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Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Recent History

                                                      Weapons of
                                                         mass destruction
                                                    WMD world map
                                                                  By type
                                                  Biological weapons
                                                   Chemical weapons
                                                    Nuclear weapons
                                                 Radiological weapons
                                                               By country
                                                     Algeria     Argentina
                                                      Brazil     Australia
                                                      Canada    P.R. China
                                                      France       Germany
                                                       India          Iran
                                                      Israel         Italy
                                                       Japan   Netherlands
                                                 North Korea      Pakistan
                                                      Poland        Russia
                                                South Africa  ROC (Taiwan)
                                              United Kingdom United States

   Iraq and weapons of mass destruction concerns the Iraqi government's
   use, possession, and alleged intention of acquiring more types of
   weapons of mass destruction (WMD) during the presidency of Saddam
   Hussein. During his reign of several decades, he was internationally
   known for his use of chemical weapons in the 1980s against civilians
   and in the Iran-Iraq War. Following the 1991 Gulf War he also engaged
   in a decade-long confrontation with the United Nations and its weapons
   inspectors, which ended in the 2003 invasion by the United States.

   The United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi WMD
   throughout the 1990s in spite of persistent Iraqi obstruction.
   Washington withdrew weapons inspectors in 1998, resulting in Operation
   Desert Fox, which further degraded Iraq's WMD capability. The United
   States and Britain, along with many intelligence experts, asserted that
   Saddam Hussein still possessed large hidden stockpiles of WMD in 2003,
   and that he must be prevented from building any more. Inspections
   restarted in 2002, but hadn't turned up any evidence of ongoing
   programs when the United States and the " Coalition of the Willing"
   invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003.

   Great controversy emerged when no stockpiles of such weapons were
   found, leading to accusations that the United States, and in particular
   its President George W. Bush had deliberately inflated intelligence or
   lied about Iraq's weapons in order to justify an invasion of the
   country. While various leftover weapons components from the 1980s and
   1990s have also been found, most weapons inspectors do not now believe
   that the WMD program proceeded after the early 1990s, though various
   theories continue to be put forward.

Program development 1970s - 1980s

   In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a
   clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
   programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in
   the 1970s and 1980s. As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl
   Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as
   laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production
   buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant.
   Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin,
   tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150
   tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984
   respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms
   supplied equipment to manfacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ
   warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that
   helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment
   and other information was provided, involving many German engineers.
   All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of
   German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP)
   ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering
   Trading.

   France built Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in the late 1970s. Israel
   claimed that Iraq was getting close to building nuclear weapons, and so
   bombed it in 1981. Later, a French company built a turnkey factory
   which helped make nuclear fuel. France also provided glass-lined
   reactors, tanks, vessels, and columns used for the production of
   chemical weapons. Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon
   equipment was French. Strains of dual-use biological material also
   helped advance Iraq’s biological warfare program.

   Italy gave Iraq plutonium extraction facilities that advanced Iraq’s
   nuclear weapon program. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical
   weapon use also came from Italy. Between 1979 and 1982 Italy gave
   depleted, natural, and low-enriched uranium. Swiss companies aided in
   Iraq’s nuclear weapons development in the form of specialized presses,
   milling machines, grinding machines, electrical discharge machines, and
   equipment for processing uranium to nuclear weapon grade. Brazil
   secretly aided the Iraqi nuclear weapon program by supplying natural
   uranium dioxide between 1981 and 1982 without notifying the IAEA. About
   100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil.

   The United States exported $500 million of dual use exports to Iraq
   that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced
   computers, some of which were used in Iraq’s nuclear program. The
   non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease
   Control sold or sent biological samples to Iraq under Saddam Hussein up
   until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. These
   materials included anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism, as well as
   Brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium
   perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. Some of these materials were
   used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were
   used for vaccine development.

   The United Kingdom paid for a chlorine factory that was intended to be
   used for manufacturing mustard gas. The government secretly gave the
   arms company Matrix Churchill permission to supply parts for the Iraqi
   supergun, precipitating the Arms-to-Iraq affair when it became known.

   Many other countries contributed as well; since Iraq's nuclear program
   in the early 1980s was officially viewed internationally as for power
   production, not weapons, there were no UN prohibitions against it. An
   Austrian company gave Iraq calutrons for enriching uranium. The nation
   also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the
   Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure, 16% of the international sales.
   Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and
   mustard gasses to Iraq. The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for
   sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq. Egypt gave 2,400 tons
   of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons
   designed for carrying chemical munitions. India gave 2,343 tons of
   precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses. Luxembourg gave
   Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors. Spain gave Iraq 57,500
   munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they
   provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraq’s chemical
   warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales. China provided 45,000
   munitions designed for chemical warfare. Portugal provided yellowcake
   between 1980 and 1982. Niger provided yellowcake in 1981.

Use of WMDs

   The first use of WMDs in Iraq may have been in the 1920s. The Royal Air
   Force dropped mustard gas on Bolshevik troops in 1919, and Winston
   Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, suggested that the RAF
   use it in Iraq in 1920 during a major revolt there. Historians are
   divided as to whether or not gas was in fact used. In 1980 the U.S.
   Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report asserting that Iraq had been
   actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years, which
   later proved to be accurate. In November 1980, two months into the
   Iran-Iraq War, the first reported use of chemical weapons took place
   when Tehran radio reported a poison gas attack on Susangerd by Iraqi
   forces. The United Nations reported many similar attacks occurred the
   following year, leading Iran to develop and deploy a mustard gas
   capability. By 1984, Iraq was using poison gas with great effectiveness
   against Iranian "human wave" attacks.. Chemical weapons were used
   extensively against Iran by Iraq. On January 14, 1991, the Defense
   Intelligence Agency said an Iraqi agent described, in medically
   accurate terms, military smallpox casualties he said he saw in 1985 or
   1986. Two weeks after, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Centre
   reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested
   showed a current immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally
   in Iraq since 1971; the same prisoners had also been inoculated for
   anthrax. All of this occurring while Iraq was a party to the Geneva
   Protocol on September 8, 1931, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on
   October 29, 1969, signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, but
   did not ratify until June 11, 1991. Iraq has not signed to the Chemical
   Weapons Convention.

