No one can know for sure if WMD is in Iraq or not. Saddam did not come clean
and his regime could not be trusted.
WMD Deception activites
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/deception.htm
'US knew Iraq was WMD free'
by Ahmed Janabi
Friday 13 February 2004 1:39 PM GMT
Iraqi nuclear scientist Dr Imad Khadduri has told Aljazeera.net he does
not
believe any ''errors'' were made regarding WMD intelligence.
Dr Khadduri, a former senior Iraqi nuclear scientist who worked for the
Iraqi
nuclear programme from 1968 to 1998, said there was a deliberate media
blackout
of evidence proving Iraq did not possess WMD, and that to redress the
balance he
had written a book in English to have his witness testimony made available
to
the world.
In 1997 Iraq delivered a report to UN weapons inspectors stating that
Iraq's
civil and military nuclear programme was brought to a halt. When UN
inspectors
left Iraq in 1998 there was sufficient evidence that Iraq was free from
non-conventional weapons, according to Dr Khadduri.
"I was one of the people involved in writing a detailed report in 1997
about
Iraq's civil and military nuclear programme.
"We included in the report every detail needed by the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify that Iraq's nuclear programme was
suspended,"
Khadduri said.
He said Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability and its nuclear
weapons programme were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war.
"Following the defection of Hussein Kamil, the godfather of Iraq's
non-conventional weapons programme, to Jordan in 1995, he made it clear to
Ralph
Ekeus, head of the UN inspection team UNSCOM and US officials, that
stockpiles
of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons were destroyed on his orders,"
Khadduri said.
"They never revealed such information, because it did not serve their war
agenda."
Khadduri said even the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission
(Unmovic) dismissed evidence that clearly indicated Iraq was free from
WMD.
"The Iraqi government allowed Iraqi officials and army officials, who were
in
charge of destroying stockpiles of WMD after the Gulf war in 1991, to give
their
testimonies to Unmovic, but the UN inspectors simply dismissed their
evidence,"
he said.
Dr Khadduri said Iraq was free from WMD, but that Western and Israeli
intelligence communities were not prepared to accept Iraq would have
actually
taken such a step.
Intelligence errors
Dr Khadduri believes that the US was very particular in who it listened to
regardless of whether or not they enjoyed any credibility.
"The US administration was keen to promote Khidhr Hamza's allegations,
nicknamed
as the father of Saddam's bomb by Western media... the truth is he was
fired
from the nuclear programme in 1987, just months after he was assigned to
head an
Iraqi team devoted to planning a nuclear bomb.
"Hamza retired from the Iraqi Atomic Commission in 1989 and left Iraq for
Libya
in 1994. He simply knows nothing."
Khadduri said he tried to get his voice heard before the war, to correct
many
misleading claims alleged by the US administration and its Iraqi backers.
"I worked in the Iraqi nuclear programme for 30 years until I left Iraq in
1998,
and there are many honest Iraqi scientists who lived outside Iraq years
before
the war. They were not approached; no one listened to them," he said.
"It was a deliberate marginalising of reliable sources, of the people
involved
directly in Iraq's WMD programme."
He said Iraqi ex-opposition figures have been silent about information
they
provided before the war.
"Where are those Iraqis who bragged of delivering valuable information
about
Iraq's WMD? Why don't they just lead the US army in Iraq to the place
where the
alleged WMD are hidden?"
--
"Naturally, the common people don't want war;
neither in Russia nor in England nor in America,
nor for that matter in Germany.
That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders
of the country who determine the policy and
it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist
dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same way
in any country."
- Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall
