The DIA and chemical weapons (long post)

The next item on the list of dissenting views concerns chemical weapons. Let’s start by examining some of what the public version of the NIE said about Iraq’s chemical weapons.

• Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons[.]
• Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort[.]
• Iraq largely has rebuilt missile and biological weapons facilities damaged during Operation Desert Fox and has expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production.
• Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX.
• Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents.
• The Iraqis have experience in manufacturing CW bombs, artillery rockets, and projectiles, and probably possess CW bulk fills for SRBM warheads, including for a limited number of covertly stored, extended-range Scuds.
• Iraq has the ability to produce chemical warfare (CW) agents within its chemical industry, although it probably depends on external sources for some precursors. Baghdad is expanding its infrastructure, under cover of civilian industries, that it could use to advance its CW agent production capability.
• More than 10 years after the Gulf war, gaps in Iraqi accounting and current production capabilities strongly suggest that Iraq maintains a stockpile of chemical agents, probably VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard.
• Iraq probably has concealed precursors, production equipment, documentation, and other items necessary for continuing its CW effort.

Wow! This is scary stuff. Now let’s look at what the Bush administration was saying before the war about Iraq and chemical weapons.

Bush administration statements

On September 12, 2002, President Bush told the UN General Assembly “United Nations' inspections also revealed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.” Notice that Bush said “likely.” That’s not quite as forceful as the public version of the NIE, which came out approximately three weeks later. However, four days earlier on “Fox News Sunday,” Colin Powell said “There is no doubt that he has chemical weapons stocks. We destroyed some after the Gulf War with the inspection regime, but there is no doubt in our mind that he still has chemical weapons stocks and he has the capacity to produce more chemical weapons.” On September 18, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that 1) “[Saddam’s] regime has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX and sarin and mustard gas;” 2) “He has at this moment stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons;” and 3) “We do know that the Iraqi regime currently has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction[.]” He basically repeated this testimony the following day to the Senate Armed Services Committee. So before the NIE comes out, Bush is saying that Iraq “likely” has chemical weapons, while Powell and Rumsfeld conclusively say that Iraq has stockpiles of chemical weapons.

And then the NIE appears on October 1, 2002. On October 2, 2002, in a press conference in the Rose Garden regarding the Iraq War Resolution, Bush said, “In defiance of pledges to the U.N., it has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons. It is rebuilding the facilities used to make those weapons. U.N. inspectors believe that Iraq could have produce enough biological and chemical agent to kill millions of people.” Oh, now that’s certainly more definitive than “likely.” And Bush continued in this manner in many speeches. Here’s a sampling:

Cincinnati, October 7, 2002:

“The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons...We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas...After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more.”

Portsmouth, N.H., November 1, 2002:

“We know he's got chemical weapons[.]”

Tampa on November 2, 2002:

“We know he's got chemical weapons. He said he wouldn't have them, but we know he's got them.”

St. Paul on November 3, 2002:

“This is a man who not only has got chemical weapons, I want you to remind your friends and neighbors, that he has used chemical weapons.”

St. Louis on November 4, 2002:

“He said he wouldn't have chemical weapons; he's got them.”

State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003:

“Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent.”

Now there’s some strong leadership on display. President Bush left no doubt that Iraq had chemical weapons. Maybe General Franks was correct in part. Maybe every sign showed that Iraq had chemical weapons. I mean, the President would not have been so emphatic if there was any doubt at all, right?

And then Bush was followed by Colin Powell, who said the following before the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003: “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent...Here you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers...The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions...Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again -- against his neighbors and against his own people. And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them.”

Judging from Bush, Powell, and Rumsfeld, one would certainly think that all the intelligence available showed that Iraq had lots of chemical weapons and the means to produce large amounts thereof.

Well, think again.

Qualifier from the NIE

Turns out that the NIE–the one that was not released to the public–was not quite as emphatic as Bush and the gang. There was a qualifier in the NIE that was not included in the public version (and, if you’ve been following at home, was not made public until July 2003): “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents–much of it added in the last year.” I’m confused. After the NIE–the 90-page classified version--was written and given to Bush and Powell, they either knew or should have known that there was “little specific information” about chemical weapons stockpiles, yet they told us that there was absolutely no doubt that Iraq had chemical weapons.