   The Washington Post reported that in 1984 the CIA secretly started
   feeding intelligence to the Iraqi army. This included assistance in
   targeting chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed
   beyond doubt by European doctors and U.N. expert missions that Iraq was
   employing chemical weapons against the Iranians. Most of these occurred
   during the Iran-Iraq War, but WMDs were used at least once to crush the
   popular uprisings of 1991. While chemical weapons were used
   extensively, there is no proof that Iraq ever employed biological
   weapons in combat. With more than 100,000 Iranian soldiers as victims
   of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons during the eight-year war with
   Iraq, Iran today is the world's second-most afflicted country by
   weapons of mass destruction, only after Japan. The official estimate
   does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering
   towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have
   developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the
   Organization for Veterans. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian
   soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000
   survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000
   are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others
   were hit by mustard gas. Despite the removal of Saddam and his regime
   by American forces, there is deep resentment and anger in Iran that it
   was Western companies (West Germany, France) that helped Iraq develop
   its chemical weapons arsenal in the first place and that the world did
   nothing to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons throughout the
   war. For example, the US and UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known
   chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was
   passed during the war that specifically criticised Iraq's use of
   chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this
   use. On 21 March 1986 the United Nation Security Council recognised
   that "chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces
   against Iranian forces"; this statement was opposed by the United
   States, the sole country to vote against it in the Security Council
   (the UK abstained).

   On March 23, 1988 western media sources reported from Halabja in Iraqi
   Kurdistan, that several days before Iraq had launched a large scale
   chemical assault on the town. Later estimates were that 7000 people had
   been killed and 20000 wounded. The Halabja poison gas attack caused an
   international outcry against the Iraqis. Later that year the U.S.
   Senate unanimously passed the "Prevention of Genocide Act", cutting off
   all U.S. assistance to Iraq and stopping U.S. imports of Iraqi oil. The
   Reagan administration opposed the bill, calling it premature, and
   eventually prevented it from taking effect, partly due to a mistaken
   DIA assessment which blamed Iran for the attack. At the time of the
   attack the town was held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas
   allied with Tehran. The Iraqis blamed the Halabja attack on Iranian
   forces. This was still the position of Saddam Hussein in his December
   2003 captivity. On August 21, 2006, the trial of Saddam Hussein and six
   codefendants, including Hassan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali"), opened on
   charges of genocide against the Kurds. While this trial does not cover
   the Halabja attack, it does cover attacks on other villages during the
   Iraqi "Anfal" operation alleged to have included bombing with chemical
   weapons.

WMD attacks

   Location WMD used Date Casualties
   Haij Umran Mustard August 1983 fewer than 100 Iranian/Kurdish
   Panjwin Mustard October-November 1983 3,000 Iranian/Kurdish
   Majnoon Island Mustard February-March 1984 2,500 Iranians
   al-Basrah Tabun March 1984 50-100 Iranians
   Hawizah Marsh Mustard & Tabun March 1985 3,000 Iranians
   al-Faw Mustard & Tabun February 1986 8,000 to 10,000 Iranians
   Um ar-Rasas Mustard December 1986 1,000s Iranians
   al-Basrah Mustard & Tabun April 1987 5,000 Iranians
   Sumar/Mehran Mustard & nerve agent October 1987 3,000 Iranians
   Halabjah Mustard & nerve agent March 1988 7,000s Kurdish/Iranian
   al-Faw Mustard & nerve agent April 1988 1,000s Iranians
   Fish Lake Mustard & nerve agent May 1988 100s or 1,000s Iranians
   Majnoon Islands Mustard & nerve agent June 1988 100s or 1,000s Iranians
   South-central border Mustard & nerve agent July 1988 100s or 1,000s
   Iranians
   an-Najaf -
   Karbala area Nerve agent & CS March 1991 Shi’a casualties not known

   (Source:)

The 1991 Gulf War

   On August 2, 1991 Iraq invaded Kuwait and was widely condemned
   internationally.The policy of the United States on Hussein's government
   changed rapidly, as it was feared Saddam intended to attack other
   oil-rich nations in the region such as Saudi Arabia. As stories of
   atrocities from the occupation of Kuwait spread, several of which later
   proved false, older atrocities and his WMD arsenal were also given
   attention. Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in
   1981 when the reactor used to generate source material for its bomb was
   bombed by Israel. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists concurs with
   this view: there were far too many technological challenges unsolved,
   they say. An international coalition of nations, led by the United
   States, liberated Kuwait in 1991.

   In the terms of the UN ceasefire set out in Security Council Resolution
   686, and in Resolution 687, Iraq was forbidden from developing,
   possessing or using chemical, biological and nuclear weapons by
   resolution 686. Also proscribed by the treaty were missiles with a
   range of more than 150 kilometres. The UN Special Commission on weapons
   (UNSCOM) was created to carry out weapons inspections in Iraq, and the
   International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was to verify the destruction
   of Iraq's nuclear program.

Between Gulf Wars

UNSCOM inspections 1991-1998

   The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was set up after
   the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. It was
   headed headed first by Rolf Ekéus and later by Richard Butler. During
   several visits to Iraq by UNSCOM, weapons inspectors interviewed
   British-educated Iraqi biologist Rihab Rashid Taha. According to a 1999
   report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the normally
   mild-mannered Taha exploded into violent rages whenever UNSCOM
   questioned her about al-Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on one
   occasion, smashing a chair, while insisting that al-Hakam was a
   chicken-feed plant. "There were a few things that were peculiar about
   this animal-feed production plant," Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy
   executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive
   air defenses surrounding it." The facility was destroyed by UNSCOM in
   1996.

