Program development 1960s–1980s 1959 August 17
USSR and
Iraq signed an agreement for the USSR to build a nuclear power plant and established a nuclear program as part of their mutual understanding. 1968 a Soviet supplied IRT-2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to
Baghdad. 1975
Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow and asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve only if the station was regulated by the
International Atomic Energy Agency, but Iraq refused. However, an agreement of co-operation was signed on April 15, which superseded the one of 1959. After 6 months France agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% uranium and built a nuclear power plant without IAEA control at a price of $3 billion. Iraq began a clandestine nuclear weapons program under President Saddam Hussain's directives in late 1969. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of foreign firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of
Project 922, Iraq built 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. 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 manufacture
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. Iraq used an overlooked method, electromagnetic separation (
calutrons), to enrich uranium. Its interest in electromagnetic separation started sometime in 1971. Iraq chose to develop the electromagnetic process over more modern, economic, and efficient methods of enrichment because calutrons were easier to build, with fewer technical challenges, and the components required to build them were not subject to export controls.
Western help with Iraq's WMD program United States The United States supported Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war with over $500 million worth of dual-use equipment 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 of
anthrax,
West Nile virus and
botulism to Iraq up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. A number of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were used for vaccine development. For example, the Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive anthrax strain for use as a biological weapon, according to
Charles Duelfer. The United States government invited a delegation of Iraqi weapons scientists to an August 1989 "detonation conference" in Portland, Oregon. The
U.S. Department of Defense and the
U.S. Department of Energy conference featured experts that explained to the Iraqis and other attendees how to generate
shock waves in any needed configuration. The conference included lectures on
HMX, a powerful explosive generally preferred for
nuclear detonation, and on flyer plates, which are devices for generating the specific type of shock waves necessary for
nuclear bomb ignition. Both HMX and flyer plates were in fact later found at Iraqi nuclear research sites by United Nations weapons inspectors.
United Kingdom In 1985, the
Second Thatcher ministry allowed a German-owned and British-based company,
Uhde Ltd, to construct a factory in Iraq which was intended to be used for mustard and nerve gas production by the Iraqis. During the late 1980s, the
British government secretly granted
Coventry-based engineering company
Matrix Churchill permission to sell parts to Iraq for use in their weapons programs, while several UK firms sold components to Canadian engineer
Gerald Bull for
Project Babylon. In March 1990, a case of nuclear triggers bound for Iraq was seized by
HM Customs and Excise at
Heathrow Airport. The
Scott Report uncovered much of the secrecy that had surrounded the "
Arms-to-Iraq" affair, as it became known when knowledge of UK arm sales to Iraq became public. Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in 1981 when the
Osiraq reactor, which would have been capable of breeding weapons-usable nuclear material,
was bombed by the
Israeli Air Force before it could be commissioned.
Iran–Iraq War In 1980, the
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating 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 during the
Iran–Iraq War. 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 later, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed an immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally in Iraq since 1971; the same prisoners had also been inoculated for anthrax. The assumption being that Iraq used both smallpox and anthrax during this war.
The Washington Post reported that in 1984 the CIA secretly started providing intelligence to the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War. This included information to target chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed beyond doubt by European doctors and UN expert missions that Iraq was employing chemical weapons against the Iranians. Most of these occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, but chemical weapons were used at least once against the Shia popular uprising in southern Iraq in 1991. 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 affected by mustard gas. There is deep resentment and anger in Iran that it was Western nations that helped Iraq develop and direct 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 United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this use. On March 21, 1986, the United Nation Security Council recognized 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 7,000 people had been killed and 20,000 wounded. The
Halabja poison gas attack caused an international outcry against the Iraqis. Later that year the U.S. Senate proposed the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, 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. 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.
Chemical weapon attacks (Source: An international coalition of nations, led by the United States, liberated Kuwait in 1991. on 10 March 1991, after it was bombed by the U.S. in the
Gulf War 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. These binding resolutions also proscribed missiles with a range of more than 150 kilometres. The UN Special Commission on Iraq (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.
