Twelve years is a long time. 1.4 million Iraqis have been killed in that time, with millions more displaced, disfigured and crippled. Countless more new-born kids will be genetically tainted by the use of American Depleted Uranium shells. The US government had withheld the intelligence report, repeatedly cited by the George W. Bush administration as it campaigned for war, for such a long time… Perhaps they were hoping you’d forgotten about the entire incident by now. I hope you haven’t, but I’m not holding my breath, what with the blockbuster sales of American Sniper movie tickets.
Known as the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, it provides hard evidence that the president and his administration had purposefully over-hyped any potential threat to be had in Iraq, and had blatantly attempted to stoke fear regarding a nuclear/biological WMD attack that was simply beyond the capability of the Iraqi government. The report itself reveals that the intelligence experts who had penned it were themselves conflicted about the potential for any threat. It was by no means “slam-dunk” evidence that the Iraqis had done anything at all.
The Black Vault, a website that seeks out and collects declassified government files, provided the partially redacted 96 pages to Vice on Thursday. Produced on October 2002. It is the most complete collection of intelligence that had been used by the Bush Administration. This was the report that was presented to congress just months before the March 2003 launch of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
From here on in, we’re quoting excerpts of the report:
“We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD,” the report states early on in a bolded subsection. “The information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.” Yup, Congress and the Bush Administration knew early on that there was no basis for even claiming that Saddam had nukes…. Much less the will to use them if he had.
“Iraq probably has renovated [a previously dismantled] facility, but we are unable to determine whether [Biological Weapon] agent research or production has resumed,” it says before citing a redacted source, which “suggests that Baghdad held true to its 1999 press claim to renovate this facility, reportedly to produce FDM vaccine.” So the facility that Bush had claimed was churning out bio-toxins was already highlighted by Saddam’s government as a revamped FDM vaccine production plant?
“We judge that Baghdad would lack confidence in its ability to attack successfully well-defended military point targets outside Iraq with biological weapons, except via missile forces.”The validity of that claim is questioned by the U.S. Air Force, which “judges that Iraq is developing [unmanned aerial vehicles] primarily for reconnaissance rather than delivery platforms for [chemical or biological] agents … delivery is an inherent capability of UAVs but probably is not the impetus for Iraq’s recent UAV programs.” Hmmm….. America has THE most advanced drone program In the world….. It ALSO has a proven cache of enough nukes to destroy the world several times over. Ergo, the US should go o war with… Itself.
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Below are the quotes used by Bush and his administration’s officials to hype the war:
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN, “You will get different estimates about precisely how close [Saddam Hussein] is. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Only one person is holding a smoking gun here, Rice. It sure wasn’t Iraq.
The propaganda did not end when the National Intelligence Estimate was completed and circulated…. It ramped up, irrespective of what the intelligence community had said. Did they even bother reading it, in their bloodlust? Or did they read it, know that it proved nothing, and proceed on to war anyway? It does not matter.
On October 10, 2002, the House of Representatives and the Senate authorized the war….. “The gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally,” Bush said after the House vote. ”The days of Iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming to an end.”
Aides of Bush would often make reference to the report, despite already knowing that it only proved that there was no case for a war with Iraq. Collin Powell would quote them during a speech, his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations.
“My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” Powell declared. “These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
George Tenet, the CIA chief who commissioned the report, was called to the White House. There, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s 2004 book, Plan of Attack, he told Bush it was “a slam dunk case” that Iraq was hoarding WMDs.
Bush now has a museum showcasing his “artwork”. Perhaps his ability to con the entire US population, as well as the populations of its allies, into brutally murdering 1.4 million people should be the only lasting legacy due to him; con artist was the only art profession, or indeed any profession at all, that he was ever any good at. Watch as the man laughs in your face, the face of the Iraqis, and the face of the disabled, dead American soldiers.
I am not saying the war was justified…but they did find weapons of mass destruction after the war ended.
The final UN report found that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling. The report also found that Iraq had worked to covertly maintain the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs and intended to restart production once sanctions were lifted.
UNMOVIC found the following proscribed items that needed to be destroyed:
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
Lets attack USA, they got WMD.
No need for that, USA got 90 trillion in debts and their economy is failing slowly. With time US government will fall.
Actually, what was found was already known about locked in bunkers that was considered destroyed and contaminated by the UN and US. Iraq had no WMD
Hahahahah wow and here I was thinking that Anon was an intelligent group of people…
Beyond what Yantis said above, Saddam actually USED chemical weapons quite often in the late 80’s early 90’s (Iran-Iraq War era). Iraq’s leaders went on record several times during the 90’s to say that they were actively developing more chemical weapons. Saddam even killed over 100,000 Kurds (fellow Iraqi’s) using chemical weapons. Simply put, it wasn’t a matter of if Iraq had WMD, but more of where they were and when would they use them?
It’s not your fault I suppose, but genuinely you guys are just simply dumb and shouldn’t write about something that you clearly have absolutely no clue about.
I would point out that no NUCLEAR WMDs were found, a common allegation from Bush. Nuclear WMDs are also far greater a threat than chemical rockets. FYI, just possessing chemical weapons does not prescribe intentions to use them; the US has one of the largest caches of both nuclear AND chemical WMDs, as well as the ability (and historical propensity, remember Vietnam and Agent Orange?) to actually use them
Further, the MAIN source of these chemical weapons and production was at one point the CIA, which had knowingly provided them to be used on Iran. Tis’ why finding a few decades-old chemical warheads was kept under wraps, not even Bush wanted to claim credit for finding weapons that had been provided in part by the US
Is it a reason to make war and kill civiles ?
Which put Saddam’s Iraq in the same place as a whole load of other nations around the world. Iraq wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, and certainly didn’t have the capabilities to launch a strike against Europe – which is what we in the UK were told the intelligence showed.
Saddam was terrible, and the Kurds are much better off without him. But we should ask why we went to war in Iraq in the first place, destabilised the region, and killed over a million people.
The main point people are angry about is that our governments put blood on our hands without our permission. This is a global burden. In future we will have to have tighter reigns on our administrators. Digital referendums and a meritocracy based apointment of people who have proven track records. Our best business leaders should do service in Government. Back to basics of 2000 years ago. Civic administartion.
We should attack the USA, ’cause they got WMD, we should attack Germany, they got american WMD, we should attack france, they got american WMD, we should attack europe, they got american WMD. We should destroy the whole world, cause Humanity is the worst and most dangerous WMD ever.