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US weapons inspector: Iraq had no WMD
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-17 09:55
Drafts of a report from the top US inspector in Iraq conclude there were no
weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to
people familiar with the findings.
In a 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer,
will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial
vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial
sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for
chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had
intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and
inspections from the international community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no
weapons of mass destruction its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.
An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as
this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the
report inside and outside the government did so on the condition of anonymity
because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.
If the report is released publicly before the Nov. 2 election, Democrats are
likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticize the Bush
administration's leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security
situation there.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized the president's
handling of the war in Iraq, but has also said he still would have voted to
authorize the war even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be
found there.
Duelfer's report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his
predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October.
Kay left the post in January, saying, ''We were almost all wrong'' about
Saddam's weapons programs.
The new analysis, however, is expected to fall between the position of the
Bush administration before the war portraying Saddam as a grave threat and the
declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.
It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October findings. Then,
Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret
chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of
an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited
ranges.
He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons
project was under way.
Duelfer's report doesn't reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance,
U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam's fallen regime may have
sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to
Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest to the U.S.
government.
The Duelfer report will come months after the Senate Intelligence Committee
released a scathing assessment of the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led committee said in July the CIA
kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in
''group think'' by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell
to make false statements.
The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find
Saddam's weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a
thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other
experts have been devoted to the effort.
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