That qualifier is nothing compared to a full intelligence report on Iraq and chemical weapons published on in September 2002–just before the NIE.

The DIA Report

This report was done by the Defense Intelligence Agency. That’s the intelligence group for the Department of Defense–you know, Donald Rumsfeld’s agency. U.S. News & World Report (yet another raging liberal rag) was among the first media to break this story in an article from the June 9, 2003 issue (keep in mind that the actual publishing date for most weekly news magazines is a week earlier than the stated dated of the issue). It turns out that in September 2002 “the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a classified assessment of Iraq's chemical weapons. It concluded: ‘There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons . . . .’” Then on June 6, 2003, this article from Bloomberg News revealed that a one page summary of the report said that there was no reliable information on “whether Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.”

As a result of these reports, the Pentagon, on June 7, 2003, released an unclassified excerpt of the September 2002 DIA report. In this press release found at the State Department’s website (which also contains the unclassified excerpt), the director of the DIA, Admiral Lowell Jacoby, said that the statements in the U.S. News and Bloomberg articles “was actually a single sentence lifted out of a much longer planning document.” This is correct; therefore, it is possible that those articles took those statements out of context and presented a misleading picture. Jacoby also said this about the full report: “It talks about the fact that at the time, in September 2002, we could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction programs, specifically, the chemical warfare portion," he said, according to an unofficial transcript of the exchange with reporters. "It is not, in any way, intended to portray the fact that we had doubts that such a program existed ... was active, or ... was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure.”

O.K...let’s look at the excerpt from the report to see if the media just screwed this up. I’ll reproduce portions of the excerpt in bold type, and then make some comments.

A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions.

So it seems that most of the “large stockpiles” had been destroyed before the war.

Nevertheless, we believe Iraq retained production equipment, expertise and chemical precursors and can reconstitute a chemical warfare program...

Oh my...this sounds serious...but wait...there’s more to this sentence:

...in the absence of an international inspection regime.

Read that again. Let it sink in. The Pentagon’s own intelligence agency concluded that Iraq could have reconstituted its chemical weapons program unless there was an international inspection regime in place. Gosh, that’s a rather inconvenient conclusion, don’t you think? After all, THERE WAS AN INTERNATIONAL INSPECTION REGIME IN PLACE BEFORE THE WAR. Let’s move forward, shall we?

Iraq retains all the chemicals and equipment to produce the blister agent mustard but its ability for sustained production of G-series nerve agents and VX is constrained by its stockpile of key chemical precursors and by the destruction of all known CW production facilities during Operation Desert Storm and during subsequent UNSCOM inspections.

So the DIA concluded that Iraq could produce mustard gas. That’s not good. I can’t dispute that. But I don’t see how anyone could say mustard gas–a blister agent–compares in severity to nerve agents such as sarin and cyclosarin (which are G-series nerve agents) and VX. Read footnotes 1, 2, and 3 of the 25-page version of the NIE and see what you think. The DIA concluded Iraq lacked large quantities of the key chemical precursors for these chemical weapons AND that all known production facilities had been destroyed. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. What about all the unknown production facilities those sneaky Iraqis had built? Well, assuming that there were any, don’t you think that an international inspection regime would have found those and then destroyed them? The DIA apparently did. Perhaps this explains why the DIA also said this:

In the absence of external aid, Iraq will likely experience difficulties in producing nerve agents at the rate executed before Operation Desert Storm.

So, the DIA felt that Iraq would have trouble producing large quantities of the nerve agents unless it got help from outside Iraq. Does anybody really think that was likely to happen, especially with the U.N. inspection program ongoing?

And one last one:

Although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses CW agent in chemical munitions, possibly including artillery rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. Baghdad also probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent or stabilized VX.

