December 08, 2003
MEDIA MINUTES
British claims that Iraq possessed WMD capable of being launched within 45 minutes were a lie. They could be launched within 30 minutes:
An Iraqi colonel who commanded a front-line unit during the build-up to the war in Iraq has revealed how he passed top secret information to British intelligence warning that Saddam Hussein had deployed weapons of mass destruction that could be used on the battlefield against coalition troops in less than 45 minutes.
Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, 40, who was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the western desert, said that cases containing WMD warheads were delivered to front-line units, including his own, towards the end of last year.
"I am the one responsible for providing this information," said the colonel, who is now working as an adviser to Iraq's Governing Council.
The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades. They could also have been launched sooner than the 45-minutes claimed in the dossier.
"Forget 45 minutes," said Col al-Dabbagh. "We could have fired these within half-an-hour."
Interesting. The British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee criticised the UK government’s dossier for not highlighting that the 45-minute claim referred to battlefield devices; The Guardian claimed that:
The implication in the dossier was that Iraq could threaten the west by arming long-range missiles with chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes.
Really? Here is Tony Blair’s foreword to the dossier:
Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own people. Intelligence reports make clear that he sees the building up of his WMD capability, and the belief overseas that he would use these weapons, as vital to his strategic interests, and in particular his goal of regional domination. And the document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.
Some of the WMD. No obvious link between the 45-minute claim and a threat to the west there. Nor is there in Blair’s statement to Parliament:
It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population ...
And from the dossier itself:
Iraq's military forces are able to use chemical and biological weapons, with command, control and logistical arrangements in place. The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within forty five minutes of a decision to do so.
Intelligence indicates that as part of Iraq's military planning, Saddam is willing to use chemical and biological weapons, including against an internal uprising by the Shia population. Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within forty five minutes of an order to do so.
Again, no link to an attack on the west. During the Hutton inquiry, Senior QC to the inquiry James Dingemans quoted the Intelligence and Security Committee’s findings in a question to MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove:
"The dossier was for public consumption and not for experienced readers of intelligence material. The 45 minutes claim, included four times, was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before." It then goes on to say that it was unhelpful to an understanding of the issue. Do you agree with that comment?
Sir Richard’s reply:
Given the misinterpretation of the original piece of intelligence, particularly as it was not qualified in terms of its relationship to battlefield munitions, this now looks a valid criticism.
In other words, because the dossier didn’t specifically state that the 45-minute WMD were battlefield munitions, inexperienced readers of intelligence material -- ie, journalists -- took the claim to refer to a threat against the west. Although, of course, no specific statement to that effect was included in the dossier either.
Who sexed-up the 45-minute claim? The media did.
UPDATE. "WMD claims treated sceptically."
Posted by Tim Blair at December 8, 2003 01:29 PMI would treat very carefully, & skeptically, any claims by Iraqi ex-Army officers that they were in posession of WMDs without independent corroboration by Iraqi official documentation and/or (habeas corpus) the WMDs themselves.
Or an independent witness.
There have been just too many WMD hoaxes pulled so far.(non-nuke programs, innocent aluminium tubes, botox in the fridge, non-bio labs, non-SCUDs)
The full story of how the neo-cons duped the "Naive Right" is available from Seymour Hersh's long running series in the New Yorker.
There is clear evidence that defectors will squawk to the pipers tune, especially if that piper happens to be a neo-con with an axe to grind and a well-stuffed war chest.
It appears that Hussein got rid of his WMDs in the nineties. All inferences to the contrary, presented by intelligence agencies, or the UN inspectors, were the result of Hussein's attempt to have his cake and eat it too, ie comply with the Gulf War I cease fire agreements but appear to his rivals and enemies to be armed nonetheless.
Opposition to Hussein, and support for the US attempt at nation building, does not entail accepting the admins WMD claims at face value.
If they did, then the case for regime change would long since have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
50 word limit from now on, Jack. Actually, in light of this post, a 45 word limit.
Posted by: tim at December 8, 2003 at 02:29 PMJack,
In four words or less:
"Saddam lied, people died"?
Posted by: Andjam at December 8, 2003 at 02:34 PM50 words! I take that long to clear my throat.
Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 8, 2003 at 02:58 PMCan't win, no matter the evidence, its all a nasty U.S. plot, right down to the informants.
Perhaps the question should be, did Saddam have an army . SMH,ABc & others would then work overtime to deny that too.
Posted by: d at December 8, 2003 at 02:58 PMMaybe some members of the media aught to take the 'honorable' way out and kill themselves now?
Yeah, I am a b*st*rd.
Hussein had to keep up a persona of being able to attack his neighbours at any time. Such is life in the middle east, and for that matter most countries world wide.
If he had said he had no weapons, he would have been ripe for the plucking.
