No
weapons in Iraq?
We'll find them in Iran
By Neil Mackay
Sunday Herald
2 June, 20
The spooks are on the offensive.
In their eyes, it still remains to be seen whether Tony Blair lied to
the British public by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs), but as the Prime Minister's own intelligence officers now say,
Parliament was misled and subjected to spin, exaggeration and bare-faced
flim-flammery.
It is now seven weeks since
the war in Iraq ground to a confused, stuttering halt and still not
one WMD has been found. A couple of possible mobile bio-weapons labs
have been located, but a close examination showed they hadn't seen so
much as a speck of anthrax or nerve gas. Blair and Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw made clear before the invasion that the UK was entering the
war to disarm Saddam. We were specifically told this was not a battle
about regime change, but a battle to 'eradicate the threat of weapons
of mass destruction'.
Ironically, it was the ultra-hawkish
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who let the cat out of the bag
when he said on Wednesday: 'It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they
would destroy (WMDs) prior to the conflict.' If that was true then Saddam
had fulfilled the criteria of UN resolution 1441 and there was absolutely
no legal right for the US and UK to go to war. Rumsfeld's claim that
Iraq might have destroyed its weapons makes a mockery of the way the
US treated the UN's chief weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix. The US effectively
told him he wasn't up to the job and the Iraqis had fooled him .
To add to Blair's woes, Paul
Wolfowitz, US deputy defence secretary and the man credited with being
the architect of the Iraqi war, told American magazine Vanity Fair last
week that the Bush administration only focused on alleged WMDs because
it was a politically convenient means of justifying the removal of Saddam.
'For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,'
the leading neo-conservative hawk said, 'because it was the one reason
everyone could agree on'.
Then to cap it all, a secret transcript of a discussion between US Secretary
of State Colin Powell and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw came to light
on Friday showing that, even while they were telling the world that
Saddam was armed and dangerous, the pair were worried that the claims
about Iraq's WMD programme couldn't be proved. Powell reportedly told
Straw he hoped that when the facts came out they wouldn't 'explode in
their faces'.
So how on earth did the British
people come to believe Saddam was sitting in one of his palaces with
an itchy trigger finger poised above a button marked 'WMD'? And if there
were no WMDs, then why did we fight the war? The answer lies with Rumsfeld.
With September 11 as his ideological backdrop, Rumsfeld decided in autumn
2001 to establish a new intelligence agency, independent of the CIA
and the Pentagon, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). He put his
deputy, Wolfowitz, in charge. The pair were dissatisfied with the failure
of the CIA among others to provide firm proof of both Saddam's alleged
WMD arsenal and links to al-Qaeda.
Regime change in Iraq had been a long-term goal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
Even before Bush took over the presidency in September 2000 the pair
were planning 'regime change' in Iraq. As founders of the Project for
the New American Century (PNAC), one of the USA's most extreme neo-con
think-tanks, the pair were behind what has been described as the 'blueprint'
for US global domination -- a document called Rebuilding America's Defences.
Other founders of the PNAC include: Vice-President Dick Cheney; Bush's
younger brother Jeb; and Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The Rebuilding
America's Defences document stated: 'The United States has for decades
sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While
the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,
the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends
the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports
a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the
rise of a great-power rival and shaping the international security order
in line with American principles and interests'.
It also calls for America
to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars'
and describes US armed forces as 'the calvary on the new American frontier'.
The UN is sidelined as well, with the PNAC saying that peace-keeping
missions demand 'American political leadership rather than that of the
United Nations'.
That was the policy blueprint,
but to deliver it Rumsfeld turned to the Office of Special Plans. Put
simply, the OSP was told to come up with the evidence of WMD to give
credence to US military intervention.
But what do conventional
intelligence experts make of the OSP? Colonel Patrick Lang is a former
chief of human intelligence for the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA) in the 1990s. He was also the DIA's chief of Middle East
intelligence and was regularly in Iraq. He said of the OSP : 'This office
had a great deal of influence in a number of places in Washington in
a way that seemed to me to be excessive and rather ill-advised.
'The regular organisations
of the intelligence community have very rigorous rules for how you evaluate
information and resources, and tend to take a conservative view of analytic
positions because they're going to dictate government decisions.
'That wasn't satisfactory in Secretary Rumsfeld's Pentagon so he set
up a separate office to review this data, and the people in this office,
although they're described as intelligence people, are by and large
congressional staffers. They seemed to me not to have deceived intentionally
but to have seen in the data what they believe is true. I think it's
a very risky thing to do.'
Most of the OSP intelligence
was based on debriefings with Iraqi exiles -- a tactic, says Lang, which
is highly questionable as the exiles have clear, personal agendas that
might taint their claims. But even if the US was using selective intelligence
to justify war against Iraq, does that mean that Tony Blair was also
being briefed with OSP intelligence ? According to Melvin Goodman, veteran
CIA analyst and current professor of national security at the National
War College in Washington, the answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Goodman
says that there is 'no question' that Blair was 'brought along at the
highest level' by Bush and Rumsfeld, adding that the Prime Minister
was 'vulnerable because of his own evangelical bent' over bringing democracy
to the Middle East.
That US view has been corroborated
by British intelligence sources who have confirmed to the Sunday Herald
that the UK government was being influenced by the selective intelligence
emanating from the OSP. Senior UK intelligence sources representing
a range of views from across all the spying services said: 'There was
absolute scepticism among British intelligence over the invasion of
Iraq. The intelligence we were working on was basically of a technical
nature coming from satellite surveillance and eavesdropping. The only
real Humint (human intelligence from agents) that we had was from Iraqi
exiles and we were sceptical of their motives.'
