Iraq:  British Intelligence Official Says Iraqi Dossier Reworked

A senior British intelligence official has said a government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs was reworked to make it “sexier” prior to its release in September, BBC News reported today (see GSN, May 28).

The British dossier’s claims included that the Iraqi military had the ability to deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order (see GSN, Sept. 24, 2002).  The British intelligence official said, however, that claim was not in the original draft of the dossier because it was considered to be unreliable.

“Most things in the dossier were double-source, but that was single-source, and we believe that the source was wrong,” the intelligence official said.

British Defense Minister Adam Ingram denied that the government had demanded changes to the dossier, saying it was “not concocted by Number 10 or under pressure from Number 10 to produce it in a particular way.”

“(It came from) their best knowledge and their best assessment of what they could declare into the public domain, based upon the knowledge of what was out there,” Ingram said (BBC News, May 29).

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has accused the government of basing its justification for the war on Iraq on false information.

“It is plain he [ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] did not have that capacity to threaten us, possibly did not have the capacity to threaten even his neighbors, and that is profoundly important,” Cook said.  “We were, after all, told that those who opposed the resolution that would provide the basis for military action were in the wrong.  Perhaps we should now admit they were in the right,” he said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that he had “absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction.”

“Rather than speculating, let’s just wait until we get the full report back from our people who are interviewing the Iraqi scientists,” Blair said (Russell/McSmith, London Independent, May 29).

Iraqi WMD Was Singled Out for “Bureaucratic Reasons,” Wolfowitz Says

Meanwhile, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has said the United States focused on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a reason for war because of “bureaucratic reasons,” adding that there were several other motives.

“For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in the July issue of Vanity Fair (Reuters, May 28).

United States Limits IAEA’s Return Role

While the United States has reached an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the organization to send its experts back to Iraq to help secure the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, the agreement sharply limits the agency’s role, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, May 27).

Under the agreement, IAEA experts are limited to a small area within the complex and are specifically blocked from investigating reports that radioactive material from the site may have been removed, the Post reported.  After labeling the effort made by U.N. inspectors prior to the war as insufficient, the Bush administration was not going to allow them to return to look for weapons now, a senior Bush administration official said.

“Make no mistake, the IAEA wanted to get back in and do its former inspection role,” the senior Bush administration official said.  “And they were told, in no uncertain terms, no,” the official added (DeYoung/Pincus, Washington Post, May 29).

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Threat Assessment:  Al-Qaeda May Still Strike U.S. Interests, FBI Says

More than a week after raising the U.S. terror threat level to “orange,” the FBI has warned that al-Qaeda could still strike U.S. interests at home or abroad using chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, May 21).

In its weekly bulletin to state and local law enforcement and government agencies, the FBI said the terrorist group continues “to enhance their capabilities to conduct effective mass casualty attacks” (Washington Post, May 29).

In an interview published Sunday in the London-based al-Majallah magazine, al-Qaeda spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj said the group plans to poison the U.S. water supply, according to a United Press International report.

“Al-Qaeda (does not rule out) using sarin gas and poisoning drinking water in U.S. and Western cities,” al-Ablaj said.  “We will talk about (these weapons) then and the infidels will know what harms them.  They spared no effort in their war on us in Afghanistan. … They should not therefore rule out the possibility that we will present them with our capabilities,” he added.

U.S. officials, however, have played down al-Ablaj’s claims, noting that it is extremely difficult to contaminate an entire water supply, UPI reported.

“It would take many truckloads of poison, which would make it difficult to do secretly,” a U.S. intelligence official said.  “That is not really a viable threat” (Shaun Waterman, UPI/Washington Times,  May 29).

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British Response:  Decontamination Units To Aid Terror Attack Victims

Mobile decontamination units that will serve to aid victims in the event of a chemical, biological or nuclear terror attack have been purchased by British authorities and will be delivered within days, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Nov. 8).

The units — which have the capability to decontaminate up to 200 people per hour and contain large tents that house walk-through showers and dressing areas — are similar to those stationed at airports and major cities within in the United States, according to AFP.