Come visit my blog
Posted by: alphaCoward at December 8, 2003 at 03:20 PMI share Jack's skepticism but the scenario he describes: Saddam ditched (intentionally or temporarily?) his weapons programs in the nineties is only one of several possible scenarios.
Yes defectors can be unreliable. Kadr Hamza, the former head of Saddam's nuke program wrote letters to the Wall Street Journal and featured prominently in a lot of pre-War arguments. He's been pretty quiet since (he's probably just as mystified as all of us - he escaped Iraq in '96 so his info was old). But the claim that they were buried is very plausible. They've already uncovered buried whole figher jets and other surprising stuff. No conclusions should be drawn yet.
Posted by: John, Tokyo at December 8, 2003 at 03:55 PMIf you really want to get the full story, load Tim into asksnoop.com
I swear, after you get off the floor from pissing yourself laughing so hard, the rest makes far more sense. So does the ABC and CNN for that matter....
The issue isn't really "did Saddam have the WMD?", it's "Did the Coalition have credible intelligence that Saddam had WMD?".
Lt-Col al-Dabbagh (according to the TV news) had been feeding military Int to the Brits for years - on that basis, when this guy tells you that WMDs are in place, you would have to say that the Coalition had good reason to attack.
Posted by: Harry Tuttle at December 8, 2003 at 05:48 PMNow that's spin. UK/US intellegence lied/was wrong about WMD because Saddam went to enormous lengths to decieve the UK/US into thinking that he had WMD, when infact he did not.
Posted by: Charles at December 8, 2003 at 05:58 PMOK, so this upstanding fellow took delivery of chemical warheads at the end of last year and ... then what? He lost them?
Or maybe his interrogators were so busy asking him more important questions that they just plain forgot to ask him where he'd left them.
And as for Tim's incisive analysis of the media's misinterpretation of the "45 minutes" claim ... well, if what he says is correct, then why on earth didn't the Blair government point out the error?
Somehow, I find the idea that they let stand such a powerful claim although they were fully aware that it was false considerably more disturbing than the idea that they merely repeated some bad intelligence.
But, of course, that's not the case.
Posted by: Mork at December 8, 2003 at 05:59 PMWhat's up with that? Put this page's URL in the Shizzolator and check out the pistol packing babe. Don't use the Main page URL. Tim's main page, jeeze. No, don't use Tim's main page's URL. Use this one's. The comment one. Ok, if you are reading this now, copy the URL in the address bar at the top and use that. If you aren't reading this now, don't worry about it. There, that should take care of it.
Lugers and Pearls. That's my fetish! Good name for a blog.
Posted by: Charles at December 8, 2003 at 06:08 PMThe SMH has published a denial by an anonymous Iraqi general. Not sure about other outlets.
I agree with Mork. If this guy's unit were lugging just-add-water WMD's around in the desert, then where the hell are they? The say-so of some two-bit Iraqi officer isn't good enough to start triumphantly announcing the Blair government's vindication. I'm sitting on the fence until something more convincing turns up.
Posted by: ChrisV at December 8, 2003 at 06:27 PMIs it April 1 every day in the WMD-believers camp?
The devices, which were known by Iraqi officers as "the secret weapon", were made in Iraq and designed to be launched by hand-held rocket-propelled grenades.
Hand-held RPG's typically have a range of less than 500m.
I know, I have fired them.
That rules out...queue Dr Evil-tyle theme..."the secret weapon" being either nukes & bio-weapons.
Were they chem-weaps?
No mention of NBC suits for handling, or blow-back.
I think you guys have been had again.
Don't blame me I tried to warn you. Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 8, 2003 at 06:49 PM
The WMDs are in Syria and buried in remote Iraq. In desperation to see Bush & Co fail, the left is setting the bar so low that it won't take much to convince people he is right.
And yes it was the media that jumped on the 45 minute claim. It was a great sound-bite that made their job easier. It still befuddles me why the Blair government went on the WMD schtick and not the "Saddam is a genocidal maniac" meme.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at December 8, 2003 at 07:03 PMThe world's only superpower is camped on your doorstep for months, leaving no doubt about their intentions.
You've got WMD: why the hell wouldn't you use them?
Quick, we're about to get invaded, better bury our weapons in the desert!
Ooops, forgot the balsa wood drone. We're busted.
Andrew - isn't that obvious? Do you think that the American people would have supported spending $300 billion of their tax dollars and sacrificing a thousand American lives on a humanitarian mission to Iraq?
You and I might think that that is a noble use of resources, but in March 2003, I dare say we would have had trouble convincing a majority of the American people that it was.
Hell, I think we would have had a hard time convincing a good many conservative columnists that it was ... until it became the only way to save George W. Bush from embarrassment!
