Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month Critical September Report to Be Final Word By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A01 The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley. In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas. Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States. Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small. Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing some addenda to his September report before it is reprinted. "There's no particular news in them, just some odds and ends," the intelligence official said. The Government Printing Office will publish it in book form, the official said. The CIA declined to authorize any official involved in the weapons search to speak on the record for this story. The intelligence official offered an authoritative account of the status of the hunt on the condition of anonymity. The agency did confirm that Duelfer is wrapping up his work and will not be replaced in Baghdad. The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin. Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate because Duelfer's last report answered as many outstanding questions as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the weapons hunt. Satellite photos show that entire facilities have been dismantled, possibly by scrap dealers who sold off parts and equipment to buyers around the world. "The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said. "We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward." Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified. Several hundred military translators and document experts will continue to sift through millions of pages of documents on paper and computer media sitting in a storeroom on a U.S. military base in Qatar. But their work is focused on material that could support possible war crimes charges or shed light on the fate of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, a Navy pilot who was shot down in an F/A-18 fighter over central Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991, the opening night of the Persian Gulf War. Although he was initially reported as killed in action, Speicher's status was changed to missing after evidence emerged that he had ejected alive from his aircraft. The work on documents is not connected to weapons of mass destruction, officials said, and a small group of Iraqi scientists still in U.S. military custody are not being held in connection with weapons investigations, either. Three people involved with the ISG said the weapons teams made several pleas to the Pentagon to release the scientists, who have been interviewed extensively. All three officials specifically mentioned Gen. Amir Saadi, who was a liaison between Hussein's government and U.N. inspectors; Rihab Taha, a biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" years ago by U.N. inspectors; her husband, Amir Rashid, the former oil minister; and Huda Amash, a biologist whose extensive dealings with U.N. inspectors earned her the nickname "Mrs. Anthrax." None of the scientists has been involved in weapons programs since the 1991 Gulf War, the ISG determined more than a year ago, and all have cooperated with investigators despite nearly two years of jail time without charges. U.S. officials previously said they were being held because their denials of ongoing weapons programs were presumed to be lies; now, they say the scientists are being held in connection with the possible war crimes trials of Iraqis. It has been more than a year since any Iraqi scientist was arrested in connection with weapons of mass destruction. Many of those questioned and cleared have since left Iraq, one senior official said, acknowledging for the first time that the "brain drain" that has long been feared "is well underway." "A lot of it is because of the kidnapping industry" in Iraq, the official said. The State Department has been trying to implement programs designed to keep Iraqi scientists from seeking weapons-related work in neighboring countries, such as Syria and Iran. Since March 2003, nearly a dozen people working for or with the weapons hunt have lost their lives to the insurgency. The most recent deaths came in November, when Duelfer's convoy was attacked during a routine mission around Baghdad and two of his bodyguards were killed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2129-2005Jan11?language=printer
Let's see if I get this straight... Clinton is impeached for lying under oath about having sex with an intern where no one is killed. And W gets re-elected after lying (while not under oath of course) about WMDs (so it okay) and over 1300 brave men and women are killed and over 10,000 wounded. Not to mention the over 100,000 Iraqis killed (but those don't count). Go on Red Staters! ~ Preach on about moral values! DISGUSTING HYPOCRITS!
your vigilance, notwithstanding...i don't think most bush supporters believed he lied on this. they may believe there were intelligence screwups. but most don't believe he flat out made it up. i think he thought there was a threat...whether there was or not is a whole other topic.
Seriously, I think most GWB supporters BELIEVE that he did the right thing using good judgement. This belief trumps all facts or shifts the blame to someone else.
And yet, somehow, no regrets. No remorse. No regrets from Bush, no regrets from Cheney or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or Bremer or Rice or Powell, no regrets from those who voted for Bush the first time or even, almost impossibly, the ones that voted for him again, no regrets from treeman or basso or Jorge or johnheath, no regrets from Lieberman or Kerry or Gephardt or Edwards, no regrets from the Democrats who voted for guys who voted to authorize the use of force, sending American troops to die and kill, when there was no credible evidence of a threat. Incredible. This war is worse than Vietnam for the simple fact that, right or wrong, the reason we went to war in Vietnam wasn't a lie. People are dying in Iraq for a lie. And yet, no regrets. Max, the president's been very careful not to explicitly lie (depending on what the meaning of "lie" is), but I think you know as well as I do that he willfully encouraged, promoted and, moreover, inflated intelligence that supported WMD claims while willfully rejecting and denouncing the vast amount of intelligence that refuted those claims. I think you know as well as I do he promoted the concept of an Al Qaeda/Iraq connection long after he knew one didn't exist. He didn't employ good intelligence because he didn't want good intelligence. In fact he rejected it and swept it under the rug. He kept it from the American people because it didn't support the war he wanted. He didn't want the truth, he wanted the war. To those of you who believed the bad intel and supported the war, you're certainly forgiven for being snowed. It's understandable. Even to the majority of Americans who continued to believe the WMD and Al Qaeda connection stuff even after it had all been refuted, well, you'd been well programmed. I understand you too. But no regrets? Still? Seriously? Whatever. You were victims too. But by November of last year, we all knew this stuff was bogus. That Americans were dying and killing in a country that has never in its history posed a threat to us. To those who voted for Bush again in 04, knowing all that, shame on you. A thousand times, shame on you.
what is the canned response that both sides use either affirmatively or negatively? 9/11 changed EVERYTHING
Lying to Congress is a felony. Bush lied to congress over 12 times during the 2003 State of the Union address.
You're right. It's not important whether the president lied or not. It's not important whether or not we were misled into war. Why can't I just say something nice about the troops like Jorge is always asking? Why can't I recognize the glory in Bush's re-election like texxx does? I think it's because I'm just so hung up on all those people dying for a bunch of lies, but you're right. It's not important.
i surrender!!! i'm not trying to be argumentative...i'm not trying to fight with you. when i say i can't believe i engaged this conversation, it wasn't anything personal...just that i hate engaging any real political discussion here anymore. immediately we should all be ashamed because we don't think like the other guy....one side rushes to defend its own; the other rushes to take the other side. bottom line: there is no real political discussion here anymore, as best I can tell. it's been squashed.
If he is not guilty of straight up lying, and that is a big IF. Then him and his administration are without a doubt guilty of grossly exagerating the threat. In other words misleading people i.e. Lying