Eighty of the vehicles have been purchased at a cost of $92 million and will be stationed across England and Wales (Agence France-Presse, May 29).

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United States:  Army to Revise Patent Amid Treaty Violation Concerns

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army plans to revise a patent for a rifle-launched, aerosol-dispensing grenade that experts say suggests the United States designed the system in violation of international arms control treaties and federal law.

The patent application was filed September 10, 2001, and the patent was awarded Feb. 25, 2003.  A copy appears on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site and was first publicized by the Sunshine Project, an arms control advocacy group.

The application says the “rifle-launched non-lethal cargo dispenser” could be used to disperse aerosols, including “chemical agents” and “biological agents.”

One of the patent’s specific claims is that it could disperse aerosols from a category of materials, including “smoke, crowd control agents, biological agents, chemical agents, obscurants, marking agents, dyes and inks, chaffs and flakes.”

“There is also a need for delivering nonaerosol payloads or articles, including, but not limited to, flash grenades, concussion grenades, nets … biological/chemical agents, and the like for efficient, rapid dispersal and delivery,” the patent says.

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and treaty-implementing U.S. Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act of 1989 prohibit developing devices for delivering biological weapons agents.

The more complicated 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention generally prohibits dispersal of toxic chemical agents in combat, while allowing certain chemicals to be used for law enforcement purposes and perhaps riot control agents in certain military situations, experts say.

“It looks as if it is being specifically designed to deliver those payloads.  Now that raises some pretty serious questions under the BWC or CWC,” said David Fidler, an Indiana University international law professor and arms control treaty expert.

“To see biological agents repeatedly used here as a specifically contemplated payload, it’s amazing and worrying,” he said.

“Either it’s a [treaty] violation or the patent is invalid,” Julian Perry Robinson of the University of Sussex, a chemist and patent lawyer by training, said.  Robinson said a patent might be considered invalid if it makes a claim that could not be supported.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell said today in an e-mail that the terms “chemical agents” and “biological agents” were included in the patent “in order to be comprehensive and claim possible payloads as broadly and generically as possible (which is the objective when obtaining patent protection).”

“Our objective was to claim chemical and biological payloads in general, not to specify chemical or biological warfare agents/materials,” he said.

Sewell said the Army is planning to change the text.

“It is clear now, in hindsight, that inserting the term chemical or biological ‘agents’ was unfortunate and that ‘materials’ may have been a better choice of words,” he said.

Suggested Interpretations

In a worst-case interpretation, experts said, the patent indicated that the United States is developing a weapon in violation of an international treaty and U.S. law.  In the best possible light, they said, the language was mistakenly included in the patent, but is nevertheless harmful because it could undermine the credibility of the U.S. commitment to upholding its international arms control commitments.

Even if the language was mistaken, “this is not prudent drafting …  What’s going to happen is people are going to say, here’s further proof that the United States is flouting its obligations under the BWC,” said Fidler.

“It suggests a kind of cavalier attitude by the United States government towards its international treaty constraints and that in turn will suggest, at least to many people, that the United States is acting to develop a biological and chemical weapons capability,” said Mark Wheelis, a University of California-Davis chemical and biological warfare authority.

“Whether that’s true or not is another matter, but it certainly is giving that impression,” Wheelis said.

The Defense Department said in a statement yesterday it was “currently reviewing the patent.”

“It has not been finally determined if and how the rifle-launched delivery device might be used, but it will not be used in any way that is inconsistent with U.S. law or U.S. treaty obligations,” the statement said.

Suggestions of Intent

In another recent e-mail comment, Mickey Morales, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, said that just because a device could be used for illicit purposes does not necessarily make it illegal.

“Keep in mind that there are endless items that can deliver chemical or biological agents.  These include aerosol cans used for commercial deodorants, crop dusters, conventional munitions, plastic baggies (remember the Tokyo subway incident?), etc.”

The experts agreed, but said if the patent language correctly indicated the system was designed specifically so it could disperse biological agents and nonlethal chemical agents such as incapacitants on a battlefield, it indicated treaty and federal law violations.