Posted by: Mork at December 8, 2003 at 07:12 PMAs a matter of fact construction workers just uncovered some buried chemical weapons from the Second World War while working on a project in northern Japan. And it seems the Chinese find these buried chemical and biological weapons that the Japanese buried quite often. I
f you want to figure this out with all that mental masturbation you're doing just ask what this Iraqi Col.'s motives would be for lying to British intelligence about Iraq's WMD. He has come foward and publically reiterated his statements that he made in the dossier. If he was lying it would have been best for him personally to remain anonymous. But then logic has never been the left's strong point. I think their strongest point is confiscating and spending other people's money. Well that and a blind maniacal craving for power and privelege.
Posted by: Harry at December 8, 2003 at 07:22 PMHarry, you don't have to be on the left to question this guy's motives. His motives were the same as Kadr Hamza's and a lot of the other defectors/spies: They hated Saddam and they wanted to get rid of him (or, more cynically, to justify their defection/espionage). So they paint as lurid a picture as possible. This is often the case of defectors from any country. We see it a lot with N. Korean defectors. I don't want to condemn these people because they made hard and dangerous decisions to work against someone as ruthless and brutal as Saddam (or N. Korea). But hawks, more than anyone, have to take a skeptical view of most reports coming from these people. Even when they tell the truth, as in the case of Hamza - the top Nuke scientist, the regime will alter everything the second they know that the enemy has got its hands on that information source.
Bottom line: all of this is spin and speculation until we get more info. There is no guarantee that we will ever completely unravel what happened.
Posted by: John, Tokyo at December 8, 2003 at 08:02 PMStrange. There's Andy Card going on TV to say that the WMD intelligence question is moot.
And, the same day, the Telegraph pops up with, supposedly, the name of the Missing Link on the most interesting (to T Blair) WMD intelligence question, in a piece that, in all sorts of ways, seems to go out of its way to raise doubts about its own reliability.
Posted by: John Smith at December 8, 2003 at 09:14 PMBongoman:
And the reason the Iraqis buried MiG-25 jets in the desert was what?
It certainly was not going to be doing much good against Coalition forces, yet the Iraqis did precisely that.
Just because it's not what you or I would do does not mean that they (Iraqis, al-Qaeda, Iranians) won't choose to do it.
Posted by: Dean at December 8, 2003 at 09:25 PMMork
Why cant people have there own reason to support GW2 apart from save "George W. Bush from embarrassment"?. I have seen enough justification for myself.
Posted by: Gary at December 8, 2003 at 10:09 PMLt-Col al-Dabbagh - The New Iraqi Minister for Information.
Posted by: LD at December 8, 2003 at 10:51 PMMy my, hasn't this put the cat amongst the pigeons? The desperation to explain this away is almost palpable.
I was always amused by the anti-war movement’s instantaneous acceptance of the Iraqi's laughable explanation that the thousands of chemical protective suits found were for the protection of the Iraqi troops against coalition WMD.
Of course the Iraqi’s chem protection suits by themselves didn’t prove anything, but together with this information, the whole ‘NO WMD…it was all lies' mantra has taken a massive credibility blow.
"There was certainly adequate intelligence without it being gilded and exaggerated by the administration to raise questions about chemical and biological programs and a continuing effort to obtain nuclear power." – Hillary Clinton, 12/1/03
Posted by: d-rod at December 9, 2003 at 01:56 AMGary - I think you somewhat miss my point. Try this as a thought exercise: imagine that in the waning years of the Clinton presidency, he had announced that he was planning on spending $300 billion and sacrificing 1,000 American lives to depose Saddam Hussein and "nation-build" a new Iraq in order to free the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny.
Can you imagine any conservatives - many of whom, remember, bitterly opposed American intervention in Kosovo - who would have supported that plan?
But now that the WMD and terrorism canards have been exposed, that's what they're left with as a justification for Iraq. So they run with it.
It's kind of funny: as a humanitarian gesture, assuming (against mounting evidence) that they don't f*ck up the rebuilding, it's an incredibly noble thing that the Americans have done. I just don't think that many of them would have supported it if it had been presented to them honestly in the first place.
Posted by: Mork at December 9, 2003 at 09:21 AMMork said, "I just don't think that many of them would have supported it if it had been presented to them honestly in the first place."
WMD was only a microbe in this war. It was the end of the Gulf War that should have taken place years ago. (Thanks UN) However, I think it was better to do it now, when we had time to plan a rebuild of Iraq. If we had finished the job the first time, it might have been a real cluster fu=k. We see how difficult it is now, even with planning.
Another damn good reason for this mission.....terrorism. It breeds in the mid east and we jumped right into the middle of it. To me, the plan is genious.
We (citizens) are starting to see just how long, and quickly terrorism has been building, and who the builders were. The Bush administration had alot of this info before the war. Again, I think the planners were brilliant. If we had done it much differently......we could have had a real quagmire on our hands.
