|
Junkie
|
Point by point debunking of Powell's February go-to-war speech
Good article, well researched. It's nice to see the press doing some research on their own and holding the administration accountable for what they have said in the past.
Sorta makes "I did not have sex with that woman" seem a bit irrelevant, doesn't it? 
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...printstory.jsp
Quote:
Powell's push toward Iraq war questioned
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press
In a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York last February, Secretary of State Colin Powell unleashed an 80-minute avalanche of allegations:
The Iraqis were hiding chemical and biological weapons, were secretly working to make more banned arms and were reviving their nuclear bomb project. He spoke of "the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."
It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors, and other intelligence sources.
In the United States, Powell's "thick intelligence file" was galvanizing, swinging opinion toward war.
Six months later, the file looks thin. Powell has said several times since February that he stands by what he said, the State Department said Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, told U.S. senators last month that the Bush administration had no "dramatic new evidence" before ordering the Iraq invasion.
"We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11," he said.
So how does Powell's pivotal indictment look from the vantage point of today? Today in The Kansas City Star, an Associated Press review analyzes what he said, based on what was known in February and what has been learned since.
FOR AN IN-DEPTH, POINT-BY-POINT ANALYSIS OF THE U.S. CASE FOR WAR, SEE PAGE A-XX
Satellite photos
Powell presented satellite photos of industrial buildings, bunkers and trucks. He suggested that they showed Iraqis surreptitiously moving prohibited missiles and chemical and biological weapons to hide them. At two sites, he said, trucks were "decontamination vehicles" associated with chemical weapons.
These and other sites, however, had undergone 500 inspections in recent months. Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, a day earlier, had said that his experts had found no contraband in their inspections and no sign that items had been moved.
Nothing has been reported found since.
Addressing the Security Council a week after Powell, Blix used one photo scenario as an example and said it could be showing routine as easily as illicit activity.
Inspector Jorn Siljeholm told The Associated Press on March 19 that "decontamination vehicles" the U.N. teams were led to by U.S. information turned out to be water trucks or fire trucks.
Audiotapes
Powell played three audiotapes of men speaking in Arabic of a mysterious "modified vehicle," "forbidden ammo" and "the expression `nerve agents' " -- tapes said to be intercepts of Iraqi army officers discussing concealment.
Two of the brief, anonymous tapes, otherwise not authenticated, provided little context for judging their meaning. It could not be known whether the mystery vehicle, however modified, was even banned. A listener could only speculate over the mention of "nerve agents."
The third tape was an order to inspect scrap areas for "forbidden ammo." The Iraqis had just told U.N. inspectors that they would search ammunition dumps for stray, empty chemical warheads left over from years earlier. They later turned four over to inspectors.
Powell's rendition of the third conversation made it more incriminating, by saying an officer ordered that the area be "cleared out." The voice on the tape did not say that, but only that the area be "inspected," according to the official U.S. translation.
Hidden documents
Powell said that "classified" documents found at a nuclear scientist's Baghdad home were "dramatic confirmation" of intelligence saying prohibited items were concealed this way.
U.N. inspectors later said the documents were old and irrelevant -- some administrative material, some from a failed and well-known uranium-enrichment program of the 1980s.
Desert weapons
According to Powell, unidentified sources said the Iraqis dispersed rocket launchers and warheads holding biological weapons to the western desert, hiding them in palm groves and moving them every one to four weeks.
Nothing has been reported found after months of searching by U.S. and Australian troops.
Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, the Iraqi presidential science adviser, suggested that the story of palm groves and movement was lifted whole from an Iraqi general's written account of hiding missiles in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
U-2s, scientists
Powell said that Iraq was violating a U.N. resolution by rejecting U-2 reconnaissance flights and barring private interviews with scientists. He suggested that only fear of the Saddam Hussein regime kept scientists from exposing secret weapons programs.
On Feb. 17, U-2 flights began. By early March, 12 scientists had submitted to private interviews.
In postwar interviews, with Hussein no longer in power, no Iraqi scientist is known to have confirmed any revived weapons program.
Anthrax
Powell noted Iraq had declared that it produced 8,500 liters of the biological agent anthrax before 1991, but U.N. inspectors estimated it could have made up to 25,000 liters. None has been "verifiably accounted for," he said.
No anthrax has been reported found.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, in a confidential report last September that has recently been disclosed, said that although it thought Iraq had biological weapons, it did not know their nature, amounts or condition.
Three weeks before the invasion, an Iraqi report of scientific soil sampling supported the regime's contention that it had destroyed its anthrax stocks at a known site, the U.N. inspection agency said May 30. Iraq also presented a list of witnesses to verify amounts, the agency said.
