Where are the WMD? (long)

“By Cliff Montgomery
May 8, 2003

For weeks, we have been hearing breathless media reports of possible discoveries of chemical and biological weapons by U.S. and British troops in Iraq. Within hours or days, if one scours the back pages of the newspaper, he finds that it was merely another false alarm. But what is never mentioned is that these weapons, made five, ten or fifteen years ago, are almost certainly unusable, having long since passed their stable shelf-life, according to the Department of Defense's own documents based on a decade of international inspections, electronic surveillance and information supplied by spies and defectors.

There was never any question Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction programs. Nor was the world naïve enough to trust Saddam Hussein not to try and hide such weapons from UN inspectors. The rationale for the U.S. invasion, however, was that after a decade of sanctions, war, U.S. bombing runs, and UN inspections, Iraq still possessed a viable nuclear, chemical or biological threat that could be deployed beyond Iraq’s borders or which was in danger of being supplied to terrorist groups.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no basis for this argument, made so forcefully by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, when he claimed to possess clear evidence that huge stocks of everything from sarin gas to anthrax to sanction-violating missiles were stored in Iraq, ready for use. Never mind that the same Iraqi defector who told Powell about the stores of chem and bio weapons also said they had been completely destroyed, which Powell neglected to tell the United Nations. It doesn’t matter, because those stores would almost certainly have become useless by now.

Strangely, the U.S. media have, with almost no exceptions, failed to mention that most bio/chemical agents have a rather limited shelf life. The few who do usually quote Scott Ritter, former UN Iraqi weapons inspector and controversial opponent of Dubya’s drive to Baghdad.

According to Ritter, the chemical weapons which Iraq has been known to possess – nerve agents like sarin and tabun – have a shelf life of five years, VX just a bit longer. Saddam's major bio weapons are hardly any better; botulinum toxin is potent for about three years, and liquid anthrax about the same (under the right conditions). And he adds that since all chemical weapons were made in Iraq's only chemical weapons complex – the Muthanna State establishment, which was blown up during the first Gulf War in 1991 – and all biological weapons plants and research papers were clearly destroyed by 1998, any remaining bio/chemical weapons stores are now “harmless, useless goo.”

However, others have questioned Ritter’s veracity. A former hawk keen on an Iraq invasion after the first Gulf War, as recently as 1998 he wrote in an article for the New Republic that Saddam may have successfully hidden everything from potent biological and chemical agents to his "entire nuclear weapons infrastructure" from UN inspectors.

But the truth of the matter is that Iraq’s WMD may have even less of a shelf life than Ritter now claims – and the U.S. government knows it.

The U.S. Defense Department’s “Militarily Critical Technologies List” (MCTL) is “a detailed compendium of technologies" that the department advocates as “critical to maintaining superior US military capabilities. It applies to all mission areas, especially counter-proliferation.” Written in 1998, it was recently re-published with updates for 2002.

So what is the MCTL’s opinion of Iraq's chemical weapons program? In making its chemical nerve agents, “The Iraqis . . . produce[d] a . . . mixture which was inherently unstable,” says the report. “When the Iraqis produced chemical munitions they appeared to adhere to a ‘make and use’ regimen. Judging by the information Iraq gave the United Nations, later verified by on-site inspections, Iraq had poor product quality for their nerve agents. This low quality was likely due to a lack of purification. They had to get the agent to the front promptly or have it degrade in the munition.”

Furthermore, says this Defense Department report, “The chemical munitions found in Iraq after the [first] Gulf War contained badly deteriorated agents and a significant proportion were visibly leaking.” The shelf life of these poorly made agents were said to be a few weeks at best – hardly the stuff of vast chemical weapons stores.

There was some talk shortly before the first Gulf War that the Iraqis had been creating binary chemical weapons, in which the relatively non-toxic ingredients of the agent remain unmixed until just before the weapon is used; this allows the user to bypass any worry about shelf life or toxicity. But according to the MCTL, “The Iraqis had a small number of bastardized binary munitions in which some unfortunate individual was to pour one ingredient into the other from a Jerry can prior to use” – an action few soldiers were willing to perform.

Iraq did produce mustard gas that was somewhat more stable than the nerve agents. It may have a longer shelf life; perhaps potent forms of this agent could still be found. But one must wonder how worried we should be about Iraq’s poorly-made agents, several years after their production.

