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Suspected Iraqi Aircraft Not Designed for Use in WMD Attacks, U.S. Analysts Say U.S. weapons experts working in Iraq have concluded that Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles were not designed for conducting biological or chemical weapons attacks, contrary to claims made by the Bush administration prior to the war, the Associated Press reported last week (see GSN, Aug. 22). Senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, had warned that Iraqi UAVs were intended to deliver weapons of mass destruction and cautioned that even U.S. territory was at risk. However, reports are now emerging that prior to the war, U.S. Air Force intelligence analysts and analysts from the Missile Defense Agency said they believed the UAVs did not pose a threat to either Iraq’s neighbors or the United States, U.S. officials and weapons experts said. There was also little evidence that Iraq’s UAV program was connected with its suspected biological weapons program, said Air Force Intelligence Analysis Agency Director Bob Boyd. The Iraqi drones were also believed to be too small to carry weapons, he said. “We didn’t see there was a very large chance they (UAVs) would be used to attack the continental United States,” Boyd said. “We didn’t see them as a big threat to the homeland,” he said. Evidence found in July by U.S. weapons experts in Iraq support the views of the Air Force and MDA analysts, according to two U.S. scientists involved in the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. “We just looked at the UAVs and said, ‘There’s nothing here. There’s no room to put anything in here,’” one of the scientists said (Linzer/Lumpkin, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 24). Blair Says He Would Have Resigned Over Intelligence Dispute Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week that he would have resigned if there were any truth to the allegations that his government exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq, according to Reuters (see GSN, Aug. 21). “This was an allegation that we had behaved in a way which ... if true would have merited my resignation,” Blair said In testimony before a parliamentary inquiry, Blair denied that his government had exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in a dossier released in September 2002. Blair also said, however, that his government had been under public pressure to justify going to war, adding that he wanted the dossier to make “the best case we could have.” Blair said that he continued to support the dossier. “We described the intelligence in a way that was perfectly justified,” he said (Evans/McBride, Reuters, Aug. 28).
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