” for readers to draw their own conclusions.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not