Iraq
Survey Group:
Straw
clutches at straws
Hussein
Kamal, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, defected in August 1995. For almost a decade, he had been the
director of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Corporation, which was
responsible for Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes. He later returned to Iraq and was executed.
After he defected
in August 1995, he was interviewed by UN weapons inspectors and told them that,
on his orders, all Iraq’s proscribed weapons and weapons-related material had
been destroyed in the summer 1991. A note
on that interview by the inspectors came into the public domain a few weeks
before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Kamal was also
interviewed by CIA and MI6. There is no
reason to suppose that he told them any different, but in any case they would
have seen known what he told the UN inspectors, since they had their operatives
embedded in UNSCOM. So, there is no
doubt that as long ago as August 1995, the CIA was told that Iraq’s proscribed
agents and weapons had been destroyed, told by the person who, as the head of
Iraq’s Military Industrialisation Corporation, had ordered their destruction.
Nearly a decade
later, on 6 October 2004, the CIA presented a report to
the US Senate Armed Services Committee, which said that Iraq’s proscribed
agents and weapons had been destroyed on the orders of Hussein Kamal in the summer
of 1991. Needless to say, the report
doesn’t say that the CIA were told this nearly a decade earlier by Hussein
Kamal himself.
The report, by
the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) headed by Charles Duelfer, cost nearly a billion
dollars to compile. Since the CIA was
first told that Iraq was disarmed, tens of thousands – perhaps, hundreds of
thousands – of Iraqis have died as a result of economic sanctions and war, and
they are still dying.
Key findings
The report is
extremely long – over 1,200 pages – and it is difficult to extract the key
findings from it, not least because they are not always in the sections, headed
“Key Findings”, at the beginning of each of the 6 chapters.
For example, the
answer to the biggest question of all – Had Iraq any proscribed weapons in
March 2003? – is buried away in the middle of Chapter 1 (entitled Regime
Strategic Intent)
“ISG
has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the
available evidence from its investigation – including detainee interviews and
document exploitation – leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed
in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability.” (Chapter 1, page
64)
When were the
stocks unaccounted for by UN inspectors destroyed? Answer:
“Following unexpectedly thorough inspections, Saddam
ordered Husayn Kamil in July 1991 to destroy unilaterally large numbers of
undeclared weapons and related materials to conceal Iraq’s WMD capabilities.”
(Chapter 1, page 46)
Specifically, on delivery
systems:
“Desert Storm and subsequent UN resolutions and
inspections brought many of Iraq’s delivery system programs to a halt. While
much of Iraq’s long-range missile inventory and production infrastructure was
eliminated, Iraq until late 1991 kept some items hidden to assist future
reconstitution of the force. …
“The Iraq Survey Group (ISG)
has uncovered no evidence Iraq retained Scud-variant missiles [capable of
reaching Cyprus], and debriefings of Iraqi officials in addition to some
documentation suggest that Iraq did not retain such missiles after 1991.”
(Chapter 3, Key Findings)
“Iraq Survey Group (ISG)
discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991
Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear
weapons program progressively decayed after that date.
“Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991
following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to
restart the program.
“Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the
nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the
program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.” (Chapter 4, Key Findings)
“While
a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG
judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons
stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed
production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to
Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear
of force against it should WMD be discovered.”
(Chapter 5, Key Findings)
On biological weapons:
“ISG judges that in 1991 and
1992, Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW weapons and
probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent. However ISG lacks
evidence to document complete destruction.” (Chapter 6, Key Findings)
In
summary, the report says that it is virtually certain that within months of the
Security Council passing resolution 687 in April 1991, all weapons and
weapons-related material, proscribed in that resolution, were destroyed and the
weapons programmes abandoned – just as Hussein Kamal told the CIA in August
1995. What is more, there is no
evidence that programmes were restarted thereafter.
That is
the central conclusion of the ISG report.
Understandably, the Government has been anxious to divert attention from
that conclusion, which flies in the face of what it told us prior to March 2003
(and what successive Governments have told us for over a decade). When the invasion began in March 2003,
ostensibly to disarm Iraq in accordance with Security Council resolutions, it
had been disarmed for well over a decade.
Straws of speculation
To divert
attention from that awkward fact, the Government has been clutching at the
straws of speculation in the report about whether Saddam Hussein intended to
resume the development of non-conventional weapons, if economic sanctions were
lifted. In a statement to the Commons
on 12 October, for example, giving the Government’s reaction to the report,
Jack Straw said:
“Saddam
Hussein's regime was dedicated to deceiving the international community, and it
was working flat out to undermine containment and rebuild the weapons
capability that it had already used on its own people and neighbours.”
What,
according to the report, did this “flat out working” to rebuild weapons
capability amount to? It is true that
the report says, without apparent justification:
“Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability –
which was essentially destroyed in 1991 – after sanctions were removed and
Iraq’s economy stabilized …” (Chapter 1, Key Findings)
But it also says:
“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.” (Chapter 1, Key Findings)
“As late as 2003, Iraq’s leadership discussed no WMD
aspirations other than advancing the country’s overall scientific and
engineering expertise, which potentially included dual-use research and
development, according to the former Minister of Military Industrialization
[and Deputy Prime Minister, Abdallah Al Mullah Huwaysh].” (Chapter 1, page 60)
According to Straw, this means that the
Iraqi regime was “working flat out” to rebuild its weapons capability. Has he finally lost his grip on reality?
