International Herald Tribune
The White House has released a document as evidence that it is time to overthrow Saddam Hussein that summarizes his regime's abuses of Iraqis and its past use or possession of chemical and biological agents.
But it contains little new information - and no bombshells - showing that Saddam is producing new weapons of mass destruction or has joined with terrorists to threaten the United States or its interests abroad.
Administration officials, seeking to persuade the public, Congress and foreign allies that it is time to go to war, indicated recently that their strongest case rested on evidence of Iraq's program to produce weapons of mass destruction and its efforts to develop ballistic missiles to launch the weapons beyond its borders.
But experts on Iraq's weaponry say that on this subject the report, with few exceptions, recycles a mix of dated and largely circumstantial evidence that Saddam may be hiding the ingredients for these weapons and is seeking to develop a nuclear capability and to weaponize chemical and biological agents.
The 20-page paper, "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," was released Thursday. It concludes that Iraq harbors stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons it created before the 1991 Gulf War, as well as a limited number of missiles and other systems for delivering them. The stockpile includes highly lethal VX, a nerve agent so potent that a few drops on the skin can kill, as well as anthrax and other staples of germ warfare.
The report concludes that Iraq retains the expertise and infrastructure to build new weapons and is seeking to acquire critical parts and supplies. On Iraq's nuclear program, it repeats a British research organization's finding last week that Iraq could likely build a nuclear weapon within a few months, but only if it managed the difficult feat of acquiring enriched uranium from an outside source.
The bulk of the document's assertions were attributed to reports by UN weapons inspectors who scoured Iraq for outlawed weapons programs from 1991 to 1998. Although the inspectors destroyed large amounts of weaponry and equipment, they were unable to account for all the chemical and biological warheads and bombs Iraq has admitted making.
Other claims in the report were attributed to Iraqi defectors or to surveillance imagery that showed new construction in places where Iraq once manufactured weapons.
Weapons experts who reviewed the document noted a few previously undisclosed details, such as a new test platform reportedly built for longer-range missiles at Iraq's Rafah-North facility. But several expressed surprise at the lack of fresh revelations.
"Given the high priority for knowing what is going on in Iraq, I'm stunned by the lack of evidence of fresh intelligence," said Gary Milhollin, the executive editor of Iraq Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit institution that tracks developments in Iraq's weapons program.
"You'd expect that, for the many billions we are spending on intelligence, they would be able to make factual assertions that would not have to be footnoted to an open source."
The document's evidence of Iraq's "support for international terrorism" is one page long and lacks any reference to Al Qaeda or to a purported meeting in Prague between the Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent.
The document confirms that the last terrorism operation by Saddam's regime was the 1993 attempt to kill former President George H.W. Bush during his visit to Kuwait.
It cites Iraq's shelter of various anti-Iran and extremist Palestinian terrorist groups and says Saddam has increased from $10,000 to $25,000 his compensation to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Bush has been under pressure to reveal why he is pressing for a war with Iraq in the near future, and many analysts believed the document would make his case with new information of a more urgent nature.
The absence of evidence, they say, suggests that Bush will rely on what he believes are Saddam's intentions and potential actions, rather than on concrete, current activities.