   In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector, Dr. Rod Barton from
   Australia, showed Taha documents obtained by UNSCOM that showed the
   Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium from a
   British company called Oxoid. Growth media is a mixture of sugars,
   proteins and minerals that provides nutrients for microorganisms to
   grow. It can be used in hospitals and microbiology/ molecular biology
   research laboratories. In hospitals, swabs from patients are placed in
   dishes containing growth medium for diagnostic purposes. Iraq's
   hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in
   1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha
   admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism
   toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can
   cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacteria that can cause
   gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor-bean derivative which can kill by
   impeding circulation. She also admitted conducting research into
   cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease
   that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer
   for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's
   work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services
   feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox
   virus. Iraq had a smallpox outbreak in 1971 and the Weapons
   Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Centre (WINPAC)
   believed the Iraqi government retained contaminated material.

   UNSCOM also learned that, in August 1990, after Iraq's invasion of
   Kuwait, Taha's team was ordered to set up a program to weaponize the
   biological agents. By January 1991, a team of 100 scientists and
   support staff had filled 157 bombs and 16 missile warheads with botulin
   toxin, and 50 bombs and five missile warheads with anthrax. In an
   interview with the BBC, Taha denied the Iraqi government had weaponized
   the bacteria. "We never intended to use it," she told journalist Jane
   Corbin of the BBC's Panorama program. "We never wanted to cause harm or
   damage to anybody." However, UNSCOM found the munitions dumped in a
   river near al-Hakam. UNSCOM also discovered that Taha's team had
   conducted inhalation experiments on donkeys from England and on beagles
   from Germany. The inspectors seized photographs showing beagles having
   convulsions inside sealed containers.

   The inspectors feared that Taha's team had experimented on human
   beings. During one inspection, they discovered two primate-sized
   inhalation chambers, one measuring 5 cubic metres, though there was no
   evidence the Iraqis had used large primates in their experiments.
   According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter in his 1999 book
   Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis, UNSCOM learned that, between July 1
   and August 15, 1995, 50 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison were
   transferred to a military post in al-Haditha, in the northwest of Iraq.
   Iraqi opposition groups say that scientists sprayed the prisoners with
   anthrax, though no evidence was produced to support these allegations.
   During one experiment, the inspectors were told, 12 prisoners were tied
   to posts while shells loaded with anthrax were blown up nearby.
   Ritter's team demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib prison showing
   a prisoner count. Ritter writes that they discovered the records for
   July and August 1995 were missing. Asked to explain the missing
   documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the
   CIA and refused UNSCOM access to certain sites like Baath Party
   headquarters. Although Ekéus has said that he resisted attempts at such
   espionage, many allegations have since been made against the agency
   commission under Butler, charges which Butler has denied.

   In August 1998, Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector
   and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security
   Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's
   weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N.
   Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding
   UNSCOM's work. "Iraq is not disarming," Ritter said on August 27, 1998,
   and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a
   chemical strike." In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were withdrawn
   from Iraq. They were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often
   been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his infamous "axis of
   evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam
   Defiant, it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions
   from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order
   to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes which
   eventually took place from from December 16-December 19, 1998.

Between the Inspections: 1998-2002

   Scott Ritter later accused some UNSCOM personnel of spying. On August
   31, 1998, Ritter said: "Iraq still has proscribed weapons capability.
   There needs to be a careful distinction here. Iraq today is challenging
   the special commission to come up with a weapon and say where is the
   weapon in Iraq, and yet part of their efforts to conceal their
   capabilities, I believe, have been to disassemble weapons into various
   components and to hide these components throughout Iraq. I think the
   danger right now is that without effective inspections, without
   effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measure
   the months, reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range
   ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects
   of their nuclear weaponization program."

   In June, 1999, Ritter responded to an interviewer, saying: "When you
   ask the question, 'Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or
   chemical weapons?' the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq
   produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq
   produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic
   missiles? No! It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative
   standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful
   weapons of mass destruction capability."

   In 2002, Ritter stated that, as of 1998, 90–95% of Iraq's nuclear,
   biological, and chemical capabilities, and long-range ballistic
   missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as
   destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, said Ritter,
   not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq had
   preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never
   existed. Many people were surprised by Ritter's "bizarre turnaround" in
   his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made. In
   2000, Ritter produced a film that portrayed Iraq as fully disarmed. The
   film was funded by an Iraqi-American businessman who had received
   Oil-for-Food coupons from Saddam Hussein that he sold for $400,000.
   During the 2002–2003 build-up to war Ritter criticized the Bush
   administration and maintained that it had provided no credible evidence
   that Iraq had reconstituted a significant WMD capability. In an
   interview with Time in September 2002 Ritter said there were attempts
   to use UNSCOM for spying on Iraq.

   UNSCOM encountered various difficulties and a lack of cooperation by
   the Iraqi government. In 1998, UNSCOM was withdrawn at the request of
   the United States before Operation Desert Fox. Despite this, UNSCOM's
   own estimate was that 90-95% of Iraqi WMDs had been successfully
   destroyed before its 1998 withdrawal. After that Iraq remained without
   any outside weapons inspectors for four years. During this time
   speculations arose that Iraq had actively resumed its WMD programmes.
   In particular, various figures in the George W. Bush administration as
   well as Congress went so far as to express concern about nuclear
   weapons.

