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WMD: 'You have got to be
kidding
By Nir Rosen
BAGHDAD
- To the surprise of few, the head of the Central
Intelligence Agency-led survey group hunting for weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq has admitted in his latest
report released on Thursday that none have yet been
unearthed.
But the Iraq Survey Group's leader,
David Kay, did say that Saddam Hussein "remained firmly
committed to acquiring nuclear weapons". However, they
have not found any, nor any evidence of any.
The
report will come as more bad news for President George W
Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are under
increasing pressure from their American and British
constituencies for allegedly "cooking" or exaggerating
the threat posed by Saddam as a pretext for going to war
against him.
And now Asia Times Online can
confirm reports from the US Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), which says that information provided by the Iraqi
National Congress (INC) about Iraq's weapon's programs
was exaggerated and false.
Two DIA agents
currently serving in Iraq, who also voiced bitterness
about other aspects of US Iraq policy, spoke on
condition of anonymity to Asia Times Online. The first,
a 30-year veteran of the agency, complained that "the
fixation on weapons is alienating intelligence staff",
calling it an "obsession".
Officials in
Washington now confirm that former Iraqi officials who
had defected and were handed over to the CIA by the INC,
the exile opposition group led by Chalabi, provided them
with information on Iraq's WMD program, which the Bush
administration relied on to press its case for war.
In Iraq, this was confirmed by the same DIA
agent. "The statements on WMD that the INC guys brought
in matched conclusions they [Bush cabinet members]
already had. We looked at the info and said 'you can't
be serious, you have got to be kidding'."
There
has been an increase in the willingness of intelligence
officials from the CIA and DIA to speak out about their
skepticism over Iraq WMD claims since the end of the war
and the failure to discover any evidence of their
existence. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix also
recently asserted that Iraq had had no chemical or
biological program since 1998, and no nuclear program
since the first Gulf war of 1991.
The DIA agent
went on to say, in Chalabi's defense that "there were
plenty of good reasons to attack Iraq, human rights,
dictatorship, but the impetus to attack was the
immediacy of a threat. Without Chalabi and his access to
the Pentagon through [former CIA chief James] Woolsey
and then [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz,
[Vice President Dick] Cheyney, [Pentagon head Donald]
Rumsfeld and [Under Secretary of Defense Douglas J ]
Feith the war wouldn't have happened. The INC was very
good at manipulating the press. They would say, 'look at
this, look at this', and [New York Times reporter] Judy
Miller would go to Baghdad and chase down a guy and her
information provided the lever to go to war."
This DIA agent, who has served as an
interrogator at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba,
where the US holds alleged terrorists from Afghanistan
called "illegal combatants", also rejected claims still
alleged by the vice president that there was a
relationship between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and
Saddam's regime in Iraq. "There were four Iraqis in
Guantanamo. More people had British passports than Iraqi
ones."
Now serving in Iraq as a security expert,
the DIA agent criticized post-war policy as well,
referring to what he described as "the coalition's
pursuit of a single point panacea with a semblance of
political organization to hand over the country to
them", meaning the undue trust placed in Chalabi's
organization, as well as Iyad Alawi's Iraqi National
Accord. He also did not mince words with the staff of
the office of the Coalition Provisional Administration
(CPA), headed by L Paul Bremer. He viewed Bremer's young
staff as immature and inexperienced, citing the case
where an aide to Bremer did not want to issue weapons
licenses for a political organization to provide for its
security,"she's worried about issuing a few weapons
licenses when they have whole armies".
He added
that Bremer's predecessor Jay Garner was unfairly
maligned due to inflated expectations. "Garner was
friendly, approachable and personable. He got
scapegoated by impatient people in DC. Now its DC
politics and 'what's your stance on Israel'?" He also
strongly criticized Bremer's decision to dismiss all
400,000 members of the Iraqi army. "It was a dogmatic
and ideological brain fart idea to dissolve the
military. They should have used them for security. They
should have issued an order mobilizing the regular army
and put them on highways." He ended his litany by adding
that there was not even any cable television in the
al-Rashid hotel where CPA staff were housed and they had
to rely on short wave radio for news "they want to keep
CPA staff as ignorant as possible".
A
lieutenant-colonel in the DIA who specialized in
terrorism and the Muslim world also ridiculed the claims
connecting Iraq and al-Qaeda, adding that administration
officials relied on evidence provided by Laurie Mylroie
in her book The War Against America: Saddam Hussein
and the World Trade Center Attacks: A Study of
Revenge. "From her book," he said, "It was evident
she hadn't spent one day in the Middle East but she was
close with Wolfowitz and as a result we had a guy on
staff [at the DIA] whose job for two years was to debunk
her allegations."
The lieutenant-colonel
maintained that the civilian staff of CPA, drawn from
the State Department, were ineffective in Iraq. "The
State Department just generates public policy papers,"
he said, "they don't do anything, they don't run
organizations." He cited a recent CPA talking point that
it would be run and structured like an embassy, "but
embassies preserve the status quo, they don't do
anything, we are creating a revolution. Military
officers are used to managing organizations and know
they have to deal with everybody from top to bottom, but
the State Department trains policy makers and they don't
want to hear stuff they disagree with."
He added
finally that Iraqis are ill informed about what the CPA
does do because "CPA public affairs pay more attention
to the foreign press then the local Iraqi press. English
is a problem. Also they are used to a standard press
conference and then send press releases that nobody
reads. Even if Iraqi papers can find the numbers for
CPA, nobody returns their calls."
The 30-year
veteran also confirms language difficulties in Iraq.
"The entire government was unprepared for 9/11
[September 11] and for Iraq in terms of linguists and
interrogators."
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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