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 Š 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 Š 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.