   There is dispute about whether Iraq still had WMD programs after 1998
   and whether its cooperation with the United Nations Monitoring,
   Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was complete. Chief
   weapons inspector Hans Blix said in January 2003 that "access has been
   provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect" and Iraq had
   "cooperated rather well" in that regard, although "Iraq appears not to
   have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament." On March 7, in
   an address to the Security Council, Hans Blix appeared to take a more
   positive view describing current Iraqi level of cooperation as "active
   or even proactive". Attributing increased Iraqi initiative to "outside
   pressure" he stated his estimate that it would take several months for
   all outstanding WMD issues to be resolved. United States officials
   treated Blix's report dismissively.

   There were no weapon inspections in Iraq for nearly four years after
   the U.N. departed from Iraq in 1998, and Iraq asserted that they would
   never be invited back. In addition, Saddam had issued a secret order
   that Iraq did not have to abide by any U.N. Resolution since in his
   view the U.S. had broken international law.

   In 2001 Saddam stated that "we are not at all seeking to build up
   weapons or look for the most harmful weapons . . . however, we will
   never hesitate to possess the weapons to defend Iraq and the Arab
   nation". The International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain
   published in September 2002 a review of Iraq's military capability, and
   concluded that Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months if
   fissile material from foreign sources were obtained. However, it
   concluded that without such foreign sources, it would take years at a
   bare minimum. The numbers were viewed as overly optimistic by many
   critics (such as the Federation of American Scientists and the Bulletin
   of the Atomic Scientists).

Runup to the 2003 Iraq War

   In late 2002 Saddam Hussein, in a letter to Hans Blix, invited UN
   weapons inspectors back into the country. Subsequently the Security
   Council issued resolution 1441 authorizing new inspections in Iraq. The
   carefully-worded U.N. resolution put the burden on Iraq, not U.N.
   inspectors, to prove that they no longer had weapons of mass
   destruction. The US claimed that Iraq's weapons report which was filed
   with the U.N. leaves weapons and materials unaccounted for; the Iraqis
   claimed that it was destroyed, something that had been confirmed years
   earlier by Iraq's highest profile defector, Hussein Kamel. According to
   reports from the previous U.N. inspection agency, UNSCOM, Iraq produced
   600 metric tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX and
   sarin, and nearly 25,000 rockets and 15,000 artillery shells, with
   chemical agents, that are still unaccounted for. In fact, in 1995, Iraq
   told the United Nations that it had produced at least 30,000 liters of
   biological agents, including anthrax and other toxins it could put on
   missiles, but that all of it had been destroyed.

   In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they
   had found no indication that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an
   active program. Some former UNSCOM inspectors disagree about whether
   the United States could know for certain whether or not Iraq had
   renewed production of weapons of mass destruction. Robert Gallucci
   said, "If Iraq had [uranium or plutonium], a fair assessment would be
   they could fabricate a nuclear weapon, and there's no reason for us to
   assume we'd find out if they had." Similarly, former inspector Jonathan
   Tucker said, "Nobody really knows what Iraq has. You really can't tell
   from a satellite image what's going on inside a factory." However, Hans
   Blix said in late January 2003 that Iraq had "not genuinely accepted
   U.N. resolutions demanding that it disarm." He claimed there were some
   materials which had not been accounted for. Since sites had been found
   which evidenced the destruction of chemical weaponry, UNSCOM was
   actively working with Iraq on methods to ascertain for certain whether
   the amounts destroyed matched up with the amounts that Iraq had
   produced. In the next quarterly report, after the war, the total amount
   of proscribed items destroyed by UNMOVIC in Iraq can be gathered. Those
   include:
     * 50 deployed Al Samoud 2 missiles
     * Various equipment, including vehicles, engines and warheads,
       related to the AS2 missiles
     * 2 large propellant casting chambers
     * 14 155 mm shells filled with mustard gas, the mustard gas totalling
       approximately 49 litres and still at high purity
     * Approximately 500 ml of thiodiglycol
     * Some 122 mm chemical warheads
     * Some chemical equipment
     * 224.6 kg of expired growth media

   Scott Ritter stated that the WMDs Saddam had in his possession all
   those years ago has long since turned to harmless substances. Sarin and
   tabun have a shelf life of five years, VX lasts a bit longer (but not
   much longer), and finally botulinum toxin and liquid anthrax last about
   three years. On March 7, 2003, Hans Blix's last report to the UN
   security Council prior to the US led invasion of Iraq, described Iraq
   as actively and proactively cooperating with UNMOVIC, though not
   necessarily in all areas of relevance and had been frequently
   uncooperative in the past, but that it was within months of resolving
   key remaining disarmament tasks.

The 2003 war

   On 17 March 2003, Peter Goldsmith, Attorney General of the UK, set out
   his government's legal justification for an invasion of Iraq. He said
   that Security Council resolution 678 authorised force against Iraq,
   which was suspended but not terminated by resolution 687, which imposed
   continuing obligations on Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass
   destruction. A material breach of resolution 687 would revive the
   authority to use force under resolution 678. In resolution 1441 the
   Security Council determined that Iraq was in material breach of
   resolution 687 because it had not fully carried out its obligations to
   disarm. Although resolution 1441 had given Iraq a final chance to
   comply "it is plain that Iraq has failed so to comply". Most member
   governments of the United Nations Security Council made clear that
   after resolution 1441 there still was no authorization for the use of
   force.

   Speaking on FOX News Sunday, David Kay said "We know there were
   terrorist groups in state [Iraq] still seeking WMD capability. Iraq,
   although I found no weapons, had tremendous capabilities in this area.
   A marketplace phenomenon was about to occur, if it did not occur;
   sellers meeting buyers. And I think that would have been dangerous if
   the war had not intervened."

   Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the United States stated that Saddam
   Hussein had 48 hours to step down and leave Iraq. As the deadline
   approached, the US announced that forces would be sent to verify his
   disarmament and a transition to a new government. There were media
   reports that American forces were prepared to be attacked with WMDs,
   but although various protective gear was found, WMDs were not used
   against American troops. On May 1st, 2003, American President George W.
   Bush declared major combat operations to have ceased.

