WASHINGTON, 7 October 2004 — Undercutting the Bush’s administration’s rationale for invading Iraq, the final report of the chief US arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction when international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, an administration official said yesterday.
In drafts, weapons hunter Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam’s Iraq had no stockpiles of the banned weapons but said he found signs of idle programs that Saddam could have revived once international attention waned.
“It appears that he did not vigorously pursue those programs after the inspectors left,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of the report’s release.
Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, was providing his findings yesterday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His team has compiled a 1,500-page report. Duelfer’s predecessor, David Kay, who quit last December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan continued to maintain that Duelfer’s report will support the White House’s view on Iraq’s prewar threat. He said the report will conclude “that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations through illegal financing procurement schemes.”
Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of UN agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam’s Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.
Duelfer’s report will come on a week that the White House has been put on the defensive in a number of Iraq issues.
Remarks this week by L. Paul Bremer, former US administrator in occupied Iraq, suggested he argued for more troops in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, when looting was rampant. A spokesman for Bush’s re-election campaign said Bremer indeed differed with military commanders.
President Bush’s election rival, Democrat John Kerry, pounced on Bremer’s statements that the United States “paid a big price” for having insufficient troop levels. On weapons, however, the Massachusetts senator has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known none would be found.
McClellan said: “The report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction.”
Compare that to the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion:
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said then. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”
Yesterday, the White House also continued to assert that there were clear ties between Saddam before the invasion and the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. But a CIA report recently given to the White House found no conclusive evidence that Saddam had given Al-Zarqawi support and shelter before the war, according to ABC News and Knight-Ridder.
