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Controversy over pre-war WMD evidence grows
11:08 a.m. & 2003-08-26

Controversy over pre-war WMD evidence grows href="http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/sept11/dailyUpdate.html

Time magazine reports that controversy continues to grow over the use of pre-war intelligence that justified US and British claims that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction and was poised to use them at a moment's notice.

The Sunday Herald of Scotland writes that British Prime Minister Tony Blair disregarded the advice of his own intelligence agencies and chose instead to believe "selective and defective" information from a Pentagon unit set up to validate war against Mr. Hussein by proving that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The Herald says that British intelligence sources told the paper that France and Russia actually had the most accurate intelligence on what was going on inside Iraq and those countries were telling the US and Britain that "there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program" in Iraq.

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons program "at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq." The comments, which are being called the "Waldorf transcripts" were allegedly made shortly before a crucial UN security council session on February 5. The Age reports that a British Foreign Office spokesman quickly denied the report. Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph reports that the British Foreign Office says it was impossible for Straw to meet with Powell in the few moments before the February 5 United Nations meeting.

The news of the alleged meeting between Mr. Powell and Mr. Straw came a day after US News and World Report wrote that Powell was under constant pressure from the Pentagon and the White House to include questionable intelligence in the report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February. The magazine says the first draft of the report was written for Powell by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of state Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in late January. Powell was allegedly so upset at the use of questionable material in the report that he threw several pages in the air and declared he wouldn't read it.

These remarks come after earlier statements by the top US Marine general in Iraq that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were "wrong," and that his troops had not found any evidence of WMD. Also, comments by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in an interview with Vanity Fair seemed to play down the importance of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as a reason for going to war.

A BBC report earlier in the week that quoted British intelligence sources as saying that a dossier on Iraq's WMD had been rewritten by the Prime Minister's office to make it "sexier" and contained claims that British intelligence considered false. Those remarks came after US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in Tuesday that Iraq may have destroyed banned weapons before the war began.

Perhaps sensing they are being overwhelmed by damaging news on this front, British and US administration officials have started to fight back. The Observer reports that British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he has "secret proof" that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq. Blair said he was waiting to publish a "complete picture" of both intelligence gained before the war and "what we've actually found."

The Observer reports that British intelligence says the new leads have been provided by Iraqi scientists and a member of the State Security Organization who are currently being debriefed by MI6 and the CIA.

In the United States, The Washington Post reports that CIA director George Tenet denied that his agency had been pressured by the Pentagon and the White House to exaggerate what it knew about Iraqi weapons programs to advance the case for going to war. And FoxNews reports Mr. Wolfowitz said that the Vanity Fair story omitted crucial parts of comments he made about the United States' justification for war in Iraq.

Perhaps the most interesting comments came from President Bush, currently on tour in Europe, who told a reporter for Polish television that the coalition did in fact succeed in finding weapons of mass destruction.

"We found biological laboratories ... They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them," he said.

Mr. Bush was referring to two trailers that the CIA has said were likely used for production of biological weapons, although it said no traces of chemical or biological materials were found in them. The Post reports that the President's comments showed that the White House had "lowered its standards of proof" and are part of an administration plan to shift the justification for the war in Iraq from one of finding actual weapons of mass destruction to finding evidence that Iraq at one time had a weapons program.

The administration also announced that it was sending 1,400 more experts to look for evidence of WMDs. The Associated Press reports that the man heading the effort, Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, said Friday that his team would change the focus from sites identified as suspicious before the war and instead concentrate on areas where documents, interviews with Iraqis, and other new clues suggest biological or chemical weapons could be hidden.

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