7.6.03
Iraq WMD "controversy" roundup
"There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities," a summary page of the DIA report said. The report does not suggest Iraq did not have WMD. Indeed, it concludes that Iraq "probably" has such stockpiles. But its language is far more circumspect than that of senior Bush administration officials and the President himself, who insisted Iraq not only had large stocks of WMD but it was capable of delivering them in weapons.Essentially, the Pentagon concludes that it knew that Iraq may or may not have had WMDs - which is about the same thing one can say about every country in the world.
Adding to allegations that intelligence was produced under political pressure, Greg Thielmann, a State Department intelligence official covering Iraq until the end of last year, said yesterday that all dissenting views had been omitted from a key CIA report presented to Mr Bush in October.(Link via The Agonist).
I would also point out that the now-standard refrain that "Iraq is a big country and we're still looking" is a double-edged sword. It may be true that all of Iraq's supposed WMDs are hidden away in a little corner of the country somewhere, but how could they possibly have posed an immediate threat if that were the case? Not only that: US and UK planes had been flying over Iraq on a daily basis for over a decade prior to the most recent war, and surveillance was stepped up in the months preceding it. Wouldn't the Americans and British have noticed if there was some kind of organized movement along Iraq's roads or rails out to some god-forsaken part of the country? Wouldn't they have bombed something very suspicious, like a convoy? More unanswered questions.
