{"article":{"id":60931,"heading":"WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz","author":"David Usborne","created":"2003-05-31 14:28:49","modified":"2013-11-11 00:22:48","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:22:48","article":"

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz

By David Usborne

30 May 2003

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that was \"almost unnoticed but huge\". That was the prospect of the United States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the kingdom. \"Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door\" towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa'ida and other terrorist groups.

\"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,\" Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.

The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz's immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found.

The failure to find a single example of the weapons that London and Washington said were inside Iraq only makes the embarrassment more acute. Voices are increasingly being raised in the US ú and Britain ú demanding an explanation for why nothing has been found.

Most striking is the fact that these latest remarks come from Mr Wolfowitz, recognised widely as the leader of the hawks' camp in Washington most responsible for urging President George Bush to use military might in Iraq. The magazine article reveals that Mr Wolfowitz was even pushing Mr Bush to attack Iraq immediately after the 11 September attacks in the US, instead of invading Afghanistan.

There have long been suspicions that Mr Wolfowitz has essentially been running a shadow administration out of his Pentagon office, ensuring that the right-wing views of himself and his followers find their way into the practice of American foreign policy. He is best known as the author of the policy of first-strike pre-emption in world affairs that was adopted by Mr Bush shortly after the al-Qa'ida attacks.

In asserting that weapons of mass destruction gave a rationale for attacking Iraq that was acceptable to everyone, Mr Wolfowitz was presumably referring in particular to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He was the last senior member of the administration to agree to the push earlier this year to persuade the rest of the world that removing Saddam by force was the only remaining viable option.

The conversion of Mr Powell was on full view in the UN Security Council in February when he made a forceful presentation of evidence that allegedly proved that Saddam was concealing weapons of mass destruction.

Critics of the administration and of the war will now want to know how convinced the Americans really were that the weapons existed in Iraq to the extent that was publicly stated. Questions are also multiplying as to the quality of the intelligence provided to the White House. Was it simply faulty ú given that nothing has been found in Iraq ú or was it influenced by the White House's fixation on the weapons issue? Or were the intelligence agencies telling the White House what it wanted to hear?

This week, Sam Nunn, a former senator, urged Congress to investigate whether the argument for war in Iraq was based on distorted intelligence. He raised the possibility that Mr Bush's policy against Saddam had influenced the intelligence that indicated Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.

This week, the CIA and the other American intelligence agencies have promised to conduct internal reviews of the quality of the material they supplied the administration on what was going on in Iraq. The heat on the White House was only made fiercer by Mr Rumsfeld's admission that nothing may now be found in Iraq to back up those earlier claims, if only because the Iraqis may have got rid of any evidence before the conflict.

\"It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict,\" the Defence Secretary said.

* The US military said last night that it had released a suspected Iraqi war criminal by mistake. US Central Command said it was offering a $25,000 (315,000) reward for the capture of Mohammed Jawad An-Neifus, suspected of being involved in the murder of thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims whose remains were found at a mass grave in Mahawil, southern Iraq, last month.

The alleged mobile weapons laboratories

As scepticism grows over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, London and Washington are attempting to turn the focus of attention to Iraq's alleged possession of mobile weapons labs.

A joint CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency report released this week claimed that two trucks found in northern Iraq last month were mobile labs used to develop biological weapons. The trucks were fitted with hi-tech laboratory equipment and the report said the discovery represented the \"strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biowarfare programme\".

The design of the vehicles made them \"an ingeniously simple self-contained bioprocessing system\". The report said no other purpose, for example water purification, medical laboratory or vaccine production, would justify such effort and expense.