And, as Ritter now insists, any chemical weapons facilities operating in recent years could, like their nuclear counterpart, have given off vented gases; and any new biological weapons programs would have to start again from scratch. Both activities would have been easily detected by Western intelligence, and no such evidence has been produced.

The argument for Iraq as a nuclear threat was built on even shakier ground, but this didn’t keep hawks from exploiting non-evidence to frighten any reticent politicians. As Congress was preparing to vote on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, Tony Blair's government picked that moment to publicly release an apparent bombshell: British intelligence had obtained documents showing that between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country “despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.”

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh writes that the very same day Blair unveiled this alleged “smoking gun,” CIA Director George Tenet discussed the documents between Iraq and Niger, the African country in question, during a closed-session Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Iraq WMD issue. Blair had handed the papers over to American intelligence, and at just the right time; Tenet's evidence was instrumental in getting Congress to back the war resolution.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the authenticity of these important documents for the UN Security Council, but only obtained them from the U.S. government after months of pleading – a strange delay, considering the Bush White House was so eager to prove Saddam’s nuclear intentions to a skeptical world.

As we now know, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council that the documents regarding the uranium sales were clear fakes. One senior IAEA official told Hersh, “These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine they came from a serious intelligence agency.”

When asked about the forgeries at a later House hearing, Secretary of State Colin Powell said only, “It came from other sources. It was provided in good faith to the inspectors.” Several fingers pointed to Britain’s MI6 as the perpetrators; Arabs pointed to Israel’s Mossad.

Indeed, this administration often obscured the fact that the UN destroyed all of Iraq's nuclear weapons program infrastructure and facilities by the time inspectors left in 1998. Even if Hussein had somehow secretly imported the materials necessary to rebuild them within the past five years, even as UN sanctions, no-fly zones and vigorous spying by Western forces remained firmly in place, Iraq could not hide the gases, heat, and gamma radiation which centrifuge facilities emit – and which our intelligence capacities would have identified by now.

A week after the IAEA’s bombshell, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), formally asked for an FBI investigation into the matter, stating that, “the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception aimed at manipulating public opinion . . . regarding Iraq.”

At this point, with even White House insiders and media boosters admitting they no longer expect to find much, if any, in the way of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, different unconvincing storylines are being floated: The weapons all went to Syria, they were efficiently destroyed just hours before the U.S. invasion, etc. The truth, however, appears to be that Iraq was a paper tiger, with little or no ability to threaten the United States or Israel.


Cliff Montgomery is a freelance reporter based in North Carolina.”

“Does anyone speak for themselves any more? Are there no personal critical thinkers left? Why do people depend upon the media to speak their minds for them? Is the media to be trusted enough to speak for us? Is this free thinking? And more importantly, why does Viola refuse to wear anything BUT whitey tighties?

Did I even READ the above cut and paste? No. Come back and talk to me when you want to discuss YOUR thoughts, not some reporter's.”

“it's all they got left nigie.....


phaed, keep you're fingers crossed....maybe they'll find out GW staged the whole war for TV and none of it ever even happened....


NO WAIT! maybe the economy will go really bad and we will all suffer and then you can blame bush....just think how happy you'll be....


nigal, i know what your saying about cut-n-paste jobs. i recently sent out a rash of them cuz i'm sick of the anti-liberal liberals on here always making thread after thread rippin conservatives....


i.....am equal time....”

“Nigal, do you have any original thoughts on the text above?

The articles inspire discussion both pro and con, leading to a better evaluation of the issues mentioned. Of course, I could be wrong. It might just generate blind hatred of cut and paste.”

“Strat, you're welcome to read the article as well. It won't hurt. I promise.”

“Reading is fundamental...

For most people.”

“i read it phaeddypoo....i dislocated my left eyeball from rolling them so much......


my original thought....if he had nothing to hide he would shown complete comlitcity 12 years ago.....good thing the french stalled long enough for them to hide or smuggle everything...”

“RIF, those were some cool commercials...


what was everone's favortie schoolhouse rock ?

conjunction junction, what's your function? hookin up words and clauses and phrases...”

“So you believe that Iraq was a clear threat to the US or Israel with its WMD before the invasion?