UN inspections 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 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, 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 medium 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
botulinum toxin; 8,000 litres of
anthrax; 2,000 litres of
aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure;
Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas
gangrene; and
ricin. 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 Center (WINPAC) believed the Iraqi government retained contaminated material. 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 April 1991 Iraq provided its first of what would be several declarations of its chemical weapons programs. Subsequent declarations submitted by Iraq in June 1992, March 1995 and June 1996 came only after pressure from UNSCOM. 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." Ritter later accused some UNSCOM personnel of spying, and he strongly criticized the
Bill Clinton administration for misusing the commission's resources to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military. According to Ritter: "Iraq today (1999) possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability." In June 2000, Ritter penned a piece for
Arms Control Today entitled ''The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament
. 2001 saw the theatrical release of his documentary on the UNSCOM weapons inspections in Iraq, In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq''. The film was funded by an Iraqi-American businessman who, unknown to Ritter, had received Oil-for-Food coupons from the Iraqi administration. In 2002, Scott Ritter stated that, by 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 turnaround in his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made. 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. According to the New York Times and Washington Post media of Jan. 8, 1999, "In March [1998], in a last-ditch attempt to uncover Saddam Hussein's covert weapons and intelligence networks, the United States used the United Nations inspection team to send an American spy into Baghdad to install a highly sophisticated electronic eavesdropping system." UNSCOM encountered various difficulties and a lack of cooperation from 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 WMD had been successfully destroyed before its 1998 withdrawal. After that, for four years (from 1998 to 2002) Iraq remained without any outside weapons inspectors. During this time speculations arose that Iraq had actively resumed its WMD programs. 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 a 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 stated: "Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated "immediately, unconditionally and actively" with UNMOVIC, as is required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002)... while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as "active", or even "proactive", these initiatives 3–4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute "immediate" cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance." Some U.S. officials understood this contradictory statement as a declaration of noncompliance. There were no weapon inspections in Iraq for nearly four years after the UN 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 UN Resolution since in his view "the United States had broken international law". In 2001, Saddam stated: "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 (IISS) 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, IISS also concluded that without such foreign sources, it would take years at a bare minimum. Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who created Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program that had successfully enriched uranium to weapons grade before the 1991 Gulf War, stated in an op-ed in
The New York Times that although Iraqi scientists possessed the knowledge to restart the nuclear program, by 2002 the idea had become "a vague dream from another era."
Iraq War holding a model vial of
anthrax while
giving the presentation to the United Nations Security Council Possession of WMD was cited by the United States as the primary motivation instigating the
Iraq War.
Prelude In late 2002 Saddam Hussein, in a letter to Hans Blix, invited UN weapons inspectors back into the country. Subsequently,
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 was issued, authorizing new inspections in Iraq. The United States claimed that Iraq's latest weapons declaration left materials and munitions unaccounted for; the Iraqis claimed that all such material had been destroyed, something which had been stated years earlier by Iraq's highest-ranking defector,
Hussein Kamel al-Majid. According to reports from the previous UN inspection agency, UNSCOM, Iraq produced 600 metric tons of chemical agents, including
mustard gas,
VX and
sarin; nearly 25,000 rockets and 15,000 artillery shells, with chemical agents, are still unaccounted for. 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 is no reason for us to assume we would find out if they had." Similarly, former inspector Jonathan Tucker said, "Nobody really knows what Iraq has. You really can not tell from a satellite image what is going on inside a factory." However,
Hans Blix said in late January 2003 that Iraq had "not genuinely accepted UN 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 totaling 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 In an attempt to counter the allegations that some WMD arsenals (or capability) were indeed hidden from inspectors,
Scott Ritter would argue later: Ritter also argued that the WMD Saddam had in his possession all those years ago, if retained, would have long since turned to harmless substances. He stated that Iraqi Sarin and tabun have a shelf life of approximately five years, VX lasts a bit longer (but not much longer), and finally he said botulinum toxin and liquid anthrax last about three years.
