http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/061303A.shtml

Thruthout Editorial
www.truthout.org

The Dog Ate My WMDs
By William Rivers Pitt
Friday 13 June 2003

After several years teaching high school, I've heard all the excuses. I
didn't get my homework done because my computer crashed, because my project
partner didn't do their part, because I feel sick, because I left it on the
bus, because I had a dance recital, because I was abducted by aliens and
viciously probed. Houdini doesn't have as many tricks. No one on earth is
more inventive than a high school sophomore backed into a corner and faced
with a zero on an assignment.

No one, perhaps, except Bush administration officials forced now to
account for their astounding claims made since September 2002 regarding
Iraq's alleged weapons program.

After roughly 280 days worth of fearful descriptions of the formidable
Iraqi arsenal, coming on the heels of seven years of UNSCOM weapons
inspections, four years of surveillance, months of UNMOVIC weapons
inspections, the investiture of an entire nation by American and British
forces, after which said forces searched "everywhere" per the words of the
Marine commander over there and "found nothing," after interrogating dozens
of the scientists and officers who have nothing to hide anymore because
Hussein is gone, after finding out that the dreaded 'mobile labs' were
weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British, George W. Bush and
his people suddenly have a few things to answer for.

You may recall this instance where a bombastic claim was made by Bush.
During his constitutionally-mandated State of the Union address on January
28, 2003, Mr. Bush said, "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam
Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard
and VX nerve agent." Nearly five months later, those 500 tons are nowhere
to be found. A few seconds with a calculator can help us understand exactly
what this means.

500 tons of gas equals one million pounds. After UNSCOM, after UNMOVIC,
after the war, after the US Army inspectors, after all the satellite
surveillance, it is difficult in the extreme to imagine how one million
pounds of anything could refuse to be located. Bear in mind, also, that
this one million pounds is but a part of the Iraqi weapons arsenal
described by Bush and his administration.

Maybe the dog ate it. Or maybe it was never there to begin with, having
been destroyed years ago by the first UN inspectors and by the Iraqis
themselves. Maybe we went to war on a big lie, one that killed over 3,500
Iraqi civilians to date, one that killed some 170 American soldiers, one
that has been costing us one American soldier's life per day thus far.

If you listen to the Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, this is all
just about "politics." An in-depth investigation into how exactly we came
to go to war on the WMD word of the Bush administration has been quashed by
the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Closed-door
hearings by the Intelligence Committee are planned next week, but an open
investigation has been shunted aside by Bush allies who control the gavel
and the agenda. If there is nothing to hide, as the administration insists,
if nothing was done wrong, one must wonder why they fear to have these
questions asked in public.

The questions are being asked anyway. Thirty five Representatives have
signed House Resolution 260, which demands with specificity that the
administration back up it's oft-repeated claims about the Iraqi weapons
arsenal with evidence and fact. The guts of the Resolution are as follows:

Resolved, That the President is requested to transmit to the House of
Representatives not later than 4 days after the date of the adoption of
this resolution documents or other materials in the President's possession
that provides specific evidence for the following claims relating to Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction:

(1) On August 26, 2002, the Vice President in a speech stated: `Simply
stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction . . . What he wants is time, and more time to husband his
resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program,
and to gain possession of nuclear weapons.'

(2) On September 12, 2002, in a speech to the United Nations General
Assembly, the President stated: `Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.Iraq has
made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich
uranium for a nuclear weapon.'

(3) On October 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, the President
stated: `It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is
seeking nuclear weapons.And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is
rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological
weapons.'

(4) On January 7, 2003, the Secretary of Defense at a press briefing
stated: `There is no doubt in my mind but that they currently have chemical
and biological weapons.'

(5) On January 9, 2003, in his daily press briefing, the White House
spokesperson stated: 'We know for a fact that there are weapons there Iraq.'

(6) On March 16, 2003, in an appearance on NBC's `Meet The Press', the
Vice President stated: `We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear
weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.'

(7) On March 17, 2003, in an Address to the Nation, the President
stated: `Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no
doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the
most lethal weapons ever devised.'