After all, that's the reason we were given to convince us that war was necessary.”

“yes, a clear and present danger...”

“In that case, where are the WMD that would have been used on us or our allies? I think nukes have been completely ruled out at this point, so we're talking chem and bio, right?

Where are the delivery systems and the agents that would make these a threat to us?”

“alsamude missles? scuds?

you're a blunderhead dood, wake up and smell the mustard gas....”

“They found scuds?

the al-sammud's weren't of great enough range to reach israel.”

“they shot scuds at quwait...hellllloooOoOOoo?


alsamuds could have hit US bases in SA. they could hit kuwait, turkey, isreal...all US allies with US perrsonel......”

“They shot scuds at kuwait? You might check that "fact".”

“Also, the idea that Iraq would have taken some sort of pre-emptive strike against any of its neighbors with UN inspections and our fly-overs going on is ludicrous.

Iraq was no danger to anyone but its own people.”

“WOW, I hope to God it doesn't turn out this way!! ... but right now it looks like a BIG FAT LIE.

And you know how it works. Because IF the Bush administration was incompetent or had no integrity (or both), people will generally think ALL Americans are liars or incompetents (or both).

That sure would suck, wouldn't it?

If it comes down to it, I'm hoping for incompetency over subterfuge, because... how imbecilic would they have to be to think people would just forget the justifications they put out? What FOOLS would they be taking us for?”

“On March 20, the second day of the invasion, U.S. military sources initially described missiles launched by Iraq as "Scuds"-- the U.S. name for a Soviet-made missile used by Iraq during the Gulf War. They exceed the range limits imposed on Iraqi weapons by the 1991 ceasefire agreement.

While some reporters appropriately sourced the Scud reports to military officials, and cautioned their audience about the uncertainty of the identification, others rushed to report claims as facts. NBC's Matt Lauer's report was definitive: "We understand they have fired three missiles. One of those was a Scud missile. It was destroyed by a Patriot missile battery as it headed toward Kuwait."

His colleague Tim Russert was similarly certain, saying, "Because of last night's activity, clearly the Iraqis are now trying to respond with at least one Scud fired at the troops mapped on the border of Kuwait and Iraq." Fellow NBC anchor Brian Williams added, "We learned one Scud had been intercepted, but two missiles had made it to Kuwaiti soil."

On NPR that day, anchor Bob Edwards was equally sure about what happened: "Iraq this morning launched Scud missiles at Kuwait in retaliation for the American strike on Baghdad a few hours earlier." Correspondent Mike Shuster helpfully pointed out that "these Scuds are banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions and have a range of up to 400 miles."

ABC's Ted Koppel, "embedded" with an infantry division, reported matter-of-factly that "there were two Scud missiles that came in. One was intercepted by a patriot missile." ABC anchor Derek McGinty had earlier explained that "there was a Scud attack, one Scud fired from Basra into Kuwait. It was intercepted by an American patriot battery, and apparently knocked out of the sky. There is still no word exactly what was on that Scud, whether or not there might have been any sort of unconventional weaponry onboard."

Fox News Channel's William La Jeunesse was not only asserting that a Scud had been launched, but was drawing conclusions about its significance: "Now, Iraq is not supposed to have Scuds because they have a range of 175 up to 400 miles. The limit by the U.N., of course, is like 95 miles. So, we already know they have something they're not supposed to have."

As the day went on, however, the Pentagon was less definitive about what kind of missile Iraq was using, prompting some journalists to back off the story. Associated Press reported on March 22 that "Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference that the Iraqis have not fired any Scuds and that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers."

Even so, the next day, columnist Peter Bronson (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/23/03) was still writing, "The Scuds he swore he did not have were fired at Kuwait, and Iraq was launching lame denials while the craters still smoked." Apparently the corrections of the earlier, incorrect reports had not reached even all of those whose job it is to follow the news.”

“"Nigal, do you have any original thoughts on the text above?"

What I was getting at was that people cut and paste whatever artical that happens to line up with their personal philosophy at the time on the subject and present it as fact. I do not trust ANY media outlet to present the truth spin free. It goes the same for left and right leaning media outlets. The cut and pasts are a waste of time and bandwidth IMHO.”

“LOL!

These are interesting viewpoints that I paste in here, not something I represent as end-all fact. I hope, often, when I agree with something, that someone will give me resources to other information that refutes or modifies my opinion. I like that.

