Weapons of mass delusion: President Bush told the world that Saddam's alleged WMDs directly threatened the U.S. but the war is over and no arsenal has yet been found. (Cover Story: Iraq).

Secretary of State Colin Powell used a February 24, 2001 press conference to defend a recent airstrike against Iraq. "The message I plan to give to all the leaders I speak to and to the Arab public is that the cause of this problem that we have [in the Middle East] is in Baghdad," stated Powell during a visit to Cairo. "It is Saddam Hussein who refuses to abandon his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations has an obligation and, as a part of the United Nations, the United States has an obligation to do everything we can to cause him to come into compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the Gulf War. He threatens not the United States. He threatens this region." (Emphasis added.)

President Bush offered a very different assessment of the potential Iraqi threat during a White House press conference on March 6th of this year. Like Secretary Powell, President Bush insisted that the U.S. is obligated to enforce UN disarmament decrees. "The world needs [Saddam] to answer a single question: Has the Iraqi regime fully and unconditionally disarmed, as required by [UN Security Council] Resolution 1441, or has it not?" declared the president. "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks." But unlike Powell's insistence that Saddam "threatens not the United States," the president depicted Iraq as a direct threat to our nation: "I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons."

What had changed to make Iraq such an immediate threat? According to the president and his subordinates, the 9-11 attacks illustrate the potential danger of not disarming Iraq. "The attacks of September the 11th, 2001 showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes," insisted the president. "We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."

But although the Bush administration capitalized on the public's fears of another Black Tuesday, the administration never made the case that Iraq had been involved in 9-11. Instead, the administration focused public attention on the potential threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) -- nuclear, radiological, chemical, or biological -- if they were transferred to al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks.

According to the president, Saddam's regime continued its efforts to develop and conceal WMDs, despite its devastating loss in Gulf War I, and 12 years of UN sanctions and inspections punctuated by frequent air strikes. "The only acceptable outcome is the one already defined by a unanimous vote of the Security Council -- total disarmament," insisted the president on March 6th.

Where Are the WMDs?

"Troops on the ground have searched more than 80 sites that prewar U.S. intelligence judged the most likely hiding places for chemical and biological weapons as well as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program," the Associated Press reported on April 23rd. This intensive search ended with U.S. troops "coming up empty at most of the top suspected weapons sites in Iraq."

Speaking to reporters at a military facility in Lima, Ohio, on April 24th, President Bush reiterated his earlier claims about Saddam's arsenal: "He tried to fool the United Nations and did for 12 years by hiding these weapons.... But we know he had them." But Saddam and his regime are gone, and allied troops are in control of Iraq; where are the WMDs? According to the president, Saddam may have "destroyed them, moved them or hid them" and so "it's going to take time to find them."

The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which eagerly supported the war on Iraq, has also claimed that the search for Iraqi WMDs will take time. "Saddam was a master of dissembling," British Defense Minister Lewis Moonie insisted. "It will take a great deal of time to uncover [WMDs].... I have no doubt whatsoever that we will find them."

The April 21st London Independent reported that members of Blair's socialist Labour Party are demanding an official inquiry into the intelligence given to the government on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. "We were told it was a war about weapons of mass destruction but they have not been found," observed leftwing Member of Parliament (MP) Jeremy Corbyn. Conservative MP Alan Duncan also voiced concerns about the British government's credibility: "The people who are calling for such an inquiry do have a point, which is that the international community will not trust America, and potentially us, in future opinions if the reason given for the war doesn't turn Out to have been valid."

Crying Wolf

If the Iraqi WMD threat were as grave as portrayed by the Bush and Blair governments, the regime's failure to use those weapons against coalition troops is quite puzzling. After all, Saddam and his henchmen were backed up against the wall and facing immediate defeat; why not let fly with the most potent weapons in their arsenal?

But the Bush administration's chief accusation against Iraq was that it would transfer WMDs to terrorists, rather than use them on the battlefield. "Today, the greatest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons," stated the president in his January 28th State of the Union address. "These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who could use them without the least hesitation."

However, Kevin Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, claims that "terrorism is the least of the threats posed by Iraq to the United States." Saddam wasn't eager to supply WMDs to terrorist groups, because he could not be certain "how they will act and how their actions will affect his own security." Additionally, Saddam knew if Washington could tie Iraq to a WMD attack on the U.S., "he would pay an exorbitant cost for it."

Pollack's dismissal of the potential terrorist threat from Saddam, it should be understood, comes in a book published by the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, which supported war on Iraq.

Obviously, for Iraq to supply WMDs to terrorists, Saddam had to have them first. Whether or not Iraqi WMDs are ever found, there is evidence that his regime was trying to develop them. But that evidence, as presented by the Central Intelligence Agency, has been vague at best, and self-contradictory at worst.

An October 2002 Central Intelligence Agency report entitled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs declared: "Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." The report claimed that "Iraq largely has rebuilt missile and biological weapons facilities" damaged in Gulf War I, and "has expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production." According to the CIA, illicit oil sales funded this WMD build-up.