The patent application does suggest that intent, said Jonathan Tucker, a chemical and biological arms control expert, currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

“Certain words in the patent description raise some red flags, specifically the reference to the delivery of biological/chemical agents and the use in combat or noncombat operations,” he said.

“Those specific words in that description raise concerns about the intent.  And if the intent is for delivery of chemical or biological agents or the use of chemical incapacitants in a combat situation, those would be clear violations of the convention,” Tucker said.

“There’s enough here.  I could make a case that because it’s mentioned on a number of occasions that … it is designed to deliver biological agents,” Fidler said.

Marie Chevrier, a University of Texas at Dallas arms control authority, also said the document could be read as an indication of purpose, saying it suggests “they knowingly developed a delivery system for biological agents as a weapon.”

Mistaken Language

Prior to Sewell’s statement today, Robinson said patent applications often are drafted to be as broad as possible

“Basically, when somebody is patenting a system for disseminating a payload, they’ll think of any possible payload they might conceivably put in, in order to make a claim on it,” he said.

 “It was the patent lawyers for the Army, or whoever it was that got this patent, simply using boilerplate language is my guess,” Robinson said.

Wheelis also said the language might have been crafted, “not so much to suggest that the U.S. is going to do this, but to make sure that — at least within the context of patent law — if anybody uses this munition or a munition designed on these principles, they are infringing on the U.S. patent.”

Incapacitants

Edward Hammond, co-director of the Sunshine Project, said his primary concern is that the grenade may be intended for use in dispersing so-called incapacitating agents on a battlefield. 

“When you are talking about a chemical or biological payload for use as a sort of an offensive weapon, the payload for this sucker is a calmative,” he said.

The development and stockpiling of incapacitating agents has emerged recently as a concern among arms control experts and some governments, who say the Chemical Weapons Convention does not sufficiently define the legal boundaries for using such agents.  Hammond has asserted that U.S. military-sponsored research on incapacitating agents is illegal, a charge denied by the military.

In a rescue operation last year that is generally considered legal by international experts, Russian security forces used a chemical incapacitating aerosol to free hundreds of hostages and kill their captors.  The chemical, however, unintentionally killed more than 100 hostages.

A presentation on a component of the device, the aerosol dispersal mechanism, delivered publicly last year by a joint personnel from the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center and a private contractor did not mention the types of materials that could be dispersed.

It said the system is “suited to a variety of nonlethal applications,” listing “tactical concealment, sniper countermeasure, crowd control and dispersal, building clearing operations, [and] area denial to personnel.”

Sewell said the projectile was investigated as a way to deliver “special effects payloads (especially obscurants) in MOUT (Military Operations in Urbanized Terrain) situations.”

The Defense Department in its statement yesterday said, “The Army and all other components of DOD have no plans, programs, or intention to develop chemical or biological weapons prohibited by statute or treaty.”

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Iraq:  Rumsfeld Suggests Baghdad Destroyed Banned Weapons Prior to War

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday suggested that Iraq might have destroyed its alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction prior to the recent war (see GSN, May 27).

Rumsfeld said that the rapid U.S. invasion of Iraq could have prevented the Iraqi military from ordering chemical attacks, accounting for why such weapons were not used during the war.

“It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict,” Rumsfeld said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.  “I don’t know the answer, and I suspect we’ll find out a lot more information as we go along and keep interrogating people.”

Rumsfeld also called for patience in evaluating the U.S. search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which has so far found no conclusive proof of such programs.

“It’s a country the size of California.  It is not as though we’ve managed to look every place,” Rumsfeld said.  “There are hundreds and hundreds of suspect chemical or biological or nuclear sites that have not been investigated, as yet.  It will take time,” he added (Federal News Service transcript, May 27).

Rumsfeld’s remarks raise new questions about the U.S. intelligence used to justify going to war and about U.S. credibility, defense analysts said yesterday.

“They don’t have a good explanation, and therefore are trying to come up with as long a list as possible,” said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  “But it’s impossible to destroy or hide the quantities the administration said they had without our noticing it,” he said (Eric Schmitt, New York Times, May 28).