Legal justification On March 17, 2003,
Lord 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, UK Attorney General Goldsmith wrote "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. Indeed, at the time 1441 was passed, both the U.S. and UK representatives stated explicitly that 1441 contained no provision for military action. Then-U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte was quoted as saying: There's no "automaticity" and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution [...] Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken. The British ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, concurred: We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about "automaticity" and "hidden triggers" – the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response, as one of the co-sponsors of the text we have adopted: there is no "automaticity" in this Resolution. The UN itself never had the chance to declare that Iraq had failed to take its "final opportunity" to comply as the U.S. invasion made it a moot point. American President George W. Bush stated that Saddam Hussein had 48 hours to step down and leave Iraq.
Coalition expanded intelligence On 30 May 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." 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." In 2002,
Scott Ritter, a former
UNSCOM weapons inspector heavily criticized the Bush administration and media outlets for using the testimony of alleged former Iraqi nuclear scientist
Khidir Hamza, who defected from Iraq in 1994, as a rationale for invading Iraq: We seized the entire records of the Iraqi Nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's "Bombmaker" [which was the title of Hamza's book, and earned the nickname afterwards] was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, and if you go down the list of the senior administrative personnel you will not find Hamza's name in there. In fact, we didn't find his name at all. Because in 1990, he didn't work for the Iraqi nuclear program. He had no knowledge of it because he worked as a kickback specialist for
Hussein Kamel in the Presidential Palace. He goes into northern Iraq and meets up with
Ahmad Chalabi. He walks in and says, I'm Saddam's "Bombmaker". So they call the CIA and they say, "We know who you are, you're not Saddam's 'Bombmaker', go sell your story to someone else." And he was released, he was rejected by all intelligence services at the time, he's a fraud. And here we are, someone who the
CIA knows is a fraud, the US Government knows is a fraud, is allowed to sit in front of the
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and give testimony as an expert witness. I got a problem with that, I got a problem with the American media, and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on
CNN,
MSNBC,
CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about. On June 4, 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 July 9, 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 U.S. 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 fiber of instinct and conviction" Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. On February 3, 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 July 14, 2004.
Colin Powell at the
UN Security Council in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq In the buildup 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
aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material. It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets. 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 favorable to a U.S. 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 buildup 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 favor of military intervention, with the October 2002 C.I.A. report on Iraqi WMD considered to be the most reliable one available at that time. In June and September 2002, the British secret intelligence service (SIS) had intelligence from two independent sources that Iraq had expressed an interest in buying uranium from Niger. "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 appeared on the ''BBC's Today'' program early in the morning. He reported 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." On 27 May 2003, a secret US
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, noted the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons. US General
Tommy Franks was quoted as saying: "I think no one in this country probably was more surprised than I when weapons of mass destruction were not used against our troops as they moved toward Baghdad." On 6 February 2004, U.S. President
George W. Bush named an
Iraq Intelligence Commission, chaired by
Charles Robb and
Laurence Silberman, to investigate U.S. intelligence, specifically regarding the
2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction. On 8 February 2004,
Hans Blix, in an interview on
BBC TV, accused the U.S. and UK
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.
Iraq Survey Group On May 30, 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. Various nuclear facilities, including the
Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility and Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, were found looted in the month following the invasion. (Gellman, May 3, 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. 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. On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Iraq Survey Group issued its Final Report. Among its key findings were: • "Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted." • "The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." No senior Iraqi official interviewed by the ISG believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. On October 6, 2004, the head of the
Iraq Survey Group (ISG),
Charles Duelfer, announced to the
U.S. Senate 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. After he began cooperating with 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 Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind'', the Iraqi nuclear engineer 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. In a January 26, 2004, interview with
Tom Brokaw of
NBC news, 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 Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President Bush had asserted before the invasion, 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 2004, the United States removed 2 tons of low-enriched uranium from Iraq, sufficient raw material for a single nuclear weapon. 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".
Captured documents Operation Iraqi Freedom documents refers to some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were captured by the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 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." U.S. Congressman
Peter Hoekstra called for the U.S. government to put the remaining documents on the Internet so Arabic speakers around the world can help translate the documents.