The report also claimed that "Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, satin, cyclosarin, and VX," and that all key elements of Iraq's offensive bio-chemical warfare program "are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." In addition, "Iraq maintains a small missile force and several development programs, including for a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that most analysts believe probably is intended to deliver biological warfare agents." If this CIA report were correct, then Saddam should have been able to produce and stockpile an array of WMDs -- weapons that should have been found by now.

But the grave warnings contained in that October 2002 CIA report are difficult to reconcile with another report compiled by the agency last year entitled Acquisition of Technology Relating to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions. That report documents that out of all the high-risk nations seeking to acquire WMDs, Iraq ranked second to last in procuring materials and technology. Sudan, which never had a documented weapons program, ranked last.

The other nations listed in that report were Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, India, and Pakistan, with each earning a greater risk assessment than Iraq. While the other listed nations had made measurable advances in their weapons programs (Iran being particularly close to having a nuclear weapons capacity), Saddam's alleged arsenal was described in terms that could be considered ambiguous, or even artfully evasive.

After referring to Iraq's concealment efforts following the 1998 expulsion of weapons inspectors, the report states: "More than ten years of sanctions and the loss of much of Iraq's physical nuclear infrastructure under IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] oversight have not diminished Saddam's interest in acquiring or developing nuclear weapons." (Emphasis added.) That Saddam was interested in acquiring nukes, of course, doesn't mean that he was able to do so. The CIA concluded that "Baghdad could produce a nuclear weapon within a year if it were able to procure weapons-grade fissile material abroad." This stands in contrast to the situation in neighboring Iran, which already had such materials through cooperative efforts with Russia.

Iraq's dependence on foreign sources for fissile materials underscores the real threat where WMD proliferation is concerned: "supplier" nations, specifically our "allies," Russia and China. On this point, the CIA report documented that Russia and China were greatly responsible for the advancements in weapons programs in all of the high-risk nations listed.

A General Accounting Office report, Weapons of Mass Destruction: Observations on U.S. Threat Reduction and Nonproliferation Programs in Russia, noted that since the fall of the Soviet empire, the U.S. has only been able to assist in the protection of "32 percent of Russia's weaponsusable nuclear material." That means that, of the remaining 68 percent, the U.S. has no idea whether the materials are being sold to high-risk nations and terrorist networks, or if it is vulnerable to theft. The GAO report went on to stress that one of the problems in securing the Soviet arsenal stems from Russia's refusal to grant access to certain WMD sites. "As a result, the [U.S.] agencies have been unable to help protect substantial portions of Russia's nuclear warheads and weapons-usable material."

It would appear that if America is concerned about WMD proliferation, it would do better to focus on the "supplier" nations -- Russia being the most significant. More importantly, unconventional weapons, such as chemical, biological, and radiological (or "dirty") bombs, would have to be smuggled into our country. Hence, if America were really serious about protecting citizens from these weapons, the best defense would be securing our borders and tightening our immigration protocols, rather than waging "pre-emptive" wars on distant third-world nations.

War on a Whim

In the weeks leading up to the war, President Bush insisted that rather than cooperating with UN arms inspections, Iraq was engaged in a "willful charade," and was "deliberately ... defying the world" by refusing to disarm. "If the Iraqi regime were disarming, we would know it because we would see it," insisted President Bush on March 6th. "Iraq's weapons would be presented to inspectors and the world would witness their destruction." This assumes, of course, that those weapons existed.

Following the U.S. military victory in Iraq, observed White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, "The Iraqi regime that created the environment for the inspectors previously to go in no longer exists. Make no mistake about it, the United States and the coalition have taken on the responsibility for dismantling Iraq's [WMDs]."

To borrow President Bush's own language, if the coalition is actually destroying Iraq's deadly WMDs, "we would know it because we would see it. Iraq's weapons would be presented to inspectors and the world would witness their destruction." Yet now that it is securely in charge of Iraq, the Bush administration insists that what it described prior to the war as an immediate threat has mysteriously evaporated. Further, the administration has rejected calls for independent verification of any WMD materials that may be found in the future.

The Bush administration's entire case for going to war with Iraq rested on that regime's defiance of UN disarmament resolutions. The presence of a verifiable Iraqi WMD threat, according to the Bush administration, justified an aggressive war on Iraq, waged without a congressional declaration of war or (for what it's worth) explicit UN authorization. While it's possible that U.S. troops will find some evidence of an Iraqi WMD program -- such as residues from, or precursors to, chemical weapons, or material left over from the 1980s-era Iraq-Iran war -- it can reasonably be said that the Bush administration grossly overstated the Iraqi threat, thereby leading our nation into an aggressive war on a pretext.

"It is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant' observed Shakespeare in Measure for Measure. While it's too early to tell what long-term political consequences will follow from the Bush administration's unwarranted belligerence, one logical outcome would be increased international efforts to cut the American giant down to size. And the present course of the Bush administration -- squandering our wealth and power on unnecessary wars, alienating those who otherwise would wish us well, and working to empower the UN - leads inexorably to that outcome.