Theories in the aftermath of the 2003 war

   The post-Saddam WMD search began with the fall of Saddam Hussein as
   ruler of Iraq and the occupation by Coalition forces. Great controversy
   was generated when stockpiles of these weapons were not found.

Stockpiles were being built post-1991

Transported to another country

   Rumors from top governmental officials have abounded of possible
   transportation of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to foreign
   countries, namely Syria and Lebanon, right before Operation Iraqi
   Freedom began.

   Former Iraqi general Georges Sada claimed that in late summer 2002,
   Saddam had ordered all of his stockpiles to be moved to Syria. The
   former number two in the Iraqi Air Force stated that with the arrival
   of inspectors on November 1st, he took the occasion of Syria’s broken
   dam and made an “air bridge”, bringing by air and by ground, moved them
   into cargo aircraft and moved them into Syria. He also claimed that Abu
   Musab al-Zarqawi’s attempt to use 20 tons of chemical weapons in Amman,
   Jordan and kill 80,000 civilians came from a large cache in Syria,
   originally transported from Iraq. Another Iraqi general, Ali Ibrahim
   al-Tikriti who defected before the 1991 Gulf War, claimed in 2006 that
   weapons are in Syria because of long military deals going back to the
   late 1980’s, where contingency plans would be activated if either
   country were threatened. The credibility of both men was brought into
   question by Alex Koppelman who questions the closeness of Syria and
   Iraq after Syria fought against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.

   Claims were also made by Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, a former
   Israeli officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense
   Forces from July 2002 to June 2005. The General told the New York Sun
   in December 2005 that “[Saddam] transferred the chemical agents from
   Iraq to Syria.” He had previously said in April 2004 that "perhaps"
   they had been transferred to Syria. Even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
   Sharon said that “Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is
   endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria.” These
   claims were considered by the Iraq Survey Group Duelfer report addenda,
   and stated that because of worsening violence in Iraq they were forced
   to stop after several months, and results remain inconclusive. It
   appeared that no official transportation of WMD’s took place, though a
   limited amount of unofficial movement could not be ruled out. They did
   note that Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards from the Syrian
   border and replaced them with intelligence officers who would then
   supervise the movement of banned materials between Syria and Iraq.
   There was also particularly heavy traffic in large trucks on the border
   before the United States invasion. In testimony before a Senate panel
   in October 2004, Charles Duelfer stated that this was true, but it was
   not possible to say if they were WMD-related, and later other officials
   concurred that there was no information that would indicate what they
   contained.

   Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw has also alleged
   that the Russians played an extensive role in transporting materials
   into Syria and Lebanon, and he claims he found that trucks were
   transporting materials to Syria and returning empty. Also, containers
   with warnings painted on them were moved to a Beirut hospitals
   basement. Russia and China were also alleged to have helped arm and
   then move WMD equipment.

   In one of the Saddam tapes released in 2006 of a conversation with one
   of his aides about UN inspectors, Saddam is asked, "Where was the
   nuclear material transported to?" The aide then says, "A number of them
   were transported out of Iraq." The aide was referring to the 1990s-era
   UN inspections of Iraq, in which the IAEA confiscated fissionable
   material from Iraq. Some reports claim Saddam discusses WMD and links
   to terrorists on these tapes. US Congressman Peter Hoekstra called for
   the U.S. government to put the remaining 35,000 boxes of documents on
   the Internet so Arabic speakers around the world can help translate the
   documents. The U.S. government is in the process of releasing these
   documents called the Operation Iraqi Freedom documents.

   Many of these documents seem to make clear that Saddam's regime had
   given up on seeking a WMD capability by the mid-1990s. Associated Press
   reported, "Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants
   remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological
   weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the
   nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon." At one 1996
   presidential meeting, top weapons program official Amer Mohammed
   Rashid, describes his conversation with UN weapons inspector Rolf
   Ekeus: "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the
   details." At another meeting Saddam told his deputies, "We cooperated
   with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5
   percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to
   (verify). Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD. We have
   nothing."

Still hidden

   Some experts, such as former Pentagon investigator Dave Gaubatz, allege
   that not all of the potential sites that may have WMDs have been
   searched. On February 12, 2006, he appeared on Fox News Channel and
   claimed he and fellow military investigators identified four
   underground bunkers with five foot thick concrete walls in southern
   Iraq believed to hold WMD. Iraqi informants had brought these sites to
   the attention of Gaubatz and his colleagues. Gaubatz claims that, for
   various reasons, these sites have never been inspected by the Iraq
   Survey Group or the CIA, and made a plea the sites be inspected.
   Gaubatz also reiterated his claims in a telephone interview with The
   New York Sun.

   On August 14, 2005, The Washington Post published an article reporting
   a raid on a suspected chemical weapons facility in Iraq where
   (according to the US military) chemical weapons had been uncovered and
   were now in the process of being classified. The Post reported that
   "the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led
   invasion of Iraq in 2003."

   The Washington Times editorialized on a moment on the "Saddam tapes"
   that revealed "Saddam was actively working on a plan to enrich uranium
   using a technique known as plasma separation. This is particularly
   worrisome because of the date of the conversation: It took place in
   2000, nearly five years after Iraq's nuclear programs were thought to
   have stopped."

Stockpiles weren't created post-1991

Coalition inflated intelligence

   In an interview with BBC in June 2004 David Kay, former head of the
   Iraq Survey Group, made the following comment:

          "Anyone out there holding — as I gather Prime Minister Blair has
          recently said — the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey
          Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction,
          [is] really delusional."

