A four-month, $300m search of Iraq has found no weapons of mass destruction, says the CIA-led team conducting the search.
鈥淲e have not found stocks of weapons,鈥� said David Kay, head of the 1200-strong Iraq Survey Group. However Kay鈥檚 statement did reveal 鈥渟ubstantial evidence of intent鈥� to produce WMD in the future, including a clandestine network of laboratories, some hidden in prisons. It also detailed evidence of plans to build missiles with a range of up to 1000 kilometres.
鈥淲e have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations,鈥� says Kay.
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This 鈥渃onclusive and incontrovertible evidence鈥� that Iraq defied the UN showed the war had been justified, said UK foreign secretary Jack Straw. However, outside the US and UK governments, most observers interpreted Kay鈥檚 statement as seriously undermining the idea of an 鈥渋mminent threat鈥� that was one of the key justifications for going to war.
鈥淗ad this stuff been known before the war, it would have been hard to drum up support,鈥� says Daniel Serwer, at the US Institute of Peace, a Washington DC think tank.
鈥淭here is no smoking gun and there is no gun,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here is evidence for designs for a gun, but that is certainly not an imminent threat, is it? This is evidence of a remarkable intelligence failure.鈥�
Ammunition sites
Kay stresses that his 鈥渋nterim鈥� report is only 鈥渁 snapshot in an on-going investigation鈥�, and he says the search must continue. The Pentagon has requested an additional $600 million dollars for this. For example, Kay says, there are 120 ammunition sites still to be examined.
He says biological weapons might be found, but that 鈥渕ultiple sources 鈥� told the ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, chemical weapons program after 1991鈥�. The report also suggests Iraq鈥檚 nuclear weapons program was long dead.
Jonathan Tucker, at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Washington DC, says: 鈥淭he lesson to be learned here is that the UN inspections were very effective at containing Iraq鈥檚 weapons program.鈥�
If the search is to continue, says Joe Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, the UN weapon鈥檚 inspectors, and not the ISG, must do the work.
鈥淭he ISG report is a pathetic collection of scraps of information that indicate there may have been some intentions to develop some programme sometime in the future,鈥� he says.
Warfare or wrinkles
The single example of an actual WMD agent found by Kay鈥檚 team was a vial of the extremely poisonous botulinum toxin, found in the house of an Iraqi scientist. Botulinum is a potential biowarfare agent, but also a common treatment for wrinkles.
Cirincione is sceptical: 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 say when the scientist was given the vial or how much he had. We all know Botox is widely available in small quantities 鈥� was he trying to kill people or just cure wrinkles?鈥�
One key question raised by the report is that if Iraq did not pose an immediate threat, why did Saddam Hussein not come clean and avoid war.
鈥淭he most likely explanation is that he was trying to inflate his threatening image to his own people, his own neighbours and to the US,鈥� says Cirincione. Tucker agrees: 鈥淥f course Iraq did not admit that it did not possess stockpiles. That would have encouraged Iran or Israel to attack it.鈥