We know for a fact Sodom had and used chem/bio weapons. Knowing him, he wouldn't destroy all of them just because someone told him to....It's just going to go on in stricter secrecy. To think any different would lead me to believe you:
A. Live in a liberal shell.
B. Aren't smart enough to tie your shoes.
C. Actually side with terrorism.
D. Believe everything is a 'conspiracy'.
E. Just hate George Bush for no real reason.
F. Mate with monkeys.
G. All of the above.
As heard on NPR, this week's TIME magazine has an article by Michael Ware (an Aussie by the accent), who's spent time with the Iraqi Deadenders. He claims they have chemical weapons. Warheads for mortars or shoulder-fired missiles NOW. He said a warhead had a odor, interfered with his breathing and when shook, liquid slooshed around.
This part of article wasn't on first page of TIME.com online. A subscriber is going to have to get that specific info.
Posted by: Jabba the Nutt at December 9, 2003 at 11:00 AMMork
1) It has been said that the cost of containment would be fare more then war.
2) Kosovo is not the best example of humanitarian intervention is it. When is that airier going to independent from the UN?. Why was the UN bypassed in order to intervene? Why are people still dying from 'militants'?. Why couldn't the surrounding countries handle it? Why no exit strategy? that's Kosovo.
Posted by: Gary at December 9, 2003 at 11:04 AM""It is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted-for stocks of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq." - Bill Clinton, commander and chief of the "naive right".
Posted by: d-rod at December 9, 2003 at 11:17 AMKosovo is not the best example of humanitarian intervention is it. When is that airier going to independent from the UN?. Why was the UN bypassed in order to intervene? Why are people still dying from 'militants'?. Why couldn't the surrounding countries handle it? Why no exit strategy? that's Kosovo.
Gary - I'm wondering which of the above you think does not apply to Iraq?
I'm also wondering what you mean by "containment". Containing what?
Posted by: Mork at December 9, 2003 at 11:21 AMSorry, Gary, I misunderstood you - I thought you were disagreeing with the connection I drew.
It seems to me that the chief difference between the two actions is the cost: from a strictly humanitarian viewpoint, I'd describe both as (so far) a qualified success.
The principal difference is that Kosovo cost somewhere between $2 and $3 billion (plus a recurring $2 billion or so for peacekeepers and contributions to rebuilding, shared with the EU) and no Americans lost their lives, while the cost of Iraq is already well into the hundreds of billions of dollars and will end up costing a thousand or so American lives.
Hence my question: would the American people have supported it as a purely humanitarian intervention?
Posted by: Mork at December 9, 2003 at 11:45 AM"Hence my question: would the American people have supported it as a purely humanitarian intervention?"
Probably not neither would it have got more support from the rest of the word.
Posted by: Gary at December 9, 2003 at 12:06 PMthe search for WMDs gets more and more metaphysical. Andrew Ian Dodge says:
The WMDs are in Syria and buried in remote Iraq.
Why can't we have them dancing on a pin-head, just like the good old days when theologians conducted these types of disputes.
Face it guys, you have been had. There were no WMDs in Iraq. And supposing Hussein had got some in the future, there was no way he was going to use them for aggression, lest he find his nation turned into a carpark by IDF or the US DoD.
One question for WMD believers: if you don't use WMDs when your government is facing a survival threat, when would you use them?
Posted by: Jack Strocchi at December 9, 2003 at 12:53 PMGolly, Jack, does that mean that Germany did not have stockpiles of chemical weapons in WWII? It never used them, after all.
You did know that, didn't you?
Face it guys, you have been had. There were no WMDs in Iraq.
The kurds must have been killed by falling apples then I guess.
One question for WMD believers: if you don't use WMDs when your government is facing a survival threat, when would you use them?
How about giving them to a third party willing to use them? There's no shortage of them in the Middle East. You'd inflict great harm on the evil infidels, and make it less likely your country would be turned into a carpark by the aforementioned DoD or IDF. Personally, I'd glad we weren't left to find out.
Posted by: Tex at December 9, 2003 at 03:19 PMTex, on the one hand, you suggest that the explanation for the absence of WMD is that Iraq gave them away to terrorists, but by the end of your spiel, you're expressing relief for the fact that the invasion prevented this from occuring.
Which is it?
Did they exist and are now in the hands of terrorists, or did they exist and are now under (secret) coalition control or did they never exist, but you're glad we invaded anyway because, hell, it's nice to be sure?
Posted by: Mork at December 9, 2003 at 04:15 PM"One question for WMD believers: if you don't use WMDs when your government is facing a survival threat, when would you use them?"
When you are facing an enemy that DOESN'T have some of the most sophisticated protection known to protect against those weapons? Protection equipment that would make yours look like something out of the dark ages, and would quite possibly make those weapons more dangerous to your own troops than the enemy.
"Face it guys, you have been had. There were no WMDs in Iraq."
Face it Jack, you're clutching at straws.