   A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi "bioweapons
   trailers" were discredited by American experts, a biological weapons
   specialist from Australia has claimed that U.S. officials were still
   suppressing the findings, and that a CIA officer told him it was
   "politically not possible" to report that the White House claims (about
   WMD) were untrue. On 4 June 2003, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts announced
   that the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence that he chaired would
   "as a part of its ongoing oversight of the intelligence
   community...conduct a Review of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass
   destruction. On 9 July 2004, the Committee released the Senate Report
   of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. On July 17, 2003, the British Prime
   Minister Tony Blair said in an address to the US congress, that history
   would forgive the United States and United Kingdom, even if they were
   wrong about weapons of mass destruction. He still maintained that "with
   every fibre of instinct and conviction" Iraq did have weapons of mass
   destruction.

   On May 30, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz stated in an interview with Vanity Fair
   magazine that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was the point of
   greatest agreement among Bush's team among the reasons to remove Saddam
   Hussein from power. He said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a
   lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one
   issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass
   destruction as the core reason, but, there have always been three
   fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is
   support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi
   people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one
   which is the connection between the first two." The same day, General
   James T. Conway, senior Marine commander in Iraq, expressed similar
   thoughts in a satellite interview with reporters at the Pentagon.

   "It was to do with information management. The intention was to
   dramatise it." On 3 February 2004, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
   announced an independent inquiry, to be chaired by Lord Butler of
   Brockwell, to examine the reliability of British intelligence relating
   to alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

   The Butler Review was published 14 July 2004.

   One notable excerpt:

   "We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the
   time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the
   statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the
   Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of
   Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the
   statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January
   2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein
   recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was
   well-founded."

   In the build up to the 2003 war the New York Times published a number
   of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in
   particular, written by Judith Miller helped persuade the American
   public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an
   intercepted shipment of aluminium tubes which the NYT said were to be
   used to develop nuclear material. It is now clear that they could not
   be used for that purpose. The story was followed up with television
   appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all
   pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action
   against Iraq. Miller's sources were introduced to her by Ahmed Chalabi,
   an Iraqi exile favourable to a US invasion of Iraq. Miller is also
   listed as a speaker for The Middle East Forum, an organization which
   openly declared support for an invasion. In May 2004 the New York Times
   published an editorial which stated that its journalism in the build up
   to war had sometimes been lax. It appears that in the cases where Iraqi
   exiles were used for the stories about WMD were either ignorant as to
   the real status of Iraq's WMD or lied to journalists to achieve their
   own ends.

   Despite the intelligence lapse, Bush stood by his decision to invade
   Iraq stating:

          But what wasn't wrong was Saddam Hussein had invaded a country,
          he had used weapons of mass destruction, he had the capability
          of making weapons of mass destruction, he was firing at our
          pilots. He was a state sponsor of terror. Removing Saddam
          Hussein was the right thing for world peace and the security of
          our country.

   In a speech before the World Affairs Council of Charlotte, NC, on April
   7, 2006, President Bush stated that he "fully understood that the
   intelligence was wrong, and [he was] just as disappointed as everybody
   else" when U.S. troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction in
   Iraq.

   Intelligence shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq was heavily used
   as support arguments in favour of military intervention with the
   October 2002 C.I.A. report on Iraqi WMDs considered to be the most
   reliable one available at that time.

   "According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree
   that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that
   Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons." Senator John Kerry
   (D-Mass.) - Congressional Record, October 9, 2002

   On May 29, 2003, Andrew Gilligan appears on the BBC's Today program
   early in the morning. Among the contentions he makes in his report are
   that the government "ordered (the September Dossier, a British
   Government dossier on WMD) to be sexed up, to be made more exciting,
   and ordered more facts to be...discovered." The broadcast is not
   repeated.

   On May 27, 2003, a secret Defense Intelligence Agency fact-finding
   mission in Iraq reported unanimously to intelligence officials in
   Washington that two trailers captured in Iraq by Kurdish troops "had
   nothing to do with biological weapons." The trailers had been a key
   part of the argument for the 2003 invasion; Secretary of State Colin
   Powell had told the United Nations Security Council, "We have firsthand
   descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. We
   know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps,
   compressors and other parts look like." The Pentagon team had been sent
   to investigate the trailers after the invasion. The team of experts
   unanimously found "no connection to anything biological"; one of the
   experts told reporters that they privately called the trailers "the
   biggest sand toilets in the world." The report was classified, and the
   next day, the CIA publicly released the assessment of its Washington
   analysts that the trailers were "mobile biological weapons production."
   The White House continued to refer to the trailers as mobile biological
   laboratories throughout the year, and the Pentagon field report
   remained classified. It is still classified, but a Washington Post
   report of 12 April 2006 disclosed some of the details of the report.
   According to the Post:

          A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were
          neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the
          work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search
          for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final
          report in September 2004 -- 15 months after the technical report
          was written -- said the trailers were "impractical" for
          biological weapons production and were "almost certainly
          intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons. "No
          one was more surprised than I that we didn't find (WMDs)."
          General Tommy Franks December 2nd 2005.

   On 6 February 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush named an Iraq
   Intelligence Commission, chaired by Charles Robb and Laurence
   Silberman, to investigate United States intelligence, specifically
   regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass
   destruction. On 8 February 2004, Dr Hans Blix, in an interview on BBC
   TV, accused the US and British governments of dramatising the threat of
   weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case
   for the 2003 war against the government of Saddam Hussein. Quote:

Saddam was misled

   A rumor originating among the British intelligence community was the
   Saddam had been lied to about his biological and chemical weapons
   capabilities. And as most of the informers for British intelligence
   were high level informers close to Saddam, the British were also
   fooled. Doctor Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic
   Studies noted that during the 2003 invasion, there was "chatter" among
   Iraqi forces that was interpreted to mean that a chemical weapons
   attack was ordered. Whether they really had these weapons, whether it
   was bluster to frighten the coalition or fool Saddam is unclear.

