[Vision2020] Today's Washington Post:Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat

U.S. Inspector Says Hussein Lacked Means

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A01 

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be 
released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the 
time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to 
develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday. 

The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the 
chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but 
not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his 
neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump 
speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat." 


 Charles A. Duelfer wrote that Iraq did not have the means to produce 
unconventional weapons. (File Photo) 

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons 
inspector, found that the state of Hussein's weapons-development programs and 
knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, 
when international inspectors left Iraq. 

"They have not found anything yet," said one U.S. official who had been 
briefed on the report. 

A senior U.S. government official said that the report includes comments 
Hussein made to debriefers after his capture that bolster administration 
assertions, including his statement that his past possession of weapons of mass 
destruction "was one of the reasons he had survived so long." He also maintained such 
weapons saved his government by halting Iranian ground offensives during the 
Iran-Iraq war and deterred coalition forces from pressing on to Baghdad during 
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the official said. 

The official also said that Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had uncovered Iraqi 
plans for ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers and for a 
1,000-kilometer-range cruise missile, farther than the 150-kilometer range 
permitted by the United Nations, the senior official said. 

The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in testimony 
today that Hussein intended to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction 
programs if he were freed of the U.N. sanctions that prevented him from getting 
needed materials. 

Duelfer's report said Hussein was pursuing an aggressive effort to subvert 
the international sanctions through illegal financing and procurement efforts, 
officials said. The official said the report states that Hussein had the intent 
to resume full-scale weapons of mass destruction efforts after the sanctions 
were eliminated, and details Hussein's efforts to hinder international 
inspectors and preserve his weapons of mass destruction capabilities. 

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House intelligence 
committee, said she had not read Duelfer's report but has been told that it thoroughly 
undercuts the administration's assertions that Iraq posed a serious threat. 

"Intentions do not constitute a growing danger," Harman said. "It's hardly 
mushroom clouds, hardly stockpiles," she added, a reference to administration 
rhetoric used in the run-up to the war. 

The report's release comes at a point in the presidential campaign when 
Democratic candidate John F. Kerry is aggressively challenging the Bush 
administration about its prewar justifications for invading Iraq, which centered largely 
on the contention that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. People 
familiar with the report said it is being released today because Duelfer was 
ready and his schedule permitted him to testify to Congress. 

Yesterday, administration officials discussed some of the report's findings 
publicly, arguing that it showed Hussein was a long-term threat even though no 
weapons of mass destruction were found. 

White House press secretary Scott McClellan called Hussein's effort to evade 
the U.N. sanctions "very revealing." "We all thought that we would find 
stockpiles, and that was not the case," McClellan said. 

"The fact that he had the intent and capability, and that he was trying to 
undermine the sanctions that were in place is very disturbing. And I think the 
report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be 
taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin 
pursuing those weapons of mass destruction." 

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V2020 Post by Ted Moffett

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