Islamic Foreign Ministers to Meet

Meanwhile, Iraq is expected to be one of the main issues tackled by foreign ministers from the Organization of the Islamic Conference during a three-day meeting slated to begin today in Tehran, according to Agence France-Presse.

All 57 member states — except Iraq — are expected to participate in the meeting to “review and consult about the situation in Iraq,” a conference source said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 28).

United States Lifts Most of Remaining Sanctions

The U.S. Treasury Department yesterday announced a general license to permit U.S. companies to trade with Iraq — a move that lifts most of the remaining U.S. sanctions and implements a recent U.N. resolution that lifts international sanctions against the country.  The U.S. license still prohibits a small number of transactions, such as trade in arms and stolen cultural artifacts, as well as trade with Baath Party officials, according to the Washington Post.

“It is no longer a crime for U.S. companies and individuals to do business with Iraq,” U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said.  “Trade and the opportunities that come with it will unleash the forces of the free market, bringing a better life for the people of Iraq,” he said (Paul Blustein, Washington Post, May 28).

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U.S. Response:  House Defeats High-Speed Computer Export Control Revisions

The U.S. House of Representatives last week voted 217-207 against legislation that would have allowed U.S. President George W. Bush to revise guidelines on the export of high-speed computers (see GSN, Dec. 30, 2002; Jim Puzzanghera, San Jose Mercury News, May 28).

The amendment to the fiscal 2004 defense authorization act, would have repealed a congressional mandate that high-performance computer exports be regulated based on the number of millions of theoretical operations per second a computer can perform, according to Technology Daily (Technology Daily, May 22).

Opponents of the bill suggested that easing computer export controls would help rogue states acquire tools to develop nuclear weapons.

“We need to put heavy restrictions on those countries that could be potential enemies, like Communist China,” Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said.

U.S. technology industry executives have said, however, that the current export control system hurts competition and does not adequately protect homeland security.  A revised control system would still prohibit rogue states from obtaining high-powered computers, they said.

“The idea that these computers are going to be sold willy nilly to anybody is fairly crazy logic,” said Ralph Hellmann, senior vice president of government relations for the Information Technology Industry Council, a technology industry trade organization (Puzzanghera, San Jose Mercury News).

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Iraq:  IAEA Inspectors Expected to Return This Week

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are expected to return to Iraq by the end of the week to evaluate the security of radioactive material stored at the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, an agency spokesman said yesterday (see GSN, May 26).

IAEA inspectors will “determine what is missing and what it will take to recapture that material and ultimately repackage it and reseal it and secure the facility,” agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.  “The mission is limited to verifying Iraq’s safeguards obligations,” he said.

The United States limited the scope of the IAEA’s planned mission to Iraq, Gwozdecky said.

“The IAEA was informed by the United States that at this stage, the occupying powers are responsible for the health and safety of the Iraqi people, including nuclear health and safety issues,” Gwozdecky said.  “The IAEA stands ready, if requested, to provide assistance in these areas,” he added (Susanna Loof, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 26).

Suspicious Finds

Meanwhile, British military experts have learned through interrogations with captured Iraqi officials about Iraq’s efforts to develop a ballistic missile with a range of more than 600 miles, according to the London Sunday Telegraph.

The missile was being developed by the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission, according to the Telegraph.  While Iraqi officials have said the missile was only designed to be equipped with a conventional warhead, British experts have said it could have been modified to carry biological or chemical weapons. 

A senior Iraqi engineer who worked at the commission said the missile had entered the development stage just prior to the recent war.  “If it had not been for the war, development would have been completed within a year,” the engineer said.

Former U.N. nuclear inspector David Kay said Iraq’s plans to develop the missile proved that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein never intended to comply with U.N. disarmament requirements.

“This is the smoking gun we have been looking for,” Kay said.  “We have known all along that Saddam was desperate to develop a delivery system for his mass destruction weapons, and this missile would undoubtedly have given him that capability,” he added (London Sunday Telegraph, May 25).