Only retained old weapons and equipment to develop later

   On 30 May 2003, The U.S. Department of Defense briefed the media that
   it was ready to formally begin the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG),
   a fact finding mission from the coalition of the Iraq occupation into
   the WMD programs developed by Iraq, taking over from the
   British-American 75th Exploitation Task Force.

   On October 6, 2004, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Charles
   Duelfer, announced to the United StatesSenate Armed Services Committee
   that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had
   produced and stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction since 1991,
   when UN sanctions were imposed.

   Bill Tierney, former UNSCOM inspector and Arabic linguist had stated
   that he believed Iraq could very well have produced enough weapons
   grade uranium to make weapons, and their past attempts make this a
   strong possibility.

   Various nuclear facilities, including the Baghdad Nuclear Research
   Facility and Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre, were found looted in the
   month following the invasion. (Gellman, 3 May 2003) On June 20, 2003,
   the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that tons of uranium,
   as well as other radioactive materials such as thorium, had been
   recovered, and that the vast majority had remained on site. There were
   several reports of radiation sickness in the area. By June 7, 2003,
   many American and British media sourcesbegan questioning the
   credibility of the Bush administration, and John Dean even brought up
   the possibility of impeachment for "lying to Congress and the American
   people", although this idea has largely fallen by the wayside since
   some members of Congress had access to much of the same information as
   the White House. It has been suggested that the documents and suspected
   weapons sites were looted and burned in Iraq by looters in the final
   days of the war.

   The reason for the high false positive rates is that field tests using
   the ICAM (Improved Chemical Agent Monitor) are very inaccurate, and
   even the more time consuming field tests have shown themselves to be
   poor at determining whether something is a chemical weapon. According
   to Donald Rumsfeld, ""Almost all first reports we get turn out to be
   wrong," he said. "We don't do first reports and we don't speculate."
   Many chemicals used in explosives, such as phosphorus, show up as
   blister agents. Other chemicals, such as pesticides (especially
   organophosphates such as malathion), routinely show up as nerve agents.
   Chemically, they are quite similar — the main difference is that some
   organophosphates kill only insects, and are consequently used as
   insecticides.

   On May 2, 2004 a shell containing mustard gas, was found in the middle
   of street west of Baghdad. The Iraq Survey Group investigation reported
   that it had been previously "stored improperly", and thus the gas was
   "ineffective" as a useful chemical agent. Officials from the Defense
   Department commented that they were not certain if use was to be made
   of the device as a bomb.

   On May 16, 2004 a 152mm artillery shell was used as an improvised
   bomb.( Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program Annex F. Retrieved on 2005-
   06-29.) The shell exploded and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor
   exposure to a nerve agent (nausea and dilated pupils). On May 18 it was
   reported by U.S. Department of Defense intelligence officials that
   tests showed the two-chambered shell contained the chemical agent
   sarin, the shell being "likely" to have contained three to four liters
   of the substance (in the form of its two unmixed precursor chemicals
   prior to the aforementioned explosion that had not effectively mixed
   them). Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told the Associated
   Press that "he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden
   stockpile, although he didn't rule out that possibility." Kay also
   considered it possible that the shell was "an old relic overlooked when
   Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s." It is
   likely that the insurgents who planted the bomb did not know it
   contained sarin, according to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, and another U.S.
   official confirmed that the shell did not have the markings of a
   chemical agent. The Iraq Survey Group later concluded that the shell
   "probably originated with a batch that was stored in a Al Muthanna CW
   complex basement during the late 1980s for the purpose of leakage
   testing." ( Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program Annex F. Retrieved on 2005-
   06-29.)

   On 29 October U.S. intelligence spokesmen claimed that Iraqi WMDs and
   programs had been comprehensively hidden before or immediately after
   the fall of Bagdhad, with some elements of the programs being shipped
   out of the country.

   In a July 2, 2004 article published by The Associated Press and
   reported by Fox News that more WMD not destroyed by the Iraqi Regime
   were discovered in South Central Iraq by Polish Allies. Sarin Gas
   warheads dating back to the last Iran-Iraq war were trying to be
   purchased by terrorists for $5000 a warhead. The Polish troops secured
   munitions on June 23, 2004. After being tested, it turned out that the
   warheads did not in fact contain sarin gas. The Coalition Press
   Information Centre in Baghdad announced that the munitions "were all
   empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals." The US abandoned
   its search for WMDs in Iraq on January 12, 2005.

   On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Iraq Survey Group Final Report
   concluded that, "ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn (sic)
   possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its
   investigation—including detainee interviews and document
   exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in
   Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability." Among the
   key findings of the final ISG report were:
    1. Evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi
       Nuclear Program but found that Iraq's ability to reconstitute a
       nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date;
    2. Concealment of nuclear program in its entirety, as with Iraq's BW
       program. Aggressive UN inspections after Desert Storm forced Saddam
       to admit the existence of the program and destroy or surrender
       components of the program;
    3. After Desert Storm, Iraq concealed key elements of its program and
       preserved what it could of the professional capabilities of its
       nuclear scientific community;
    4. Saddam's ambitions in the nuclear area were secondary to his prime
       objective of ending UN sanctions; and
    5. A limited number of post-1995 activities would have aided the
       reconstitution of the nuclear weapons program once sanctions were
       lifted.

   The report found that "The ISG has not found evidence that Saddam
   possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but [there is] the possibility that some
   weapons existed in Iraq, although not of a militarily significant
   capability." It also concluded that there was a possible intent to
   restart all banned weapons programs as soon as multilateral sanctions
   against it had been dropped, with Hussein pursuing WMD proliferation in
   the future : "There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and
   circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a
   strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were
   lifted..." No senior Iraqi official interviewed by the ISG believed
   that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever.

   In the Saddam tapes, one of Saddams aides insist the inspections are
   meaningless, since Iraq retained the technical skill and personele to
   reconstitute the program at a later date.

