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Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat<BR>
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<P ALIGN=LEFT></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=5 PTSIZE=16 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">U.S. Inspector Says Hussein Lacked Means<BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"></B>By Mike Allen and Dana Priest<BR>
Washington Post Staff Writers<BR>
Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page A01 </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
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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. <BR>
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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." <BR>
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<IMG SRC="http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I10132-2004Oct05" WIDTH="164" HEIGHT="190" BORDER="0" DATASIZE="16490"> Charles A. Duelfer wrote that Iraq did not have the means to produce unconventional weapons. (File Photo) <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="verdana" LANG="0">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. <BR>
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"They have not found anything yet," said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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"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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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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. <BR>
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"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." <BR>
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V2020 Post by Ted Moffett<BR>
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