Scientists Still Deny Iraqi Arms Programs

[ze_dscherman]

U.S. Interrogations Net No Evidence

By Walter Pincus and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A01

Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject.

The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.

No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Hussein was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.

SNIP

David Kay, the CIA's representative in Iraq to coordinate the search for weapons of mass destruction, returned to Washington this week and met with President Bush on Tuesday. Kay is scheduled to appear today before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.


More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5497-2003Jul30.html

[jamesinca]

1. Well that is not what Bush wants to hear

Just come clean, tell people why you went in there. At this point they will not make you give the country back. Why keep up the charade?

[Merlin]

2. Significantly, the deny not just WMDs, but a wmd PROGRAM.

The American people may be too dull to grasp the significance of what Bush has done, but history will not absolve him.

[mainer]

3. Who was the 'third country" with th WMD's intelligence?

Britain keeps insisting they got their intelligence from an unnamed third country.

Another news report I saw yesterday says that the Israeli government is launching a probe into its own intelligence forces to find out why the hell they didn't know the location of the WMD's. (Implying that they SHOULD have known their location.)

Was Israel the unnamed third country? That's why no one wants to talk about it.

[Liberal_Andy]

4. I just faxed this to my congressman and senator,...

Think I'll call them.

I'll report back anything worthwhile.

Not holding breath.

[jackstraw45]

5. WOW - this story is big.

You know the administration will use threats of violence against these scientists to make them say there was an active program - nice to see word leaked before that happens.

[wellst0nev0ter]

6. Remember This Oldie But Goodie?

The Mourning After

By William Safire

<snip>
After the war, however, hawks…will counter these claims with told-you-so's of their own.

1. If Saddam were to use crude weapons of mass destruction against our forces…that would be the ultimate, retrospective smoking gun. It would prove not only that he had the forbidden weaponry and lied about it, but had been getting stronger all the time. Had he been allowed to further develop or buy nuclear arms and intercontinental missiles, stopping him in the future would come at an unacceptable cost.

2. When Iraqi scientists are permitted to talk to inspectors…without fear of having their…families slaughtered…the truth will out in vivid detail about the decade long deception of the U.N… today's American straddlers will at last be confronted with conclusive evidence they now profess to doubt.

3. When the postwar books are written, a former Iraqi spymaster with knowledge of the suicide attacker Mohamed Atta's perhaps unwitting connection to Saddam will eagerly come forth to spill all he knows to save his neck or sell his memoirs. Suspected followers of Osama bin Laden like Musaab Zarqawi and Mullah Krekar, if alive, will further link Al Qaeda to Saddam's mukhabarat police.
<snip>

You may sit in the corner now, Safliar