It was this 'tainted' information
which was used to compile the crucial dossier on Iraq which Blair presented
to MPs last September. The most sensational part of the dossier claimed
that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes
-- a claim based on one single Iraqi defector. A British intelligence
source said: 'The information had been lying around for ages. The problem
was we didn't really trust the defectors as they were working in their
own self-interest and really doing their master's bidding -- by that
I mean us, the UK. They also had one eye to the future and their role
in any new Iraqi government.'
The British intelligence source said the best Humint on Saddam was held
by the French who had agents in Iraq.
'French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real
evidence of a WMD programme. That's why France wanted a longer extension
on the weapons inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians
all knew there were no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as
that's what the French told them directly. Blair ignored what the French
told us and instead listened to the Americans.'
Another source -- an official involved in preparing the Iraqi dossier
for Blair -- told the BBC: 'Most people in intelligence weren't happy
with [the dossier] as it didn't reflect the considered view they were
putting forward.' Other sources said they accepted there was a 'small
WMD programme' in Iraq, but not one that would either threaten the West
or even Saddam's neighbours. Another said they were 'very unhappy' with
the dossier, others said they were 'pissed off' and one described the
claim that WMDs could be ready in 45 minutes as 'complete and utter
bollocks'.
The Sunday Herald was told:
'The spooks were being asked to write this stuff. The dossier had been
lying around for about six months. When it came time for publication
Downing Street said it wasn't exciting or convincing enough. The message
was that it didn't cut the mustard in terms of PR as there wasn't much
more in it than a discerning newspaper reader would know.
'The intelligence services were asked if there was anything else that
could be added into it. Intelligence told Downing Street that the 45-minute
claim hadn't been added in as it only came from one source who was thought
to be wrong.
'The intelligence services were asked to go back and do a rewrite even
though Downing Street was told the 45 minute claim was unconvincing.'
Another intelligence source
was quoted as telling the BBC that they had been asked to rewrite the
dossier as well to make it 'sexier'. The intelligence source said the
dossier had been 'transformed' a week before publication. Blair has
rejected each and every one of these claims as 'completely absurd'.
In a further curious twist, an intelligence source claimed the real
'over-arching strategic reason' for the war was the road map to peace,
designed to settle the running sore of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The source said: 'I believe that Britain and America see the road map
as fundamental. They were being told by Ariel Sharon's government that
Israel would not play ball until Saddam was out of the picture. That
was the condition. So he had to go.'
Meanwhile, the blame game
is now well and truly under way and someone is going to end up carrying
the can. Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House Select Committee
on Intelligence, said: 'This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence
hoax of all time ... It was the moral justification for war. I think
the world is owed an accounting.'
CIA director George Tenet
has just over a month to get his act together before the House and Senate
Intelligence committees start hearings into the nature of intelligence
and the Iraq war. Like Downing Street, the Pentagon strongly denies
it manipulated information.
Here in the UK, more than
70 MPs have signed an early day motion calling on the government to
justify its case for war by publishing the intelligence on which it
was based. Labour rebels are threatening to report Blair to the Speaker
of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament. This would
force Blair to answer emergency questions in the Commons.
The government, however,
has hit back by starting to spin against its own intelligence agencies
-- a potentially deadly tactic. One senior minister was quoted as saying
anonymously: 'If we don't find weapons of mass destruction, it will
be Britain's biggest ever intelligence failure. We would have to look
at the whole set up of how we gather intelligence in the future. It
would have serious consequences.'
Peter Kilfoyle, the former
defence minister who is organising the backbench protests, said: 'The
only cogent reason that was offered for the war was weapons of mass
destruction, which the government said could be utilised within 45 minutes.
It seems to me that, at the very least, evidence was used selectively
from intelligence reports to fit the case.' He added that failure to
prove the case for war was built on solid ground would 'shatter trust'
in the government. 'Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon are all barristers,'
Kilfoyle said. 'They know very well a case based on this sort of information
would be laughed out of court.'
Five steps to the world according
to Bush
1. PNAC
The ultra-hawkish neo-conservative think-tank, the Project for the New
American Century, was set up in 1997 by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld,
Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush (George W's brother) and Paul Wolfowitz. Its over-arching
aim is the establishment of a 'global Pax Americana' -- a re-ordered
world squarely under the control of the USA. To achieve this grand strategic
goal, the PNAC says these steps must be achieved:
* Saddam deposed
* Afghanistan invaded
* Arafat isolated
* Syria cowed
* UN sidelined
* Iran punished
As the world has seen, nearly
all of these aims have beenachieved.
2. The Office of Special
Plans
This new intelligence agency
was set up in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by US defence
secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Frustrated by the failure
of conventional spying organisations such as the CIA to come up with
proof that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was linked to
Osama bin Laden, the OSP cherry-picked intelligence from mountains of
raw data to build the intelligence picture its political masters required.
3. Bush and Blair
With Bush fully briefed by
Rumsfeld using intelligence from the OSP, the US was convinced it had
a case to prosecute a war against Iraq. But could America take its allies
with it? Blair was briefed at length by Bush and other leading members
of the US administration using OSP information. The British intelligence
services were not coming up with the same sort of information that the
OSP were collating. Nevertheless, Blair threw his lot in with Bush,
banking on the OSP intelligence.
4. Troops and conflict
With Afghanistan under US control after the first major battle in the
seemingly endless war on terror, Bush and Blair were able to topple
Saddam using the OSP intelligence to take the public with them. With
Iraq occupied, the hawks have turned their attentions to Iran, with
claims that the 'Mullahcracy', in the words of the neo-conservatives,
had a weapons of mass destruction programme and was tied to al-Qaeda.
Sound familiar?
5. Pax Americana
This is the ultimate aim of the neo-conservatives now running the United
States. America stands as the world's policeman, the US has no powerful
rivals and global capitalism flourishes: the PNAC's project is complete.