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.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese