Chief
US Inspector Admits
Iraq Had No WMD Stockpiles
By Peter Symonds
World Socialist
Website
28 January 2004
The
admission by the CIAs top weapons adviser in Iraq, David Kay,
that the country possessed no stockpiles of so-called weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) nor related production facilities is a devastating
refutation of the lies used by the Bush administration to justify its
illegal invasion and occupation. The comments are all the more damning
coming from someone who was one of the most rabid advocates of ousting
Saddam Hussein as the only means of ending the alleged threat posed
by Iraqi weapons.
Last Friday Kay
resigned his post as head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG)a collection
of 1,400 special forces troops, intelligence officers and technical
experts who have been scouring Iraq since Baghdad fell attempting to
uncover evidence of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Kay was
appointed by the CIA to head the team in May after it failed to find
anything remotely resembling the masses of weapons that Bush and his
top officials claimed existed prior to the US-led attack.
Kay was not chosen
for the post because of any technical or scientific expertisehe
has nonebut because of his record of support for the Bush administrations
actions. Prior to the invasion, Kay, who had served previously as a
UN weapons inspector in Iraq, routinely appeared in the media lending
his expert credentials to attack the credibility of the
continuing UN weapons inspection efforts and to warn of the dangers
posed by the Hussein regime and its alleged WMD stockpiles. The Bush
administration picked Kaye as ISG head because it knew he could be trusted
to stop at nothing in manufacturing a case.
Kaye and his team
have spent nine months not only checking weapons dumps and possible
production sites, but also interrogating hundreds of Iraqis to try and
extract information about the countrys WMD programs. Scores of
Iraqi scientific experts have been held without charge or trial at a
US base outside the Baghdad airport and subjected to months of questioning
about their activities. Most have now been releasedpresumably
because Kay concluded nothing useful could be learned from them.
Kay presented an
interim report on his work to several US congressional committees last
October in which he was forced to concede that he had found no stockpiles
of chemical, biological or nuclear weaponslarge or smallnor
the production facilities or precursors necessary to manufacture them.
The remainder of his report consisted of a lengthy and elaborate obfuscationcobbling
together assertions about Husseins intentions with
unsubstantiated claims concerning Iraqi scientific research into weapons
or weapons concepts.
In comments over
the past few days, Kay has declared he now believes there were no stockpiles
of weapons prior to the US attack on Iraq. In an interview on National
Public Radio on Sunday, he said: I think there were stockpiles
at the end of the first Gulf War and... a combination of UN inspectors
and unilateral Iraq action got rid of them. Asked whether he believed
that Iraq destroyed its banned weapons just before the US-led invasion,
Kay bluntly replied: No. I dont think they existed.
Nor, it appears,
does the Pentagon or White House. Kay explained that he resignedat
least in partbecause the military had insisted on reallocating
elements of the huge ISG team from the costly and futile exercise of
hunting down imaginary weapons of mass destruction to the more pressing
task of combating the armed resistance against the US-led occupation.
The ISGs focus has now shifted. Kays replacement, Charles
Deulfer, has been assigned to concentrate on Iraqs WMD programs,
rather than any actual hoards of weapons.
Kay, however, remains
completely unapologetic. During his National Public Radio interview,
he was timidly asked about comments just months before he was appointed
to the ISG that he was absolutely confident weapons would
be found. Kay unabashedly declared that he felt no embarrassment at
all. In an interview on NBC television yesterday he reiterated his view
that the US invasion of Iraq was absolutely prudent.
Kay and other US
spokesmen are at pains to invent new justifications for the US war on
Iraq, now that it is obvious that no WMD stockpiles are going to be
found. The old lies are to be replaced with new falsifications and diversions
in an effort to contain the political damage not only to the Bush administration,
but also to the Democratic Party and the media, which rubber-stamped
the lies of the Bush White House and supported the invasion.
Kay placed the blame
for the gulf between the pre-war claims about Iraqs weapons and
the post-invasion reality on US intelligence agencies, rather than on
the Bush administration. Asked on National Public Radio whether Bush
owed the nation an explanation, Kay replied: I actually think
the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president
owing the American people. It was a technical issue, not a political
issue, he said.
Kay stands reality
on its head. The US invasion of Iraq was never about the alleged threat
posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the September 11
attacks on the US were seized upon by the Bush administration to press
ahead with long-held ambitions to subjugate Iraq as a means of gaining
control of the worlds second largest reserves of oil and to position
the US strategically to dominate the Middle East and Central Asia.
The threadbare lies
about Iraqs WMD capacity and the Hussein regimes alleged
links to Al Qaeda were aimed at stampeding public opinion in the face
of opposition from close US allies in Europe and, more importantly,
from the millions of people in the US and around the world who joined
anti-war protests. It was not a matter, as Kay would have it, of the
inadequate or mistaken character of US intelligence. Rather, the Bush
administration was desperate for anythingeven the most transparent
falsificationsto bully the UN and the broader population into
supporting an invasion that had been planned and prepared well in advance.
Kays claim
that the White House had brought no pressure to bear on intelligence
agencies is a lie. Even the supine US media was compelled to report
Vice President Richard Cheneys visits to CIA headquarters to browbeat
officials into making a stronger case for war. Disenchanted with the
CIAs efforts, the most militarist elements of the Bush administrationthe
so-called neo-conservatives in charge of the Pentagonset up their
own intelligence unitthe Office of Special Planswhich had
no qualms about feeding the most dubious information to a compliant
press.
In an article in
the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA
analyst and, like Kay, a supporter of the Iraq war, described the situation
in the intelligence agencies in late 2002 and early 2003, based on numerous
complaints he received from former colleagues. Intelligence officers
who presented analyses that were at odds with the pre-existing views
of senior Administration officials were subjected to barrages of questions
and requests for additional information... Reportedly, the worst fights
were those over sources. The Administration gave greatest credence to
accounts that presented the most lurid picture of Iraqi activities.
In many cases intelligence analysts were distrustful of those sources,
or knew unequivocally that they were wrong. But when they said so, they
were not heeded; instead they were beset with further questions about
their sources, he wrote.
To justify his claim
of intelligence failure, Kay also pointed to the fact that
the Clinton administration, along with the intelligence agencies in
Europe and elsewhere, assessed that Iraq had significant stocks of chemical
and biological weapons. Far from proving the case, his comments simply
highlight the complicity of the preceding Democratic administration
in the US and all the major powersincluding France, Germany and
Russiain using claims about Iraqi WMDs to justify repeated US
air raids and a decade-long economic embargo which cost the lives of
an estimated half million Iraqi men, women and children.
Kay ignores the
fact that France, Germany and Russia were demanding that a new and even
more onerous UN inspection regime imposed in late 2002 be given time
to verify Iraqi claims that it had no prohibited weapons. At the time,
Kay was part of an intensive media campaign to belittle and criticise
UN activities as inadequate and useless, while claiming that Iraq had
vast stores of weapons. As chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix noted
recently, the US should have known the intelligence was flawed last
year when leads followed up by UN inspectors didnt produce any
results. I began to wonder what was going on. Werent they
wondering too? he asked.
Some White House
officials, most notably Vice President Cheney, as well as key US alliesthe
British and Australian prime ministersare sticking to the original
lie, claiming that more time is needed to find Iraqs chemical
and biological weapons. Others, however, like Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who was responsible for presenting the US fabrications to the
UN last February, appear to be taking their cue from Kay. After insisting
last year that Washington had incontrovertible evidence that Hussein
had a vast arsenal of prohibited weapons, Powell admitted last weekend
during his visit to Georgia that they simply may not exist. Like Kay,
he now speaks of the Hussein regimes intention to
reconstitute weapons programs in the future.
The general line
of these officials, as well as the establishment media, is that the
absence of Iraqi WMDs is irrelevant, because the war was justified on
other grounds. Aside from the intrinsic obscenity of the claim that
the subjugation and occupation of a weak and impoverished country by
the worlds most powerful military apparatus represents a victory
for democracy, this sophistry ignores the indisputable facts
of recent history.
The Bush administration,
as well as its satellite in London, did not consider the claims of Iraqi
WMDs irrelevant when it was conducting its propaganda campaign
in advance of the military assault on Iraq. On the contrary, it considered
it politically essential to concoct a false picture of a hostile country
bristling with deadly weapons that could at any time be utilised by
terrorists to kill and maim thousands of American (or British) citizens.
This elaborate and
deliberate lie was critical for several reasons. First, it was needed
to spread fear and terror in the US, the better to drag a skeptical
and reluctant population into an unprovoked war. Second, it was essential
in fabricating a legal fig leaf for a war that was ultimately carried
out in defiance of the UN Security Council and without any international
legal sanction. That legal fiction was based on a claim of self-defence.
The demand for the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and allied troops from
Iraq must be linked to the call for a genuinely independent inquiry
into the tissue of lies that preceded the war, leading to the impeachment
and criminal prosecution of those responsible for war crimes.