But critics arenot convinced. No biological agents were found on the trucks and experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security Council, they were open sided and would therefore have left a trace easy for weapons inspectors to detect. One former UN inspector said that the trucks would have been a very inefficient way to produce anthrax. <\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.","numcomment":23,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/05\/60931.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":60933,"heading":"You mean...","article":"...the Bush Junta lied? I'm shocked, absolutely shocked.\r\n\r\nIt's the Oil Stupid!","author":"Diogenes","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 14:29:48","modified":"2003-05-31 14:29:48","fileurl":""},{"id":60937,"heading":"I like oil!","article":"Copious amounts spread on a diseased sphincter right before I pry it open! I deserve special status for my deviant behavior!","author":"Diogenes","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 14:34:31","modified":"2003-05-31 14:34:31","fileurl":""},{"id":60950,"heading":"diseases aplenty","article":"If a diseased sphincter is what you desire, look no further than me!!!\r\n\r\nwww.kobehq.com","author":"KOBE SBM","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 14:45:04","modified":"2003-05-31 14:45:04","fileurl":""},{"id":60961,"heading":"Sounds good!","article":"So we are in agreement! You and I are BOTH flaming homosexuals!","author":"Diogenes","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 14:54:26","modified":"2003-05-31 14:54:26","fileurl":""},{"id":60966,"heading":"Dio imp","article":"I'm the bigger freakazoid. I'm also a hermaphrodite.\r\n\r\nwww.kobehq.com","author":"KOBE SBM","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 14:59:22","modified":"2003-05-31 14:59:22","fileurl":""},{"id":61005,"heading":"KOBE","article":"We support the killing of Muslims and niggers. Please visit our website. \r\n\r\n","author":"KOBE SBM","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 16:00:12","modified":"2003-05-31 16:00:12","fileurl":""},{"id":61070,"heading":"Interesting. Now here's what he really said:","article":"http:\/\/www.defenselink.mil\/transcripts\/2003\/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html\r\n\r\n\r\nWolfowitz: The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second --\r\n\r\n(Pause)\r\n\r\nKellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to --\r\n\r\nWolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.\r\n\r\nKellems: By the way, it's probably the longest uninterrupted phone conversation I've witnessed, so --\r\n\r\nQ: This is extraordinary.\r\n\r\nKellems: You had good timing.\r\n\r\nQ: I'm really grateful.\r\n\r\nWolfowitz: To wrap it up.\r\n\r\nThe third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.\r\n\r\nQ: So this notion then that the strategic question was really a part of the equation, that you were looking at Saudi Arabia --\r\n\r\nWolfowitz: I was. It's one of the reasons why I took a very different view of what the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would destabilize the Middle East. I said on the record, I don't understand how people can really believe that removing this huge source of instability is going to be a cause of instability in the Middle East.\r\n","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 19:48:10","modified":"2003-05-31 19:48:10","fileurl":""},{"id":61080,"heading":"daveman","article":"Would you like another blowjob?\r\n\r\nwww.kobehq.com","author":"KOBE SBM","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 20:03:21","modified":"2003-05-31 20:03:21","fileurl":""},{"id":61120,"heading":"fake guy","article":"Just like always, you're an imbecile.","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-05-31 23:24:22","modified":"2003-05-31 23:24:22","fileurl":""},{"id":61146,"heading":"Which doesn't fit and Why?","article":""there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people."\r\n\r\n"Criminal treatment of the Iraqi people because unlike the other two lies which have no known basis is fact Saddam Hussein really was a brutal dictator and that was not why we invaded Buzzard Breath."","author":"Diogenes","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 03:04:55","modified":"2003-06-01 03:04:55","fileurl":""},{"id":61148,"heading":"Iraq","article":"the main reason was they breached the ceasefire. they didnt let us look for weapons. whether they had it or not if you are not allowed to look for them (after winning a war against them) then the whole prevention of nuclear proliferation and the principle of having ceasefires (as opposed to just wiping out your opponant) goes out the window.\r\nAnd iraq did support terrorism it supported suicide bombers in israel\/palestine. just because the victims are jews (mostly jews) and not americans does not stop it from being terrorism. ","author":"Scottie","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 03:56:21","modified":"2003-06-01 03:56:21","fileurl":""},{"id":61167,"heading":"Ah, but Scottie...","article":"...on IndyMedia, Palestinian terrorists are "freedom fighters" and Israelis deserve to get blown up. \r\n\r\nAnd the fact that Saddam violated the terms of the cease-fire and UN resolutions is a minor point compared to Bush's dreams of world conquest and dismantling the Constitution. Don't you know Bush = Hilter, and other bits of Lefty wisdom? It's all true...I saw it on IMC.","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 11:29:07","modified":"2003-06-01 11:29:07","fileurl":""},{"id":61197,"heading":"daveman the mindreader","article":"Talk about clueless... What horse shit.\r\n"...on IndyMedia, Palestinian terrorists are "freedom fighters" and Israelis\r\n deserve to get blown up. "\r\nsuch is the omnipotent view of the campers on this board.\r\nWrong.","author":"Sheepdog","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 15:53:43","modified":"2003-06-01 15:53:43","fileurl":""},{"id":61204,"heading":"Deny it all you will, Sheepdog...","article":"...but it's the truth.\r\n\r\nIMC'er: Israel is a terrorist nation, killing innocent Palestinians!\r\n\r\nTroll: Uh, but what about all the innocent people the suicide bombers kill?\r\n\r\nIMC'er: Oh...well...yeah, that's bad too...but Israel is a terrorist nation!\r\n\r\nNone of the regulars here condemn the Palestinian terrorists without being first reminded of the fact by us trolls. If we don't bring it up, Israel catches all the heat.\r\n\r\nAnd that is the truth.","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 16:28:47","modified":"2003-06-01 16:28:47","fileurl":""},{"id":61225,"heading":"duhhh, daisyman??","article":"you be elrongo on accusing IMC reglars of that....\r\ni read here enuff to see that, and yr flatout RONGW\r\nthere daisyman","author":"cuzin it","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-01 20:26:49","modified":"2003-06-01 20:26:49","fileurl":""},{"id":61275,"heading":"the above post is a TROLL","article":"i did not write that last daveman post.\r\nit was a troll......","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-02 10:02:23","modified":"2003-06-02 10:02:23","fileurl":""},{"id":61316,"heading":"davemoron","article":"You are in need of a Prozac the size of a basketball, you psycho.","author":"concerned","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-02 16:04:12","modified":"2003-06-02 16:04:12","fileurl":""},{"id":61633,"heading":"fake guy","article":"I did write the post dated Saturday May 31, 2003 12:28 PM. \r\n\r\nI didn't even get on the internet on Sunday.\r\n\r\nPutz.\r\n","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-04 08:13:36","modified":"2003-06-04 08:13:36","fileurl":""},{"id":61709,"heading":"davemoron","article":"Look out! The "fake guy" is outside your window!!! Get back into your straightjacket before you hurt somebody, you nutcase.","author":"anti-psycho","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-04 14:46:17","modified":"2003-06-04 14:46:17","fileurl":""},{"id":62548,"heading":"No","article":"I refuse to get back into my straightjacket.","author":"daveman","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-06 15:53:41","modified":"2003-06-06 15:53:41","fileurl":""},{"id":62731,"heading":"Help me","article":"I'm mentally unstable.","author":"Eric","parent_id":60931,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-06-06 16:43:41","modified":"2003-06-06 16:43:41","fileurl":""}]}