A team of international experts is traveling to Iraq to inspect two recovered trailers that the United States suspects were used as mobile biological weapons laboratories, a top U.S. military commander said yesterday (see GSN, May 21; Associated Press/Los Angeles Times, May 27).

It is only “a matter of time” before U.S. forces in Iraq find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday.

“Given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction,” Myers said (USA Today, May 27).

Intelligence

U.S. weapons experts have begun using locally gathered intelligence, instead of what is seen as outdated U.S. information, in their efforts to find evidence of Iraqi WMD programs, according to the Associated Press.

Weapons experts have begun collecting their own information through interviews with Iraqi scientists and factory workers, according to AP.  U.S. military officials hope the new approach will improve the quality of gathered information.

“The frustration level is increasing as we keep getting constant negative results,” said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington.  “Intelligence needs to play a main role here,” he said (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press/San Diego Union-Tribune, May 26).

Some coalition experts, however, have complained about the quality of information taken from Iraqi sources, according to the Associated Press.

“The human intelligence has been massively problematic,” said Lance Corp. David Reed, a member of a two-man British team that operates a ground-penetrating radar system (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press, May 27).

In an effort to increase Iraqi cooperation with coalition forces searching for weapons of mass destruction, the coalition’s Baghdad radio station announced today rewards for any new information that could aid the search.

“Give the coalition any information on mobile laboratories … help in preserving the safety of the Iraqi people,” the announcement said.  “If you bring forward any information, the coalition will keep your identity secret and provide you with protection if you want it.  You will receive a reward,” it said (Agence France-Presse, May 27).

Bush Exaggerated WMD Threat, Senator Says

U.S. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said Sunday that U.S. President George W. Bush overstated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the war.

“I do think that we hyped nuclear, we hyped al-Qaeda, we hyped the ability to disperse and use these weapons,” Biden said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Such exaggerations were unnecessary because it was obvious Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions, Biden said, while acknowledging that exaggeration is a tactic “that tends to be done by all presidents” who push for war.

“I think a lot of the hype here is a serious, serious, serious mistake and it hurts our credibility,” he said (James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News, May 26).

Chalabi Apparent Source of New York Times Reporter’s Stories

A primary source for New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s articles concerning the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq appears to be Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress opposition group, according to an internal Times e-mail obtained by the Washington Post (see GSN, April 21).

Miller’s connection to Chalabi came to light when John Burns, the Times’ Baghdad bureau chief, criticized Miller for writing a piece earlier this month on Chalabi without his approval.  In an e-mail, Miller defended her actions, noting her long association with Chalabi, and revealed that he was her primary source for her WMD-related coverage.

“I’ve been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper, including the long takeout we recently did on him.  He has provided most of the front-page exclusives on WMD to our paper,” Miller said in her reply to Burns.

Miller refused to comment on the e-mails obtained by the Post.  Andrew Rosenthal, Times assistant managing editor for foreign news, said it is a “pretty slippery slope” to publish reporters’ private e-mails and to reveal any of their possibly confidential sources.

Rosenthal defended Miller’s connections to Chalabi.  “If you were in Iraq and weren’t talking to Chalabi, I’d wonder if you were doing your job,” he said (Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, May 26).

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Iraq I:  Iraqi “Intellectual Capacity” Justified War, Official Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Iraqi “intellectual capacity” for producing unconventional weapons was sufficient justification for the successful U.S.-led war against the country, a senior Bush administration official said today, addressing criticism that U.S. forces so far have found no illicit weapons there.

In the past year, the administration repeatedly charged Iraq with concealing stocks of chemical and biological weapons — and a nuclear program too — and used those allegations to provide the central justification for the war.

The official, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton, spoke here at a luncheon hosted by the National Defense University Foundation.

Explicitly addressing the lack of WMD stocks found in Iraq so far, Bolton said, “There has been a lot of misunderstanding as to exactly what it was we expected to find and when we expected to find it.”

Since the first Gulf War, he said, “The most fundamental, most important thing that was not destroyed [by international weapons inspectors] was the intellectual capacity in Iraq to recreate systems of weapons of mass destruction.”

