Iraq WMD: Honest Mistakes or a Pack of Lies?  
 
After many months of intensive investigation, American search teams have been unable to find any evidence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Even David Kay, the CIA's chief weapon's sleuth, is now convinced that they never existed. And the media is chock full of astonished politicians who are blaming the President's now obviously erroneous claim that Iraq was harboring vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction on poor intelligence. 

As refreshing as such belated confessions may be, we must insist that they do not go far enough. Even before the war started, it seemed obvious to me that the claims of vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction were not based on any intelligence whatsoever. This was most clearly evident in Secretary of State Powell's January 2003 speech to the United Nations. Powell's speech was presented by the media as the administration's best effort to convince the public of the need to invade Iraq. It was accepted by most commentators as firm evidence of weapons of mass destruction and of the need to protect us from them. But my reaction was quite different. I found the evidence non existent and the speech as a whole pathetic and embarrassing. I could not believe how shallow and obvious the lies were. It made me feel ashamed to be an American, and I still don't understand how anyone could honestly conclude that Powell's speech contained any evidence whatsoever of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, or of the need to start a war.     

If this is the best evidence they had, it doesn't even deserve to be called "intelligence" let alone, "poor intelligence". And if there were anything more convincing, sure Powell would have included it in his speech.  

First, Powell played some recordings of soldiers talking about hiding things because the inspectors were coming. On the first recording, one guy at a military site told his boss that he had a "modified" vehicle, which was apparently a violation of some sort. There's no indication anywhere what that violation was. The other guy found it hard to believe that the vehicle even existed, and said he would come to see it in the morning. This was one vehicle, which apparently someone had forgotten about. There certainly was no evidence anywhere of an entire program of hidden weapons of any sort. Powell brought it up simply to show that they were hiding "something".

I found it startling that Powell would imply that we should start a war over something like this. He lost a lot of credibility right off the bat.  If this was the best he could do, it was already obvious to me that there was no intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. 

Then it got even worse. The next recording, another boss told a soldier to check a pile of debris in a "scrap pile" for anything that might make the inspectors suspicious. They didn't even say there was anything wrong, just to check it. Again, Powell brought it up to show that they were hiding "something". This recording was even less specific than the first. There was only the possibility that something might have been forgotten about in a pile of junk, and even the people being recorded didn't have any notion if there really was anything. 

The Americans had already shown themselves to be excellent propagandists and exaggerators. I couldn’t blame the Iraqi soldiers in this recording for checking the pile of scrap, to at least try to prevent themselves from being victimized by the vast American propaganda machine.  In fact I applauded them for trying to prevent the Americans from having an excuse to make a mountain out of a molehill. If there was some forgotten remnant of some weapon left, then the American government would certainly have used it as propaganda and blown it out of proportion, even if it was scant evidence. So it was only natural for these soldiers to at least try to make sure some harmless scraps or a leftover vehicle would not be lied about by the United States.

What I couldn't see was how anyone in their right mind could think this second recording in any way could be used as evidence for the need to start a war. It seemed to me that it would only appeal to people who are taken in by the most obvious propaganda. I was absolutely shocked to see Powell stooping so low. 
 
Then Powell showed some videos of trucks leaving the al-Musayyib facility in Iraq before the inspectors came. That was it. No sign of what was in the trucks or recordings of the orders. Any building anywhere could have trucks leaving. But are trucks leaving a building by themselves a cause for war? I don't think so. I don't think anyone should ever start a war and topple a dictatorship on such completely circumstantial evidence. Again, I was shocked that Powell would stoop so low. 

By itself, this evidence was nothing. It was worse than nothing. Bush was obviously counting on the right wing hate mongers in the media to twist these scant allegations into something resembling a "smoking gun". 

Reporters visited al-Musayyib two days after Powell's speech. They noted that canisters and missile components were being shipped in and out of the site every day, and that U.N. inspectors had visited the site 10 times since late November. Missile canisters at the site bore U.N. inventory stickers. 

Any time Powell got specific he didn't have any evidence to back it up. He said Iraq gassed its own people, but he had no evidence. The Kurds were gassed in the Iraq-Iran war, but it could just as well have been done by Iran, and in fact the CIA said at the time that it was Iran who gassed the Kurds, and that Iraq didn't even possess the kind of gas used in the attack. 

Powell also asserted that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes for refining uranium. But experts with the International Atomic Energy Agency had already told the UN that AEA also told the U.N. Security that the aluminum tubes were completely unsuitable in both size and composition for use in nuclear centrifuges; they were, however, perfectly suited for use in conventional missiles, as Iraq had claimed. 

Many of the other key components of Powell's claims had already been denied by Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix. In an article in the New York Times and in Blix's briefing of UN journalists, he said his UN team had seen "no evidence" of mobile biological weapons labs, had "no persuasive indications" of Iraq-al Qaeda links, and no evidence of Iraq hiding and moving material used for weapons of mass destruction either outside or inside Iraq. Dr. Blix also said there was no evidence of Iraq sending scientists out of the country, of Iraqi intelligence agents posing as scientists, of United Nation's inspector's conversations being monitored.

Whenever Powell claimed to have such evidence, the UN delegates in his audience must have wondered why it wasn't given to Blix. Powell's presentation failed to change the minds of French, German, and Chinese delegates and, indeed, most of the other Security Council members. I'm not surprised. What does surprise me is that Bush et al has enough credibility left to convince anyone the claims which turned out to be false were based on bad intelligence. It seems more likely they were at best, mere exaggerations and at worse, lies.