Experts grow more sceptical about extent of threat posed by Saddam before war

Focus on BBC row seen as limiting inquiry into intelligence

The Guardian
July 7, 2003
By Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor

The Commons foreign affairs committee is scheduled to release its Iraq report today. In spite of its title, The Decision to Go to War in Iraq, MPs have focused on the BBC-Downing Street spat.

In the run-up to the war, the Guardian assembled a panel of weapons experts from both sides of the Atlantic - former inspectors, academics and soldiers - to evaluate the argument for war as it was presented.

We returned to several of those experts to ask them what they thought today about the two British dossiers on Iraq as well as Colin Powell's crucial UN speech in January. While they all still recognise that Iraq used to possess weapons of mass destruction, they have grown substantially more sceptical about the extent of the threat. They also question the accuracy of prewar intelligence on Iraq and the use that the government made of it.

Tony Blair's 50-page Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, published last September

What it was said to be based on
The prime minister said it was based, in large part, on the work of British intelligence.

The dossier claimed


Iraq, since the mid-1990s, had taken over civilian plants to produce chemical and biological weapons agents.

The Iraqi military planned to use the weapons, some of which were deployable with 45 minutes of receiving orders.

Specific sites were of concern, such as the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute and the Amariyah Sera and Vaccine institute at Abu Graib.

Iraq was pursuing its ambition to secure a nuclear weapon, including "the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

What we now know
All the potential weapons sites mentioned have been visited many times by UN inspectors in the months before the war and US scientists and inspectors since the war. Nothing of significance has turned up.

Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "US troops have ... been to every one, to every area, and turned up nothing." Reports about Iraq searching for uranium in Africa have been largely discredited. An Iraqi scientist did hand in a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium that he had buried in his garden 12 years ago. Gary Samore, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, insisted this showed that Iraq was "preserving the means to revive its nuclear weapons programme". But other experts claim the fact that it had remained buried for so long proves that Iraq was no longer actively pursuing such a programme.

Tim Trevan, a former adviser to the UN inspectors in Iraq, said there was no dispute in the international community that Iraq had WMD stocks and programmes in the past. The question is, did Iraq possess the weapons, let alone be in a position to use them, when the US and Britain decided to go to war? "I never believed the 45-minute claim," said Mr Trevan.

19-page British dossier, Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation, distributed to journalists in February

What it was said to be based on
Jack Straw told cabinet colleagues that the dossier contained "compelling evidence" about Iraq's weapons programme.

Mr Powell praised the document for providing "in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities".

The dossier claimed


to be an extensive account of Iraqi intelligence network

to detail the way that Iraqi intelligence allegedly concealed WMD

What we now know
The document, now usually referred to as the "dodgy dossier", was discredited within a week of its release. Far from being the work of British intelligence, it turned out to be based on the work of a Californian postgraduate student. Parts are also believed to have been taken from the defence specialists, Jane's.

Downing Street initially stuck by it, but the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, two weeks ago described it as a Horlicks and Alastair Campbell has apologised for it.

Colin Powell's speech to UN security council in January

What it was said to be based on
Mr Powell said that "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources", and produced alleged telephone conversations as well as satellite pictures.

The speech claimed


"Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent."

Rocket launchers and warheads containing biological weapons were in various locations, mainly hidden in large groves of palm trees.

Mobile laboratories were being used to manufacture WMD.

There was evidence of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network".

Production of weapons was taking place on specific sites, including a chemical complex at al-Moussaid where Iraqis had removed the topsoil to hide any trace.

Ricin was being produced and was linked to an alleged plot in Britain.

What we now know
Glen Rangwalla, a politics lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, noting that nothing had been found at any site, said that in specific cases, such as al-Moussaid, "removing the topsoil would not have been enough. It would have been widely dispersed over a wide area. It is unlikely the US would find no trace."

As for the al-Qaida link, the main evidence concerned a base in northern Iraq that was outside Saddam's control, which has since been visited by journalists who found no evidence it was being used for the manufacture of chemical agents. The ricin plot link appears to be bogus.

Mr Samore adds: "The most likely thing they are going to find is that Iraq is not hiding large amounts of [banned] weapons but the means to produce them in the future, in the form of blueprints".

Conclusion
Mr Cirincione said the CIA assessments of Iraq between 1998 and 2001 did not change but early last year they suddenly did, even though there was no new evidence: "They started to join the dots together differently. The question is what caused that change. We will not know without a full Congressional investigation."

On this side of the Atlantic, Andy Oppenheimer, a specialist in biological, chemical and nuclear weapons at Jane's Information Group, expressed dismay that the foreign affairs committee conducted a limited inquiry: "It has all got into a slanging match over whether someone altered the text when it should be on whether the intelligence was reliable and whether the Iraqis had WMD."

The panel

Tim Trevan
Former adviser to UN weapons inspectors in Iraq and author of Saddam's Secrets: The Hunt for Iraq's Hidden Weapons

Glen Rangwalla
Politics lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, who was the first to disclose bogus nature of some of the claims in second British dossier

Andy Oppenheimer
Specialist in biological, chemical and nuclear weapons at Jane's Information Group

Gary Samore
Weapons proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former member of President Clinton's national security council

Joseph Cirincione
Senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction

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