Lack of WMD changes 'answer'

2004-02-04 07:36

Washington - A year ago, the United States was still publicly confident of finding a "smoking gun" to use against Saddam Hussein, but now the doubts about the case for the invasion are spreading deep into the US administration.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave what was one of the most important speeches in the US diplomatic campaign against Iraq on February 5 of last year.

The administration insists the war was still the right move.

But Powell has said he does not know if he would have called for an invasion if he had been told Iraq had no stockpiles of banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. President George W Bush has agreed to let an independent panel investigate the US intelligence case against Iraq.

When he spoke to the UN Security Council last year, Powell did not utter the often used "smoking gun" phrase to describe the evidence. But he did present declassified intelligence material in a dramatic bid to persuade doubters that Iraq must be disarmed by force.

Now Iraq has been invaded and its president ousted. But the failure to find banned weapons makes many inside and outside the United States uncomfortable.

"I cannot tell you everything that we know," Powell told the Security Council, with Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet nearby. "But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling.

"What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behaviour. The facts and Iraqis' behaviour, Iraq's behaviour, demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort, no effort, to disarm, as required by the international community.

"Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behaviour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction," Powell had said.

Powell played recordings of intercepted conversations between Iraqi military officers, showed spy satellite photos of military sites and gave the testimony of Iraqi defectors.

He told of unmanned aerial vehicles that might be able to carry chemical agents to neighbouring countries or even the United States, mobile laboratories that work on deadly gases.

Sources, solid sources

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence," Powell declared.

The United States would not allow Saddam to remain in possession of weapons of mass destruction for even a few months longer, Powell said.

The United Nations did not give its support. France, Germany and Russia led widespread international opposition to a war. But a US and British-led force invaded on March 20 and Baghdad fell on April 9.

After an intensive hunt involving hundreds of experts, the chief US weapons expert in Iraq, David Kay, resigned last week, saying weapons of mass destruction would probably never be found.

We got it wrong

"We all got it wrong," Kay told Congress.

Iraq's weapons were probably destroyed after the 1991 Gulf War; the mobile laboratories were probably used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons, Kay said.

The secretary of state told reporters on Tuesday: "The bottom line is this: The president made the right decision." Powell insisted that Saddam still wanted weapons and would have made them if left in power.

But asked by The Washington Post on Monday if he would have recommended an invasion if he had known Iraq had no banned weapons, Powell replied: "I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world."

He said the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get."

Bush's popularity has slumped, partly because of events in Iraq, but he also remains convinced, publicly at least, of the case for war.

"We do know that Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capabilities to cause great harm. We know he was a danger. He was not only a danger to people in the free world, he was danger to his own people," Bush said as he announced the independent investigation.

- AFP