I'd say the cut and pastes are no more a waste of time than any other post, but that's opinion.”

“Thanks Phaedrus - I hadn't heard the news on those "SCUDs." Its amazing the way the media and the Bush boyz shout the news that "CHEMICAL WEAPONS ARE FOUND" "SCUDS FIRED" and then they whisper the corrections. You have to watch very carefully to see what is really going on - most people just hear the stories that everyone yells about and don't notice when they turn out not to be true.

"A lie can get half way around the world before the truth has even got its shoes on."”

“"The problem is most people prefer the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." JFK

"i read it phaeddypoo....i dislocated my left eyeball from rolling them so much......
my original thought....if he had nothing to hide he would shown complete comlitcity 12 years ago....."
stratdewd

"There was never any question Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction programs. Nor was the world naïve enough to trust Saddam Hussein not to try and hide such weapons from UN inspectors"
-the article in question

If you had been thinking about what you were reading, instead of rolling your eyeballs you would have noticed that the article never said that Hussein had nothing to hide - that was not the point of the article.”

“Yep, Ped, that's been the M O so far. The thing that kills me is that the bigger news organizations aren't even bothering with retractions that stand out. CNN and FOX seem like they're holding hands recently.

A few independent news sources are trumpeting the incompetence of the large media, but their soap box isn't as big, obviously.”

“what is the point ped? that bush lied?

iqaq has no weapons so bush lied

but everyone knows iraq has weapons , thats not the point

bush lied because iraq has no WMD's that they obviously have.....wait....how does it go again?

how bout all the plutonium they found? was it for decoration?”

“CNN and FOX seem like they're holding hands recently
phaedrush


CNN is tired of getting their butt's kicked...”

“The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

You're acting like he imported the stuff after sanctions were imposed. He might very well have gotten the uranium from the US during the Reagan administration for all we know.

As for plutonium, They haven't found any that I'm aware of. Maybe I'm wrong. do you have a source?”

“yeah ok urainium( i get my ium's mixed up)

ok, so by your statement, you agree that there was a threat....

next thread”

“here's a link That says they have no plutonium.

here's a link that talks about Iraq's uraium and how looters have scoured the sites that held it.

All of this uranium would require significant processing in order to be suitable for enrichment for weapons use."
--State dept Spokesman Richard Boucher”

“No, strat, you can mine uranium. It doesn't mean you can make a bomb with it. Iraq was prohibited from having plutonium and enriched uranium. So far, we've found niether.

This means no threat.”

“well dontcha think that's why they had it...to enrich it?


liberals and logic don't mix.....”

“Yeah, they could have just gone to the local seven-eleven when the inspectors weren't looking and bought a bag of ErichR-Umms, and presto - There goes Seattle!


The process of enrichin uranium, strat, is not as easy as that. Read the links I posted. They only managed to produce 6 grams of fissile material over the course of a year in '91. You need four kilos to make a bomb.

Imminent threat? Please.”

“The uranium that was "found" was right where the UN had told Saddam to store it.
It was not weapons grade, it was left over from Iraq's nuclear power program.
The strange thing is it took us 3 days to secure this site after the Iraqi guards left. A site we knew about. That's 3 days for the looters to steal it and sell it to the terrorists. There's your link to terrorism.”

“Your cut-n-paste propoganda, followed with a healty dose of personal insults is no substitute for facts and legitimate debate.”

“Any article that quote's Scott Ritter is full of shiit IMHO..This guy was on the Iraqi payroll..Put that in your conspiracy pipe and smoke it :)”

“but the french said it was true....so did the russians and germans....it HAS to be true...



reasonable doupt?”

“So... where are they?

That's all I wanna know.



Where have they gone, Joe DiMaggio?”

“it they were up your a$$ , you'd know where ther were.....


sorry tilt. i don't know why, that always cracked me up.....

anyways, why don't we ask the french where they are? i saw tom dashle on the TEE VEE and he said he thinks they have them and that we will find them....and i believe everything he says....”

“Colin said they were right there....”