Post-war discoveries and incidents Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several reported finds of chemical weapons were announced, including half a dozen incidents during the invasion itself. In April 2003, US Marines stumbled across a number of buildings which emitted unusual levels of radiation. Upon close inspection the troops uncovered "many, many drums" containing low-grade uranium, also known as
yellowcake. According to an expert familiar with UN nuclear inspections, US troops had arrived at the
Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center and the material under investigation had been documented, stored in sealed containers and subject to supervision by the
International Atomic Energy Agency since 1991. The material was transported out of Iraq in July 2008 and sold to Canadian uranium producer
Cameco Corp., in a transaction described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A 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, subsequent analysis by American and Danish experts showed that no chemical agent was present. On May 2, 2004, a shell containing
mustard gas was found in the middle of a 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 152 mm artillery shell was used as an improvised bomb. 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). 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. but it turned out that the warheads did not in fact contain sarin gas but "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals"—and it transpired that the Poles had bought the shells for $5,000 each. In 2004, hundreds of chemical warheads were recovered from the desert close to the
Iran–Iraq border. According to
The Washington Post, the munitions "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran". Officials did not consider the discovery as evidence of an ongoing weapons program that was believed to be in existence before the invasion began. The Iraqi government informed the United Nations in 2014 that insurgents affiliated with the
Islamic State terror group had seized control of the
Muthana State Establishment, including a chemical weapons depot northwest of Baghdad. The facility was partially destroyed and placed under the supervision of UNSCOM following the 1991 Gulf War. It housed some 2,500 sarin-filled rockets at the time of their departure in 1999. The U.N. said that the munitions were of "poor quality" and "would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there."
2005: Operation Avarice In 2005, the CIA collaborated with the
Army Intelligence Corps in contacting an unnamed Iraqi individual who had knowledge and possession of remnant chemical weapon stockpiles and munitions in Iraq dating to its abandoned weapons program. Foreign materials exploitation specialists from the
203rd Military Intelligence Battalion as well as chemical specialists and
ordnance disposal units were assigned the task of aiding the destruction of recovered weapons; ultimately, at least 400
Borak rockets were acquired and destroyed. The declassified summary stated that "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent", that chemical munitions "are assessed to still exist" and that they "could be sold on the black market". All weapons were thought to be manufactured in the 1980s and date to Iraq's war with Iran. During a
House Armed Services Committee meeting convened to discuss the topic, the center's commander, Army Colonel John Chiu, elaborated that the munitions are "badly corroded in most cases [and] some were deliberately dismantled, if you will, to prevent them from being used." Nonetheless, in response to a question from committee member Rep.
Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania), Col. Chui agreed that the munitions met the technical definition of weapons of mass destruction. "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention and yes, sir, they do constitute weapons of mass destruction." Weapons expert
David Kay, who also appeared before the committee, disagreed with the assessment, contending that any chemical weapon produced by Iraq in the 1980s would not remain a viable weapon of mass destruction today. Kay said the chemical agent, though hazardous, is "less toxic than most things Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point". In September of the same year, the report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on
Postwar Findings stated that such discoveries were consistent with the ISG assessment that "Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. The ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran-Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along the frequently and rapidly shifting battle front."
WMD looting and The New York Times investigative report In October 2014,
The New York Times reported that the total number of munitions discovered since 2003 had climbed to 4,990, and that U.S. servicemen had been exposed and injured during the disposal and destruction process. US soldiers reporting exposure to
mustard gas and
sarin allege they were required to keep their exposure secret, sometimes declined admission to hospital and evacuation home despite the request of their commanders. "We were absolutely told not to talk about it" by a colonel, a former sergeant said.
2009 Declaration Iraq became a member state of the
Chemical Weapons Convention in 2009, declaring "two bunkers with filled and unfilled chemical weapons munitions, some precursors, as well as five former chemical weapons production facilities" according to OPCW Director General Rogelio Pfirter. No plans were announced at that time for the destruction of the material, although it was noted that the bunkers were damaged in the 2003 war and even inspection of the site must be carefully planned. The declaration contained no surprises, OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan indicated. The production facilities were "put out of commission" by airstrikes during the 1991 conflict, while United Nations personnel afterward secured the chemical munitions in the bunkers. Luhan stated at the time: "These are legacy weapons, remnants." He declined to discuss how many weapons were stored in the bunkers or what materials they contained. The weapons were not believed to be in a usable state. == Public perception ==