http://www.republicons.org/view_arti...RTICLE_ID=1187

No Iraq Intelligence Investigation Needed - Sources Have Already Spoken
by: Erik P Sorensen
Republicons.org
2/2/2004

Republicons To Go

The Bush administration today is expected to announce its reluctant
endorsement of an "independent" commission to investigate the intelligence
flaws that led the US to believe that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of
chemical and biological weapons and an advanced nuclear capacity. However,
in the period before the war many intelligence experts had warned that Iraq
did not possess an active weapons' program and that the Bush administration
was operating on spurious evidence.
According to press accounts, George W Bush will name the members of the
commission which, at first blush, must raise questions about the purported
independence of the organization. Additionally, the press also reported that
the investigative body was to be patterned after the Warren Commission that
led the investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Many
observers have questioned the independence of the Warren Commission. The
Commission ruled that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot and killed
Kennedy and that Jack Ruby had acted alone in the killing of Oswald. Many
have considered these findings dubious or at best incomplete.

However, the Bush administration's specific claims of Iraq's possession of
weapons of mass destruction do not even require this process to be vetted.
Many reputable intelligence officers and analysts have already stated that
the Bush administration was intentionally selective in the intelligence
claims it accepted and quickly discarded contradictory information.

On February 24, 2003 MS-NBC reported that the CIA had warned the Bush
administration that there was "no direct evidence" that Iraq had
successfully reconstituted its banned weapons programs. The CIA said in its
semi-annual report on weapons proliferation that Iraq may have possessed a
"low-level theoretical" nuclear program. While the assessment states that
Iraq may have an active program, there were no specific claims that
supported the Bush administration's detailed assessment of the threat.

As former State Department official, Joseph Wilson recently told Geov
Parrish of Working for Change, "[i]t was important for the international
community to persuade itself that Saddam had been effectively disarmed and
to impose a monitoring program to ensure that he didn't rearm, that was a
legitimate international objective. Now, the real question is whether you
had to invade, conquer, and occupy Baghdad in order to achieve that
objective, and I think it's clear that we didn't."

Additionally, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed
earlier this year that the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency released a
report in 2002 that equally questioned the credibility of intelligence on
the state of Iraq's weapons. The report concluded that there was "no
reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical
weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent
production facilities."

The assessment also suggests that the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent
inspections significantly affected Iraq's ability to rebuild its chemical
arsenal. "[Iraq's] ability for sustained production of G-series nerve agents
and VX is constrained by its stockpile of key chemical precursors and by the
destruction of all known CW production facilities during Operation Desert
Storm and during subsequent UNSCOM inspections. In the absence of external
aid, Iraq will likely experience difficulties in producing nerve agents at
the rate executed before Operation Desert Storm."

Moreover, the unclassified portion of the report includes numerous caveats
about its allegations and largely draws any conclusions of the threat posed
by Iraq not on intelligence but based upon the previous behaviors of Saddam
Hussein. In fact, the report states frankly that "we lack any [direct]
information".

The Carnegie Center also reported that the State Department had reservations
about Intelligence in Iraq. The State Department's Intelligence and Research
Department wrote to the White House in October 2002 that "[w]e lack specific
information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs." The report also
ranked among its "low-confidence" findings whether Saddam Hussein would
share any banned weapons with al-Qaeda.

The report, none the less, largely tries to substantiate a risk posed by
Iraq based upon previous efforts by Hussein to develop and use
non-conventional weapons. However, a remarkable dissenting opinion is voiced
within the assessment. Under the title of "Alternative View of Iraq's
Nuclear Program" that report states that, "The activities that we have
detected do not . add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently
pursuing . an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear
weapons."

Furthermore, Scott Ritter, the much maligned former UN weapons' inspector,
declared flatly that Iraq's weapons' capacity was being overstated. In
August 2002 he told the New York Daily News, "They're [members of the Bush
administration] lying to the American people about Iraq's capacity."

"[Chemical and biological programs] can no longer be viable unless Iraq
reconstituted a manufacturing facility, and there's no evidence of that," he
added citing the fact that chemical and biological weapons degrade over
time.

Hans von Sponeck, the former UN Assistant Secretary General, said in May
2001, "Iraq today is no longer a military threat to anyone. Intelligence
agencies know this. All the conjectures about weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq lack evidence."

Finally, the UN weapons' inspectors who were readmitted into Iraq in 2002
found little to support the Bush administration's claims. In fact, Mohamed
ElBaradei, the UN's chief nuclear inspector concluded the converse on March
7 2003. "At this stage, the following can be stated: One, there is no
indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were
identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or
newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited
activities at any inspected sites. Second, there is no indication that Iraq
has attempted to import uranium since 1990. Three, there is no indication
that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge
enrichment. After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date
found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon
program in Iraq," he told the UN Security Council.