Man, these certainly are strong conclusions. “We lack direct information...Iraq probably possesses...” Gee, no wonder Bush, Powell, and Rumsfeld went before the American public and declared that, without any doubt, Iraq had mass quantities of chemical weapons and the ability to produce even more mass quantities. Seriously, look at what the DIA said and then go back and look at what Bush and the Boys said. Then try to reconcile them. Even a little. C’mon, it’ll be fun.

Here again is an example of how General Franks is incorrect in asserting that every sign indicated that Iraq had weaponized WMD. As with the previous post on UAVs, I ask how could this happen? How could the NIE ignore this DIA report? Why didn’t the DIA put some sort of dissent in the NIE? Why did we not find out about this DIA report until after the end of major combat operations? As with the UAVs, this is not the time to address those questions, but, as with the post on UAVs, I will address some of what has been learned since the end of major combat operations.

Post-war findings

And by “some” I mean mostly what has been said by David Kay. For those without a score card, David Kay was the Bush administration’s choice in June 2003 to head the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the group responsible for finding all those stockpiles of WMD. Kay presented his first interim report to Congress on October 2, 2003. He stated early on that “We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.” So Kay says up front that no WMD have been found, but that the search continues. Those who want to spin this or themselves so that this seems favorable to the Bush administration can do so without danger of falling down. Kay made many statements about chemical weapons specifically. As I did before, I will reproduce Kay’s statements in bold face type and then make comments.

Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections. We are carefully examining dual-use, commercial chemical facilities to determine whether these were used or planned as alternative production sites.

You spinners might be feeling a little dizzy now, but still you’re O.K. because of the last sentence.

We have also acquired information related to Iraq's CW doctrine and Iraq's war plans for OIF(Operation Iraqi Freedom), but we have not yet found evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against Coalition forces. Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks. We have multiple reports that Iraq retained CW munitions made prior to 1991, possibly including mustard - a long-lasting chemical agent - but we have to date been unable to locate any such munitions.

Spinners getting a bit more dizzy, but hey, there were still leads coming in.

We continue to follow leads on Iraq's acquisition of equipment and bulk precursors suitable for a CW program. Several possibilities have emerged and are now being exploited.

Ah, that’s better. Dizziness fading while still spinning on an axis.

Information obtained since OIF has identified several key areas in which Iraq may have engaged in proscribed or undeclared activity since 1991...

All right. Here it comes...The proof that we just had to invade Iraq.

...including research on a possible VX stabilizer, research and development for CW-capable munitions, and procurement/concealment of dual-use materials and equipment.

Wait a minute. The person in charge of finding those WMD said that no stockpiles had been found, no actual production facilities had been found, but the Iraqis were doing some research and development on chemical weapons. But...but...Bush, Powell, and Rumsfeld told us that there was no doubt that Iraq had lots of WMD and the capacity to produce more. Spinners starting to wobble now. Having problems spinning... Why, oh why, has the ISG not found any WMD? Kay offered this partial explanation:

In searching for retained stocks of chemical munitions, ISG has had to contend with the almost unbelievable scale of Iraq's conventional weapons armory, which dwarfs by orders of magnitude the physical size of any conceivable stock of chemical weapons. For example, there are approximately 130 known Iraqi Ammunition Storage Points (ASP), many of which exceed 50 square miles in size and hold an estimated 600,000 tons of artillery shells, rockets, aviation bombs and other ordinance. Of these 130 ASPs, approximately 120 still remain unexamined.

Spinners now regaining balance. As of October 2, 2003, there were still over a hundred storage facilities to examine. So that’s where the WMD must be. Well, maybe not. In a May 31, 2003, article in the Los Angeles Times, Lt. Gen. James Conway, Commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said, “It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered unconventional weapons. It’s not for lack of trying. We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there.” Now, it is possible that Kay meant that the ISG under his leadership had examined only 10 out of 130 ASPs. Still, that does not change the fact that a Marine Lt. General said that many ASPs had already been searched and no WMD were found.

You spinners really need to stop and take a seat, because what David Kay had to say beginning in late January 2004 will otherwise send you crashing to the gound.