Middle East free zone
The ISG interviewed senior figures in the
former regime, now in US custody, including Saddam Hussein himself. Some of them made written statements as
well. A few snippets of what they said
about the recreation of weapons capability are given in a section entitled Looking
Ahead to Resume WMD Programs in Chapter 1 of the report (pages 49-51).
These suggest that, contrary to what the
report concludes, Saddam Hussein was not dogmatically committed to the
reconstitution of non-conventional weapons capability. Rather, it would depend on whether anything
was done about the commitment in paragraph 14 of resolution 687 to establish a
zone free from “weapons of mass destruction” in the Middle East.
According to the report, Abdallah Al
Mullah Huwaysh, the Minister of Military Industrialization, told the ISG that:
“Saddam briefed senior officials on several occasions
saying, ‘We do not intend or aspire to return to our previous programs to
produce WMD, if the Security Council abides by its obligations pertaining to
these resolutions [UNSCR 687, paragraph 14]’.
Saddam reiterated this point in a cabinet meeting in 2002, according to
Dr. Humam ‘Abd-al-Khaliq ‘Abd-al Ghafur, the former Minister of Higher
Education and Scientific Research.”
The report continues:
“Huwaysh believed that Saddam would base his decision
regarding future Iraqi WMD development on how the Security Council followed
through on its promise in paragraph 14 to establish ‘in the Middle East a zone
free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery’. If
this promise was not fulfilled, Iraq should be free to act in its own
interests.”
So, as long as Israel has a
non-conventional weapons capability, and in particular nuclear weapons
capability, Saddam Hussein reserved the right for Iraq to develop nuclear
weapons. That is a rational response to
the threat from Israel, the threat which prompted Iraq to attempt to develop
nuclear weapons in the first place.
Strange how this important caveat got
omitted from the report’s key findings, and from Jack Straw’s account of the report.
Saddam Hussein’s former Secretary is
quoted as saying:
“He [Saddam] would say if only Iraq possessed the
nuclear weapon then no one would commit acts of aggression on it or any other
Arab country, and the Palestinian issue would be solved peacefully because of
Iraq.”
Indeed: when you have a real weapon of
mass destruction, and the means of delivering it, you don’t get attacked, and
neither do your friends.
* * * *
Iraq’s token effort to disarm
The section entitled Looking Ahead to
Resume WMD Programs begins with the following extraordinary remark:
“The Regime made a token effort to comply with the
disarmament process, but the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the
UNSC’s resolutions. Outward acts of compliance belied a covert desire to resume
WMD activities.”
It seems that Jack Straw is not alone in
losing his grip on reality. Charles
Duelfer has similar problems. Iraq
disarmed within months of resolution 687 being passed, but according to him
Iraq only made “a token effort” to comply Iraq’s token effort to comply with
the disarmament process.
As for Iraq not intending to meet the
spirit of Security Council resolutions, the US stated openly from the outset
that they would never comply with paragraph 22 of 687, which specified that economic
sanctions would be lifted, if Iraq fulfilled its disarmament obligations. But, throughout the 1990s, the US made it
clear that it would never honour that obligation, saying publicly and
explicitly that sanctions would not be lifted as long Saddam Hussein remained
in power – which meant that the last thing the US wanted was for Iraq to be
declared disarmed.
* * * *
Straw losing his grip
We
quoted above one example of Jack Straw’s losing his grip on reality in the
Commons on 12 October. It wasn’t the
only remark that day, which suggested that men in white coats will be coming
for him soon. For example, in his
opening statement he said:
“Even after reading all the evidence detailed by the
Iraq survey group, it is still hard to believe that any regime could behave in
so self-destructive a manner as to pretend that it had forbidden weaponry, when
in fact it had not.”
Does
he not remember that, far from pretending to have forbidden weaponry, for many
years Iraq repeatedly said that it had none?
And it was telling the truth, which is more than can be said for the
Government of which he is a senior member.
And:
“It is still hard to
comprehend the logic of Saddam's behaviour in resisting UN inspections in 1998,
and indeed driving out the inspectors, when he could have demonstrated that he
had no weapons of mass destruction.”
Saddam Hussein didn’t drive out
the UN inspectors: Clinton and Blair drove them out in December 1998, in order
to bomb Iraq (and Bush and Blair drove them out in March 2003, in order to
invade Iraq).
And, speaking about March 2003:
“We would have had to decide, with
no evidence, and despite Saddam's resistance to inspections, that he had in
fact disposed of his WMD without telling the UN.”
Does he
not remember that Iraq told the UN inspectors repeatedly that it had disposed
of its proscribed weapons, and showed them where?
And:
“Instead [in March 2003], we made
the judgment that it would not be safe to turn away and leave Saddam
re-empowered and re-emboldened.”
Does he
not know that inspection and monitoring could have been continued indefinitely?
Finally,
in reply to Robin Cook, speaking about the situation at the UN in March 2003:
“One permanent member of the
Security Council said that “whatever the circumstances” – the exact phrase used
– France would veto any decision in respect of military action.”
That is a straightforward lie: in
President Chirac’s TV interview
in which he used the phrase “whatever the circumstances”, he said that
"war would be inevitable", if the UN inspectors reported that they
couldn't achieve their goal of disarming Iraq.
Labour & Trade Union Review
November 2004