Saddam had no WMD for a decade, report says

By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times

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Saddam intended to someday reconstitute his illicit programs and rebuild at least some of his weapons if United Nations sanctions were eased and he had the opportunity, the report concluded. But the Iraqi regime had no formal, written strategy to revive the banned programs after sanctions, and no staff or infrastructure in place to do so, the investigators found.

The 1,000-page report by Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group weapons-hunting teams, is the most definitive account of Iraq's long-defunct weapons programs and comes as the presidential campaign increasingly is focused on President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq primarily to disarm Saddam of suspected chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

In his report, and in testimony yesterday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Duelfer specifically refuted many of the Bush administration's most dramatic claims before the war, basing his findings in part on extensive information gleaned directly from interrogations of Saddam and his top aides.

Duelfer said, for example, that there was no evidence that Saddam sought to import uranium from Africa, as Bush claimed in his 2003 State of the Union speech. Duelfer said investigators also found no evidence that Saddam had passed illicit weapons material to al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so.

The report said that Saddam's illicit weapons capability was "essentially destroyed" after the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and was never rebuilt. It said Saddam considered the U.N. sanctions "an economic stranglehold" that effectively curbed his ability to build or develop weapons over the ensuing 12 years.

However, Duelfer also said as a result of Saddam's steady efforts, it appeared U.N. sanctions "were in free fall" by 2001 and that Saddam was breaking them with impunity.

The report said Saddam made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the economic embargo through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures. The officials allegedly included the former top U.N. official in charge of humanitarian relief, Benon Sevan.

Russia, France and China — all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — were the top three countries in which individuals, companies or entities received the lucrative vouchers. Saddam's goal, the report said, was to provide financial incentives so that these nations would use their influence to help undermine the punishing sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Conservatives who oppose the U.N. have been going after the alleged scandals in the U.N. Oil For Food program for months to focus on wrongdoing at the United Nations.

Duelfer's report in many ways echoed and amplified preliminary findings by his predecessor, David Kay. In January this year, Kay stunned the White House and the CIA when he announced that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq's weapons.
 
Asked there to explain how U.S. intelligence agencies could have been so wrong about Iraq's weapons, Duelfer said U.S. analysts were convinced that Saddam would never give up his quest for weapons because they were vital to his survival. (See related story on page A1.)

Duelfer also noted that U.S. intelligence had "almost no contact with Iraq over more than a decade" and had become increasingly divorced from reality in the country.

He noted, for example, that U.S. experts had insisted before the war that the presence of decontamination trucks was clear evidence that chemical weapons were nearby. But "when you spend time in Iraq," Duelfer said, "you realize the Iraqis could be selling ice cream out of those vehicles."

Duelfer also rejected administration claims that two truck trailers seized in Iraq after the war were designed to produce germ weapons. This year, Vice President Dick Cheney described the trucks as "conclusive" proof of Iraq's illicit weapons.

"Those are clearly, in my judgment, for the production of hydrogen," Duelfer said. "They have nothing to do with biological weapons." The intelligence on the mobile facilities was mostly from an Iraqi defector who has "turned out to be largely a fabricator," Duelfer said.

Duelfer will return to Baghdad and the Iraq Survey Group will continue investigating several unresolved issues, he said, including study of a "new influx" of millions of pages of documents. But Duelfer said he believes there is "less than 5 percent chance" that a weapons stockpile will be found or that the picture of the prewar weapons program will be significantly altered. Duelfer did not say how long he expected the search team to remain active, but said the remaining work "is a much diminished task and requirement."

Los Angeles Times staff writer John Hendren contributed to this report. Information on the Oil-for- food program from The Washington Post.