Kay resigned as the leader of the ISG on January 23, 2004, and then he was all over the news. One of his first interviews was with Reuters, and this January 24, 2004, article contains this quote from Kay regarding the stockpiles of WMD that the Bush administration said absolutely existed: “I don't think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s...I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and that's what we're really talking about.” Oh my. Better check on the spinners. Those who disregarded my admonition to sit down might be some of the same people who chose to disregard the DIA’s report from September 2002.

But wait...there’s more from Kay. On January 28, 2004, the Washington Post published part of its interview with Kay. The major news from that interview was stated in the first two paragraphs:

U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq found new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, former chief inspector David Kay said yesterday.

The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found exculpatory information -- contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis -- demonstrating that Hussein did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war.

Let me get this straight. Not only did Kay not find any WMD, but he found evidence that Saddam did destroy WMD? Someone better check on the spinners to see if their heads are about to explode.

Kay testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28, 2004. When asked if the ISG had discovered any evidence of large or even small stockpiles of WMD, Kay answered, “We simply have no evidence.” Kay also testified that “We’ve not uncovered any small stockpiles,” and “We've got evidence that they certainly could have produced small amounts, but we've not discovered evidence of the stockpiles.” The first part of that last quote, about producing small amounts, might keep some heads from exploding, but compare that to what the Bush administration was saying before the war, namely that Iraq absolutely, positively had large stockpiles of WMD and the production capability to produce large amounts of WMD. And there’s this declaration from Rumsfeld on March 30, 2003 on national television: “We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.” Well, apparently Rumsfeld was wrong.

I know the spinners are probably semi-desperate for some sort of good news, so I’ll provide something that might help. In a previous post, I mentioned Bush’s use of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.” This term came from Kay’s first interim report in October 2003. In his January 28, 2004, testimony, Kay was asked what he meant by that phrase, and he explained

That includes, for example -- and take specific examples of the Iraqis -- a program to develop a substitute for a major precursor for VX using indigenous production capability and indigenous chemicals, so they would not have to import it.

It includes a study, for example, on a simulant for anthrax. Pre-1991 their anthrax was liquid. They had tried to freeze-dry it and get it down to a dry anthrax, which is stable and much more deadly, lethal, as we found out here. By using this simulant they actually pushed ahead about two generations the production capability.

Now, for this simulant, the same production capability that produces it is exactly the same that produces anthrax. So they, in fact, had moved ahead their anthrax capability by working on a simulant.

And so it's in those areas that you get programs.

They had looked at the lethality of various agents and classified them.

Well, there’s some proof of WMD programs, but I ask again for a comparison of this proof to what the Bush administration said before the war. In terms of degree, there really is no comparison.

A recent interview of Kay appears in the August 2, 2004, issue of Chemical & Engineering News. Kay was asked why his opinion on the existence of WMD in Iraq had changed from when he first took over the ISG. Here is his response:

What changes from theory? It's the same in science: empirical evidence.

When I accepted the job--even prior to that, during the war while I was doing on-air analyses for NBC--UN inspectors were not in Iraq, had not been in Iraq since 1998. We lacked physical evidence. Then, following the war, the coalition suddenly owned the haystack as opposed to looking at the haystack from the outside.

If there had been WMD, there were three things ISG needed to find, even if we didn't find the actual weapons: a physical plant that would have produced the weapons; scientists, engineers, and technicians who would have worked on the production of those weapons; and security and other people who would have been involved in guarding or moving the weapons.

Thus, not only have we not found the large (or small) stockpiles of WMD, we have not even found any other significant evidence of WMD production or programs.

Conclusion

People can twist and spin all they want, but there is absolutely no question that the declarations by the Bush administration regarding WMD in general and chemical weapons in particular are not even marginally supported by the physical reality. However, there is an even more important reality here. Go back and look at what the DIA Report said. Notice when that report was made. Notice that practically nothing from that report was in the NIE. Notice that after that report was made, the Bush administration made all those statements about chemical weapons. Now realize that before we went to war, before any of those claims were made, there was evidence very much to the contrary. And that evidence pretty much matches the reality that has been found. Why was that evidence not revealed before the war? Why was it not relied upon? Why did the President and other senior officials tell us things completely contrary to that evidence?

Anybody? Bueller?