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By DREW BROWN Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Iraqi weapons programs threatened regional and global security in the long run, but they weren't an immediate danger to the United States, according to a report being released today.
An immediate threat was a reason the Bush administration gave for going to war.
The report also found no conclusive evidence to support administration statements that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with al-Qaida or would have transferred chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to the terrorist group. That was another justification for the war.
The study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan research institution, faulted the intelligence community for failing to make an accurate assessment of the status of Hussein's illicit weapons and missile programs.
It criticized President Bush and top officials for “systematically” misrepresenting the threats posed by those programs, even beyond the evidence presented by faulty intelligence analyses.
Suzy DeFrancis, a White House spokesman, said she had not seen the report. But she said: “We know that Saddam Hussein had programs in place to develop weapons of mass destruction.”
Hussein had used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people, and posed a threat to his region, the United States and the world, she said.
The Carnegie Endowment describes itself as dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States. It publishes the magazine Foreign Policy.
“It becomes clear that many things we thought were working, like our intelligence assessment process, were not, and things that we thought were not working, like the U.N. inspection process, actually were,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert and an author of the six-month study.
“…This war wasn't necessary,” Cirincione said.
Among the report's other findings:
• The extent of Iraq's nuclear and chemical weapons programs was “largely knowable” before the war. Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled, and there “was no convincing evidence of its reconstitution.” United Nations weapons inspectors discovered as early as 1991 that Iraqi nerve agents had lost “most of their lethality.” Operations Desert Storm in 1991 and Desert Fox in 1998, coupled with U.N. inspections and sanctions, had “effectively destroyed” Iraq's capabilities to produce these weapons on a mass scale.
• The intelligence community “appears to have overestimated” the extent of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq before 2002, but had a “generally accurate” picture of its nuclear and missile programs.
• The intelligence picture was much less clear regarding Iraq's biological weapons.
• It is unlikely that Iraq could have hidden, destroyed or sent out of the country the weapons that administration officials said were present without the United States detecting signs of them.
• Intelligence assessments after 2002, coupled with the creation of a separate intelligence cell in the Pentagon, “suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policy-makers' views sometime in 2002.”
The report recommended the administration drop the doctrine of unilateral, pre-emptive war from its security strategy unless there was a clear and imminent threat from a potential rogue nation.
To reach Drew Brown, send e-mail to [email protected].
The Star's James Hart contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Iraqi weapons programs threatened regional and global security in the long run, but they weren't an immediate danger to the United States, according to a report being released today.
An immediate threat was a reason the Bush administration gave for going to war.
The report also found no conclusive evidence to support administration statements that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with al-Qaida or would have transferred chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to the terrorist group. That was another justification for the war.
The study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan research institution, faulted the intelligence community for failing to make an accurate assessment of the status of Hussein's illicit weapons and missile programs.
It criticized President Bush and top officials for “systematically” misrepresenting the threats posed by those programs, even beyond the evidence presented by faulty intelligence analyses.
Suzy DeFrancis, a White House spokesman, said she had not seen the report. But she said: “We know that Saddam Hussein had programs in place to develop weapons of mass destruction.”
Hussein had used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people, and posed a threat to his region, the United States and the world, she said.
The Carnegie Endowment describes itself as dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States. It publishes the magazine Foreign Policy.
“It becomes clear that many things we thought were working, like our intelligence assessment process, were not, and things that we thought were not working, like the U.N. inspection process, actually were,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert and an author of the six-month study.
“…This war wasn't necessary,” Cirincione said.
Among the report's other findings:
• The extent of Iraq's nuclear and chemical weapons programs was “largely knowable” before the war. Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled, and there “was no convincing evidence of its reconstitution.” United Nations weapons inspectors discovered as early as 1991 that Iraqi nerve agents had lost “most of their lethality.” Operations Desert Storm in 1991 and Desert Fox in 1998, coupled with U.N. inspections and sanctions, had “effectively destroyed” Iraq's capabilities to produce these weapons on a mass scale.
• The intelligence community “appears to have overestimated” the extent of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq before 2002, but had a “generally accurate” picture of its nuclear and missile programs.
• The intelligence picture was much less clear regarding Iraq's biological weapons.
• It is unlikely that Iraq could have hidden, destroyed or sent out of the country the weapons that administration officials said were present without the United States detecting signs of them.
• Intelligence assessments after 2002, coupled with the creation of a separate intelligence cell in the Pentagon, “suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policy-makers' views sometime in 2002.”
The report recommended the administration drop the doctrine of unilateral, pre-emptive war from its security strategy unless there was a clear and imminent threat from a potential rogue nation.
To reach Drew Brown, send e-mail to [email protected].
The Star's James Hart contributed to this report.