Bolton said U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors “could have inspected for years and years and years and probably never would have found weapons-grade plutonium or weapons-grade uranium.”

“But right in front of them was the continued existence of what Saddam Hussein called the ‘nuclear mujahadeen,’ the thousand or so scientists, technicians, people who have in their own heads and in their files the intellectual property necessary at an appropriate time … to recreate a nuclear weapons program.”

Bolton said the United States was justified in attacking Iraq because of that alleged capacity.

“I think we will find either weapons of mass destruction or evidence that they were destroyed shortly before or during the war,” he said, adding, “but yes, it’s the capability and particularly if you look at biological weapons and chemical weapons that can be manufactured in devastatingly lethal quantities in fairly short periods of time, and can be disseminated by all kinds of means, by terrorist groups or by the … state itself.  It does represent a substantial threat.”

Bolton said he believed Hussein intended to resume a nuclear weapons program at some point and said with respect to chemical and biological weapons, “so much of the capacity is almost inherently dual-use, and it could be established and run really right in the presence of U.N. inspectors and all have been seemingly for legitimate purposes.”

President Expressed “No Doubt”

Just before the war, President George W. Bush cited Iraq’s unconventional weapons possession as justification for U.S. action.

“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,” the president said in an address to the nation.

“The danger is clear:  using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other,” he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell in February unsuccessfully argued for U.N. authorization of the war by arguing the United States had evidence suggesting massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear weapons program. 

“We haven’t accounted for the botulinum, the VX, bulk biological agents, growth media, 30,000 chemical and biological munitions,” he said.

Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the administration’s most outspoken critic on the war, said in a much reported speech this week said U.S. forces “so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool.”

Byrd alleged the administration overstated the threat and possibly misled the American public and the world to justify the war.

“The Bush team’s extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion has become more than embarrassing.  It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power.  Were our troops needlessly put at risk?  Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and                   maimed when war was not really necessary?  Was the American public                   deliberately misled?  Was the world?” he said.

Byrd alleged the administration had played on U.S. public fears of terrorism generated by the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein’s direct threat to our freedoms.  The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post-traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9/11.  It was the exploitation of fear.”

“What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat,” Byrd said.

“Difficult Burden”

Bolton today said the administration has been concerned about “the asymmetric threat from countries that don’t come anywhere close to us in wealth and military capability but have even a limited WMD capability that they may use as a terrorist weapon.”

He said such a capability would not pose a strategic threat to the U.S. military, but could be used in terror attacks against civilians, and said that makes questions on how to eliminate such a threat a difficult question.

“None of these weapons have true military threat to the United States.  They are a threat to innocent civilians, which makes their use particularly unacceptable and which it seems to me imposes a very difficult burden on any president of the United States to make sure that our innocent civilian populations are free from the threat of these weapons,” he said.

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U.S. Response:  House, Senate Pass Defense Bills; Approve Key Elements of Bush Nuclear Agenda

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives yesterday passed separate versions of the 2004 defense authorization bill, largely approving the Bush administration’s proposals for research and development of new nuclear weapons (see GSN, May 20).

The chambers also approved the administration’s request for an initial deployment of 20 ground-based and 20 sea-based national missile defense interceptors by October 2005, while requiring the Pentagon to begin testing the system for operational performance.

The two versions of the bill, however, differ in a number of ways that will need to be reconciled during a House-Senate conference.  Furthermore, the bills do not reflect the administration’s proposals exactly, as Democrats in both houses with Republican cooperation were able to pass several amendments tailoring the legislation.

Similarities

Both bills approved the administration’s request for $15 million for research of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a nuclear weapon intended to destroy deeply buried and hardened targets.  That program, already underway, includes the study of potentially using an existing nuclear weapon developed for that purpose in the 1990s.

The chambers, which both approved the administration’s request for a repeal of a 10-year prohibition on research of low-yield nuclear weapons, also approved $6 million for nuclear weapons research in a program called the Advanced Concepts Initiative.  The money could be used for research of new low-yield nuclear weapons intended for potential use also against deeply buried targets, as well as chemical and biological weapons facilities.