It was too late for inspectors to interview them; the war soon began.
Bioweapons trailers
Powell said that defectors had told of "biological weapons factories" on trucks and in train cars. He displayed artists' conceptions of such vehicles.
After the invasion, U.S. authorities said they found two such truck trailers in Iraq, and the CIA said it concluded they were part of a bioweapons production line. But no trace of biological agents was found on them.
Iraqis said the equipment made hydrogen for weather balloons, and State Department intelligence balked at the CIA's conclusion.
The British defense secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, has said the vehicles were not a "smoking gun."
The trailers have not been submitted to U.N. inspection for verification.
No "bioweapons railcars" have been reported found.
Unmanned aircraft
Powell showed video of an Iraqi Mirage F-1 jet spraying "simulated anthrax." He said that four spray tanks were unaccounted for, and that Iraq was building small unmanned aircraft "well-suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons."
According to U.N. inspectors' reports, the video predated the 1991 war, when the Mirage was said to have been destroyed, and three of the four spray tanks were destroyed in the 1990s.
No small drones or other planes with chemical-biological capability have been reported found in Iraq since the invasion.
Iraq also gave inspectors details on its drone program, but the U.S. bombing intervened before U.N. teams could follow up.
Nerve agent production
Powell said that Iraq produced 4 tons of the nerve agent VX.
"A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons," he said.
Powell did not note that most of that 4 tons was destroyed in the 1990s under U.N. supervision. Before the invasion, the Iraqis made a "considerable effort" to prove they had destroyed the rest, doing chemical analysis of the ground where inspectors confirmed that VX had been dumped, the U.N. inspection agency reported May 30.
Experts at Britain's International Institute of Strategic Studies said that any pre-1991 VX most likely would have degraded anyway.
No VX has been reported found since the invasion.
`Embedded' capability
"We know that Iraq has embedded key portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate civilian industry," Powell said.
No "chemical weapons infrastructure" has been reported found.
The newly disclosed Defense Intelligence Agency report of last September said there was "no reliable information" on "where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent-production facilities."
It suggested that international inspections, swept aside by the U.S. invasion six months later, would be able to keep Iraq from rebuilding a chemical weapons program.
Chemical agent stockpile
"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," Powell said.
Powell gave no basis for the assertion, and no such agents have been reported found.
An unclassified CIA report last October made a similar assertion without citing concrete evidence, saying only that Iraq "probably" concealed precursor chemicals to make such weapons.
There "is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," the Defense Intelligence Agency reported confidentially last September.
Chemical warheads
Powell said 122 mm chemical warheads found by U.N. inspectors in January might be the "tip of an iceberg."
The warheads were empty, a fact Powell did not note.
Blix said June 16 that the dozen stray rocket warheads, never uncrated, were apparently "debris from the past" -- the 1980s.
No others have been reported found since the invasion.
Deployed weapons
"Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons....And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them," Powell said.
No such weapons were used, and none was reported found after the U.S. and allied military units overran Iraqi field commands and ammunition dumps.
Revived nuclear program
"We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program," Powell said.
Chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council two weeks before the U.S. invasion: "We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."
On July 24, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio of Spain, a U.S. ally on Iraq, said there were "no evidences, no proof" of a nuclear bomb program before the war.
No such evidence has been reported found since the invasion.
Aluminum tubes
Powell said that "most United States experts" thought aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were intended for use as centrifuge cylinders for enriching uranium for nuclear bombs.
Energy Department experts and the State Department intelligence bureau had already dissented from this CIA view.
On March 7, ElBaradei said his experts found convincing documentation -- and no contrary evidence -- that Iraq was using the tubes to make artillery rockets. Powell's scenario was "highly unlikely," he said.
No centrifuge program has been reported found.
Magnets
Powell said "intelligence from multiple sources" reported that Iraq was trying to buy magnets and a production line for magnets of "the same weight" as those used in uranium centrifuges.
The U.N. nuclear agency traced a dozen types of imported magnets to their Iraqi end users, and none was usable for centrifuges, ElBaradei told the Security Council March 7.
No centrifuge program has been found.
Scuds, new missiles
Powell said that "intelligence sources" indicated Iraq had a secret force of up to a few dozen prohibited Scud-type missiles. He said it also had a program to build newer, 600-mile-range missiles, and had put a roof over a test facility to block the view of spy satellites.
No Scud-type missiles have been reported found.
In the 1990s, U.N. inspectors had reported accounting for all but two of these missiles.
No program for long-range missiles has been uncovered.
Powell did not note that U.N. teams were repeatedly inspecting missile facilities, including looking under that roof, and reporting no Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions.
|
|