   After he was captured by U.S. forces in Baghdad in 2003, Dr. Mahdi
   Obeidi, who ran Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program until 1997, handed
   over blueprints for a nuclear centrifuge along with some actual
   centrifuge components, stored at his home — buried in the front yard —
   awaiting orders from Baghdad to proceed. He said, "I had to maintain
   the program to the bitter end." In his book, "The Bomb in My Garden,"
   the Iraqi physicist explains that his nuclear stash was the key that
   could have unlocked and restarted Saddam's bombmaking program. However
   it would require a massive investment and a re-creation of thousands of
   centrifuges in order to reconstitute a full centrifugal enrichment
   program.

   On October 3, 2003, the world digests David Kay's Iraq Survey Group
   report that finds no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, although it states the
   government intended to develop more weapons with additional
   capabilities. Weapons inspectors in Iraq do find some "biological
   laboratories" and a collection of "reference strains", including a
   strain of botulinum bacteria, "ought to have been declared to the UN."
   Kay testifies that Iraq had not fully complied with UN inspections. In
   some cases, equipment and materials subject to UN monitoring had been
   kept hidden from UN inspectors. "So there was a WMD program. It was
   going ahead. It was rudimentary in many areas," Kay would say in a
   later interview. In other cases, Iraq had simply lied to the UN in its
   weapons programs. The US-sponsored search for WMD had at this point
   cost $300 million and was projected to cost around $600 million more.

   According to Kay, Iraq worked on WMDs right under the noses of UNMOVIC.
   Kay said that Iraq had tried to weaponize ricin "right up until"
   Operation Iraqi Freedom.

   In David Kay's statement on the interim report of the ISG the following
   paragraphs are found:

   "We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the
   point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do
   not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to
   find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for
   such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis."

   "With regard to delivery systems, the ISG team has discovered
   sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was
   committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if OIF had
   not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq
   after the 1991 Gulf War."

   "ISG has gathered testimony from missile designers at Al Kindi State
   Company that Iraq has reinitiated work on converting SA-2
   Surface-to-Air Missiles into ballistic missiles with a range goal of
   about 250km. Engineering work was reportedly underway in early 2003,
   despite the presence of UNMOVIC. This program was not declared to the
   UN."

   "ISG has developed multiple sources of testimony, which is corroborated
   in part by a captured document, that Iraq undertook a program aimed at
   increasing the HY-2's range and permitting its use as a land-attack
   missile. These efforts extended the HY-2's range from its original
   100km to 150-180km. Ten modified missiles were delivered to the
   military prior to OIF and two of these were fired from Umm Qasr during
   OIF -- one was shot down and one hit Kuwait."

   Another notable statement is the following:

   "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and
   significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United
   Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."

   The phrase of 'WMD-related program activities' was later used in George
   Bush's state of the union speech. Bush's critics, often not realizing
   the origin of the statement, derided Bush for unclear wording and
   trying to "lower the bar" on confirming his pre-war WMD-claims.

   In a January 26, 2004 interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC news, Mr. Kay
   described Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs as
   being in a "rudimentary" stage. He also stated that "What we did find,
   and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups
   and individuals that passed through Iraq." In responding to a question
   by Mr. Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President
   Bush had asserted before the invasion, Mr. Kay answered:

          Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It’s not a
          technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more
          dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam
          was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace
          of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier
          if the war had not intervened.

   In June of 2004, the United States removed 2 tons of low-enriched
   uranium from Iraq, sufficient raw material for a single nuclear weapon.

   Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several reported finds of chemical
   weapons were announced. During the invasion itself, there were half a
   dozen incidents in which the US military announced that it had found
   chemical weapons. All of these claims were based on field reports, and
   were later retracted. After the war, many cases — most notably on April
   7, 2003 when several large drums tested positive — continued to be
   reported in the same way.

   Another such post-war case occurred on January 9, 2004, when Icelandic
   munitions experts and Danish military engineers discovered 36 120-mm
   mortar rounds containing liquid buried in Southern Iraq. While initial
   tests suggested that the rounds contained a blister agent, a chemical
   weapon banned by the Geneva Convention, subsequent analysis by American
   and Danish experts showed that no chemical agent was present. It
   appears that the rounds have been buried, and most probably forgotten,
   since the Iran-Iraq war. Some of the munitions were in an advanced
   state of decay and most of the weaponry would likely have been
   unusable.

   Demetrius Perricos, then head of UNMOVIC, stated that the Kay report
   contained little information not already known by UNMOVIC. Many
   organizations, such as the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, have
   claimed that Kay's report is a "worst case analysis"

   Beginning in 2003, the ISG had uncovered remnants of Iraq's 1980s-era
   WMD programs. On June 21, 2006 Rick Santorum claimed that "we have
   found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," citing a
   declassified June 6th letter to Pete Hoekstra saying that since the
   2003 invasion, a total of "approximately 500 weapons munitions which
   contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent" had been found scattered
   throughout the country.

   The Washington Post reported that "the U.S. military announced in 2004
   in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and
   that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active." It said
   the shells "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long
   forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which
   ended in 1988."

Saddam lied to stay in power

   On 14 December Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces. Time Online
   Edition reports that in his first interrogation he was asked whether
   Iraq had any WMDs. According to an official, his reply was: "'No, of
   course not, the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to
   war with us.' The interrogator continued along this line, said the
   official, asking: 'if you had no weapons of mass destruction then why
   not let the U.N. inspectors into your facilities?' Saddam’s reply: 'We
   didn’t want them to go into the presidential areas and intrude on our
   privacy." Later interviews with Saddam's military leaders indicated
   that Saddam didn't want it demonstrated through inspections that he
   didn't possess WMDs in certain places in order to pose a threat against
   those who might attempt a coup.

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