Both bills authorized funding to reduce the preparation time for resuming nuclear weapons testing from 32 months to 18 months.

Differences

In a bipartisan compromise, the House bill — but not the Senate legislation — did not authorize the administration’s request to repeal a ban on the development of low-yield nuclear weapons, provoking an expression of disappointment from the White House.

“Maintaining the prohibition on development will hinder the ability of our scientists and engineers to explore technical options to deter national security threats of the 21^st century,” the administration said yesterday in a critique of the bill.

The Senate bill, on the other hand, granted a partial repeal by allowing the United States to develop such weapons, but only with specific Congressional approval.

The Senate bill also differs from the House version in that it requires the same sort of approval for engineering development work on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program and for spending on design, development and deployment of hit-to-kill interceptors or other weapons to be deployed in space.  The Bush administration has indicated plans for developing space-based interceptors over the coming decade (see GSN, Jan. 22).

Threat Reduction

Both bills approved in full the administration’s request for money to Pentagon and Energy Department programs to dismantle and secure weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.

The House bill though, unlike the Senate, did not contain authorization for using Pentagon funds outside the former Soviet Union, which the administration has advocated.

The bill, according to the White House analysis, “would limit the President’s flexibility to apply CTR [Cooperative Threat Reduction] resources to the most pressing nonproliferation challenges in support of the global war on terrorism and would not clarify that DOE has authority to carry out such activities outside states of the former Soviet Union.”

The House bill did, however, contain an amendment introduced by Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) to authorize the State Department to expand existing nuclear material security activities outside the former Soviet Union.

Bush Missile Defense Deployment Approved

Both bills approved the administration’s $9.1 billion request for missile defense programs, including authorization of the White House request for an initial deployment of the national missile defense system by October 2004.

Although the system is still under development and has not yet been proven through operational testing, as major systems normally are before deployment, the administration is planning to deploy an initial element, consisting in part of 10 land-based interceptors by October 2004 and 10 more the following year, as well as 20 sea-based interceptors.

Both Houses also passed Democrat-sponsored amendments requiring the setting of performance criteria for developing missile defense systems that will be evaluated through operational testing.

“Currently, none of the missile defense programs under development, under the Missile Defense Agency, have established performance criteria, meaning essentially there are no standards for when a system reaches any particular milestone or has completed its development.  These standards did exist under the Clinton administration but were removed by the current administration,” said Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

The House went a step further, however, requiring that prior to any subsequent deployments the president must rigorously test and comply with initial test and operational evaluation requirements.

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Iraq II:  Baghdad May Not Have Possessed Banned Weapons, Blix Says

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said he is beginning to suspect that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the Straits Times reported today (see GSN, May 22).

“I am beginning to suspect there possibly were none,” Blix said in an interview with the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

Instead, Iraq’s evasive behavior could have been a result of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s fixation with Iraqi honor and his wish to control the conditions by which people could enter Iraq, Blix said (Straits Times, May 23).

Health Survey to Be Conducted Near Tuwaitha

Meanwhile, Iraqi and foreign doctors plan to conduct a major health survey in areas near the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, after reports of people becoming sick from radiation poisoning after looting materials from the site, the Iraqi Health Ministry announced yesterday.

There is a growing panic over radiation poisoning in the neighborhoods near the site, residents said.

“People are sick now — what is being done to help people right now?” said Bashir Abdul Majeed, a resident of the Mansia village about 20 feet from the Tuwaitha facility (Patrick Healy, Boston Globe, May 23).

Syria Weighs In on Resolution

Syria yesterday said it instructed its U.N. ambassador to register a “yes” vote for a resolution to end sanctions in Iraq several hours after the council had approved the resolution.

The ambassador could not take part in the council’s vote on the resolution because “consultations over the content of the draft resolution were not completed,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.  At the time of the vote, the Syrian government was in the midst of a meeting and had requested additional time to reach a position on the resolution, Syrian Deputy U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad said (Thanaa Imam, United Press International, May 22). 

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