Book closed on Iraq WMD, with warning
In his final report, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said yesterday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programmes of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.
“After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.
“As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.”
In 92 pages posted online yesterday, Duelfer provides a final look at an investigation that occupied over 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts at its peak. His latest addenda conclude a roughly 1,500-page report released last autumn.
Yesterday, Duelfer said there is no purpose in keeping many of the detainees who are in custody because of their knowledge on Iraq’s weapons, although he did not provide any details about the current number.
The survey group also provided warnings.
The addenda conclude that Saddam’s programmes created a pool of experts now available to develop and produce weapons and many will be seeking work.
While most will probably turn to the “benign civil sector”, the danger remains that ”hostile foreign governments, terrorists or insurgents may seek Iraqi expertise”.
“Because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern,” one addendum said.
Another addendum also noted that military forces in Iraq may continue to find small numbers of degraded chemical weapons – most likely misplaced or improperly destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War.
In an insurgent’s hands, “the use of a single even ineffectual chemical weapon would likely cause more terror than deadlier conventional explosives”, another addendum said.
And still another said the survey group found some potential nuclear-related equipment was “missing from heavily damaged and looted sites”.
Yet, because of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the survey group was unable to determine what happened to the equipment, which also had alternate civilian uses.
Among unanswered questions, Duelfer said a group formed to investigate whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the invasion wasn’t able to reach firm conclusions because the security situation limited and later halted their work.
Investigators were focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria.
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