Threats

This post is also avail­able at Leon’s new weblog!

In today’s Guardian, there’s a column by William Shaw­cross which asserts that Iraq’s WMD pro­grams posed a threat to, well, he doesn’t really say to whom, but they Posed A Threat nonethe­less. He quotes the Butler report, which stated, in para­graph 499, that “statements on Iraqi attempts to buy Ura­nium from Africa in the government’s dossier, and by the Prime Min­is­ter in the House Of Com­mons, were well founded.”

It’s inter­est­ing to note, how­ever, the para­graph which fol­lowed this state­ment, para­graph 500 in the Butler report: “We also note that, because the intel­li­gence evi­dence was incon­clu­sive, nei­ther the government’s dossier nor the Prime Min­is­ter went on to say that a deal between the gov­ern­ments of Iraq and Niger for the supply had been signed, or ura­nium shipped.”

He also quotes Charles Duelfer, the Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Spe­cial Advi­sor for Strat­egy regard­ing Iraqi WMD Pro­grams, who asked “Were weapons hidden that were not read­ily avail­able? Was there a plan for a break-​out pro­duc­tion capacity?” What he doesn’t quote is another bit of Duelfer’s tes­ti­mony to Con­gress, on March 30 2004: “Let me state at the outset that I do not believe we have suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion and insight to make final judg­ments with con­fi­dence at this time.”

Despite pre-​war intel­li­gence, says Shaw­cross, it may be the case that at the time of the inva­sion, Saddam Hus­sein did not have reserves of WMD. How­ever, he goes on to assert that, this being the case, it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an Iraqi threat from WMD (that would “trivialise” the issue, he says, though exactly what he means by this is unclear: does he mean that the cur­rent lack of WMD is not proof that no WMD exist, or does he mean that any attempt to dis­cuss Iraq’s real or imag­ined WMD is triv­ial, and there­fore misses the point that Saddam Hus­sein is a very bad man, which undoubt­edly he is?)

Shawcross’s asser­tion that the lack of WMD at the time of inva­sion isn’t proof that WMD didn’t exist at all is decent enough logic, as it goes. But when he then says that “intelligence has to look to form” he’s really falling into a log­i­cal trap, which assumes that because Saddam Hus­sein attempted to acquire WMD in the past means that he was still trying to do so in 2003, despite being under sur­veil­lance from a mul­ti­tude of inter­na­tional bodies. “During the Gulf War [i.e. the first Gulf War] he fired 39 mis­siles into Israel. They had con­ven­tional war­heads, but they might not have done,” [my empha­sis] he says. Yes, and the water bal­loons that I lobbed into my neighbours’ garden could have been toxic but, y’know, they were just filled with water since I couldn’t get hold of any anthrax.

Shaw­cross says that “Saddam may not have been an imme­di­ate threat” - ignor­ing the fact that the imme­di­acy of Saddam Hussein’s threat is sup­pos­edly why we went to war in the first place - “but he was an inevitable one.”
If Saddam Hussein’s threat was an inevitable one, it’s not a threat which Colin Powell believed in. Talk­ing about the Iraqi threat in 2001, he said that sanc­tions against Iraq exist “not for the pur­pose of hurt­ing the Iraqi people, but for the pur­pose of keep­ing in check Saddam Hussein’s ambi­tions toward devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion. We should con­stantly be review­ing our poli­cies, con­stantly be look­ing at those sanc­tions to make sure that they are directed toward that pur­pose. That pur­pose is every bit as impor­tant now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not devel­oped any sig­nif­i­cant capa­bil­ity with respect to weapons of mass destruc­tion. He is unable to project con­ven­tional power against his neighbors.”

Mean­while, David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group when he gave the fol­low­ing tes­ti­mony to the CIA in Octo­ber 2003, said that “Multiple sources with varied access and reli­a­bil­ity have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongo­ing, cen­trally con­trolled CW [Chem­i­cal Weapons] pro­gram after 1991. Infor­ma­tion found to date sug­gests that Iraq’s large-​scale capa­bil­ity to develop, pro­duce, and fill new CW muni­tions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Oper­a­tions Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanc­tions and UN inspections.

“We have also acquired infor­ma­tion related to Iraq’s CW doc­trine and Iraq’s war plans for OIF [Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom], but we have not yet found evi­dence to con­firm pre-​war report­ing that Iraqi mil­i­tary units were pre­pared to use CW against Coali­tion forces. Our efforts to col­lect and exploit intel­li­gence on Iraq’s chem­i­cal weapons pro­gram have thus far yielded little reli­able infor­ma­tion on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent pro­duc­tion, although we con­tinue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks. We have mul­ti­ple reports that Iraq retained CW muni­tions made prior to 1991, pos­si­bly includ­ing mus­tard - a long-​lasting chem­i­cal agent - but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions”

So. Saddam Hus­sein was con­strained, his weapons pro­grams were all but destroyed, the sup­posed WMD he was devel­op­ing were not an imme­di­ate threat. Yet Shaw­cross says that, “Given all we knew of Saddam by 2003, the con­clu­sion had to be that he still pos­sessed a resid­ual WMD capability.” Those for the war will hope that Shaw­cross is right. Those against the war will see Shawcross’s sup­posed evi­dence as fur­ther proof that this war was noth­ing to do with lib­er­a­tion and every­thing to do with secur­ing strate­gic interests.

Posted at 10pm on 21/07/04 by Leon McDermott to the politics category.
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