(8) On March 21, 2003, in his daily press briefing the White House
spokesperson stated: `Well, there is no question that we have evidence and
information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and
chemical particularly.all this will be made clear in the course of the
operation, for whatever duration it takes.'

(9) On March 24, 2003, in an appearance on CBS's `Face the Nation', the
Secretary of Defense stated: `We have seen intelligence over many months
that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have
dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least,
the command and control arrangements have been established.'

(10) On March 30, 2003, in an appearance on ABC's `This Week', the
Secretary of Defense stated: `We know where they are, they are in the area
around Tikrit and Baghdad.'

On June 10, 2003, Representative Henry Waxman transmitted a letter to
Condoleezza Rice demanding answers to a specific area of concern in this
whole mess. His letter goes on to repeat, in scathing detail, the
multifaceted claims made by the Bush administration regarding an Iraqi
nuclear weapons program, and deconstructs those claims with a fine scalpel.
"What I want to know is the answer to a simple question: Why did the
President use forged evidence in the State of the Union address?" the
letter concludes. "This is a question that bears directly on the
credibility of the United States, and it should be answered in a prompt and
forthright manner, with full disclosure of all the relevant facts."

It is this aspect, the nuclear claims, that has led the Bush
administration to do what many observers expected them to do for a while
now: They have blamed it all on the CIA. A report in the June 12, 2003
edition of the Washington Post cites an unnamed Bush administration
official who claims that the CIA knew the evidence of Iraqi nuclear plans
had been forged, but that CIA failed to give this information to Bush. The
Post story states, "A senior intelligence official said the CIA's action
was the result of 'extremely sloppy' handling of a central piece of
evidence in the administration's case against then-Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein."

Ergo, it wasn't the dog who ate the WMDs. It was the CIA. Unfortunately
for Bush and his people, this blame game will not hold water.

Early in October of 2002, Bush went before the American people and
delivered yet another vat of nightmarish descriptions of what Saddam
Hussein could do to America and the world with his vast array of weaponry.
One week before this speech, however, the CIA had publicly stated that
Hussein and Iraq were less of a threat than they had been for the last ten
years.

Columnist Robert Scheer reported on October 9, 2002, that, "In its
report, the CIA concludes that years of U.N. inspections combined with U.S.
and British bombing of selected targets have left Iraq far weaker
militarily than in the 1980s, when it was supported in its war against Iran
by the United States. The CIA report also concedes that the agency has no
evidence that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons."

Certainly, if citizen Scheer was able to read and understand the CIA
report on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, the President of the United States
could easily do so as well.

The scandal which laid Bill Clinton low centered around his lying under
oath about sex. The scandal which took down Richard Nixon was certainly
more profound, as he was accused of misusing the CIA and FBI to spy on
political opponents while paying off people to lie about his actions. Lying
under oath and misusing the intelligence community are both serious
transgressions, to be sure. The matter of Iraq's weapons program, however,
leaves both of these in deep shade.

George W. Bush and his people used the fear and terror that still roils
within the American people in the aftermath of September 11 to fob off an
unnerving fiction about a faraway nation, and then used that fiction to
justify a war that killed thousands and thousands of people.

Latter-day justifications about 'liberating' the Iraqi people or
demonstrating the strength of America to the world do not obscure this
fact. They lied us into a war that, beyond the death toll, served as the
greatest Al Qaeda recruiting drive in the history of the world. They lied
about a war that cost billions of dollars which could have been better used
to bolster America's amazingly substandard anti-terror defenses. They are
attempting, in the aftermath, to misuse the CIA by blaming them for all of
it.

Blaming the CIA will not solve this problem, for the CIA is well able to
defend itself. Quashing investigations in the House will not stem the
questions that come now at a fast and furious clip.

They lied. Period. Trust a teacher on this. We can spot liars who have
not done their homework a mile away.

---------

William Rivers Pitt william.pitt@mail.truthout.org is a New York Times
best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" available now from Context
Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," now available from Pluto
Press at www.SilenceIsSedition.com.

Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.



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