Iraq arms report says no threat

By The Associated Press;Mike Allen and Dana Priest
The Washington Post

Arms inspector Charles Duelfer: no smoking gun

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The officials said the 1,000-page report by Charles Duelfer, chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded Saddam had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat."

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Saddam's weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

"They have not found anything yet," said one U.S. official who had been briefed on the report.

A senior U.S. government official said the report includes comments Saddam made to debriefers after his capture that bolster administration assertions, including his statement that his past possession of weapons of mass destruction "was one of the reasons he had survived so long." He also maintained such weapons saved his regime by halting Iranian ground offensives during the Iran-Iraq war and deterred coalition forces from pressing on to Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, the official said.

The official also said Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group had uncovered Iraqi plans for ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers and for a 1,000-kilometer-range cruise missile, farther than the 150-kilometer range permitted by the United Nations, the senior official said.

The official said Duelfer will tell Congress in the report and in testimony today that Saddam intended to reconstitute programs for weapons of mass destruction if he were freed of the U.N. sanctions that prevented him from getting needed materials.

Duelfer's report said Saddam was pursuing an aggressive effort to subvert the international sanctions through illegal financing and procurement efforts, officials said, and details Saddam's efforts to hinder international inspectors and preserve his capabilities for weapons of mass destruction.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., vice chairman of the House intelligence committee, said she hadn't read Duelfer's report but has been told that it thoroughly undercuts the administration's assertions that Iraq posed a serious threat.

"Intentions do not constitute a growing danger," said Harman. "It's hardly mushroom clouds, hardly stockpiles," she added, a reference to administration rhetoric used in the buildup to the war.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan called Saddam's effort to evade the U.N. sanctions "very revealing." "We all thought that we would find stockpiles, and that was not the case," McClellan said. "The fact that he had the intent and capability, and that he was trying to undermine the sanctions that were in place is very disturbing. And I think the report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat, that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."
 
The report includes page after page of names of individuals and companies — many from China, Russia and France — that had traded illegally with Iraq in ways that could have furthered the development of nuclear weapons, the senior government official said.

Duelfer's findings follow reports by the Senate intelligence committee and his predecessor, David Kay, that criticized the prewar assessment that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Bush has pointed to the Duelfer report as the last word. Asked in June if he thought such weapons had existed in Iraq, Bush said he would "wait until Charlie gets back with the final report."

Another government official who was briefed on the report said that many U.S. officials had thought Saddam would "get down to business" in developing weapons when the U.N. inspectors left. "There's no evidence of that," the official said.

The official said Iraq's nuclear-related activity in particular had been dormant for years before the invasion.

The Bush administration has held out the possibility that illicit weapons and their components were secreted by Saddam across the border into Syria. This may still be true, but Duelfer's team found no proof to support this notion, said the official. Syria denies it aided the hiding of illicit materials.

Troop-level remark distorted, Bremer says

WASHINGTON — Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator for Iraq, yesterday retreated from remarks he made Monday that the United States needed more troops after the invasion to stabilize Iraq and stop the looting and violence that fostered the lawlessness that still plagues the country.

Bremer, addressing an insurance conference Monday in West Virginia, said the United States "never had enough troops on the ground" and that "we paid a big price for not stopping it (the looting) because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness."

Bremer qualified his comments during a speech yesterday in Michigan.

"We certainly had enough (troops) going into Iraq, because we won the war in a very short three weeks," he told an audience of more than 400 people at Michigan State University.

"The point that I have been making, and that has gotten a little bit distorted in the press recently, is that, as I look back now, I believe it would have been better to stop the looting that was found right after the war.

"One way to have stopped the looting would have been to have more troops on the ground. That's a retrospective wisdom of mine, looking backwards," he added. "I think there are enough troops there now. ... "