“then he believed they were....good enough for me”

“The fact that 30 million people are free from tyranical rule means nothing? There was never any doubt that Saddam had WMD..everyone in the world agreed to that... Under the inspections Saddams regime had a chance to prove that they some how got rid of them....Had they given proof..things would have worked out in a much diff fashion...At this point if they do exist I hope we locate them...If they are gone..good...and on top of that 30 million people are better off...”

“"then he believed they were....good enough for me"
stratdewd

Ya just gotta love the blind faith on display here....

I know, all these WMD's were magically spirited away in the middle of a war. Your right Strat, the last thing we should do is question the goverment or the media. Lets close out this distasteful reminder and move on to the next war.


The fact that 30 million people are free from tyranical rule means nothing? wsdavies

What makes you think they are free? The likelyhood of a benign goverment in Iraq is poor at best. Saddam wasnt some random wanna be who grabbed control nor is this the first attempt to "free" the iraqis.”

“i do trust powell and so do alot of liberals....


to suggest that the iraqi people are not better off today shows a true lack of compassion on your part....”

“We were sold on the need for this war because of WMD, that Saddam was a threat to the U.S., and that Saddam had to go. Oh yeah, we can free 30 million too.

Now we are victorious because we freed 30 million people, and toppled Saddam. The fact that Saddam didn't use WMD against an invading army to save his own ass brings into question the existence of WMD and the level of threat posed against the U.S.

I hope this is an example of incompetence and not duplicity.”

“Strat: It's simple. The Bush boys didn't just say Saddam had some wmd... tons of places have some wmd. They said there was overwhelming evidence and absolute certainty that these were an imminent danger to the US.

Not only did we have to invade - but it was so urgent that it would be dngerous to have ramped up inspections for even a few more months while we waited for invasion.

It's really hard to believe you have you eyes and your mind open even a little when you can't even begin to comprehend what your opponent is arguing.

It's one thing to disagree - its another to compoletely miss the point you are disagreeing with.”

“Davies, I think if Bush had proposed this "liberation" on humanitarian grounds, we would have had to clean up too many of our other dealings with other countries in order to be consistent in foriegn policy. The international community would never have bought into it, and the American public wouldn't have seen benefit enough to risk its own soldiers. We invaded, as Ped says above, due to the overwhelming threat of IRAQ to the US, according to Bush (read the transcript of his state of the union address "A day of terror like we have never known").

Combine the fact that we have been unable to locate any real evidence of WMD with the papers that floated around by the neocons before Bush was even elected making the case to invade Iraq, and what you have is this administration using the tragedy of 9/11 and the corresponding outrage of the American people as a pretense to complete a pre-planned agenda of invasion. This constitutes a lie to the American public that cost lives of our soldiers, loss of reputation in the international community, and perhaps a number of unforseen consequences that will be as bad or worse than continued UN inspections would have predicated.”

“I, by the way, applauded the Bush administration when I thought they had just ramped up the pressure on hussein to get the inspectors back in. I became disillusioned when it became obvious that that had no effect on the gradual build up of military power and the inevitable invasion.

This had made it clear that inspections WERE working by making saddam a non-threat.”

“phaed, you'r full of camel crap and completely out of touch with mainstream america.....

ped, here's what i said...powell believed there were WMD's. i believe he believed that and i trust him. period and the end. what would you do in his shoes if you actually believed there was a threat? i say a man of your integrity(like powell) would do what he did.....what you are sworn to do...what you have done all your life.....which is defend freedom...”

“Well Strat - perhaps Powell believed the phony info he was handed.”

“to suggest that the iraqi people are not better off today shows a true lack of compassion on your part...."
stratdewd

What makes you believe they are better off? Do you really think that we are capable of forcing our ideas on the iraqis and some how transform them into a peacefull and benign society. Considering our track record in foriegn affairs It is very doubtfull. The minute we turn our back on Iraq the next petty dictator will jump in and take over and may actually be worse. The simple fact is the Iraqis did not value thier own freedom enough to fight for it themselves. They are not going to defend the freedoms we have given them and will end up turning them over to the first dictator that comes along.”

“Getting back to the subject:

Bush went to Congress and the UN and the people claiming that the Iraqis had a huge arsenal of WMD's. Where are they? They could not have moved them without our knowledge. If the weapons existed our intelligence would know exactly where to look. I could understand our searching the area for stray weapons but the fact that we have not uncovered a single shell to date strongly suggests that someone outright lied.”