The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
Editorial:
Saddam and the bomb
More evidence he wasn't trying for one
StarTribune
© August 12, 2003
Evidence continues to mount that on the matter of Iraq's nuclear
weapons program, the Bush administration repeatedly made claims
it knew or had reason to know were untrue. The latest evidence
comes in a powerful Washington Post report by Barton Gellman
and Walter Pincus. It should stimulate the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence to dig very deep indeed in its investigation of
the intelligence used to justify a preemptive war against Iraq.
The Gellman-Pincus article (which can be read in its entirety at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A395002003Aug9.html)
reports "a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney
and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes --
made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as
more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than
the data they had would support."
Cheney was the hawk's hawk on Iraq. "We now know," he said
on Aug. 26, 2002, "that Saddam has resumed his efforts to
acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten
this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's
own son-in-law."
But the son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, died in 1996 and could not
have been a source for the United States learning anything in
2002. Moreover, what Kamel told U.N. arms inspectors in 1995,
after he defected to Jordan, was that, "Iraq's enrichment
programs had not resumed after halting at the start of the
Gulf War in 1991."
Gellman and Pincus relate that Iraq did have a number of things
necessary to secretly produce nuclear weapons: highly educated
scientists and engineers, an established desire to go nuclear,
a propensity for covert actions and designs for critical
elements of the nuclear program. What it didn't have was
enriched uranium or the centrifuges necessary to make it.
The United States insisted that aluminum tubes Iraq tried
to purchase abroad were for those centrifuges. Almost every
scientist outside government -- and most inside -- believed
they were, as Iraq said, for an Iraqi version of Italy's
Medusa 81 rocket. Gellman and Pincus report, "Not only
the Medusa's alloy, but also its dimensions, to the
fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum
tubes."
When Secretary of State Colin Powell made his famous appearance
before the U.N. Security Council in February, he insisted that
the tubes were meant for use in centrifuges. That case was
buttressed, he said, by the latest batch of tubes, which had
"an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer
surfaces."
Gellman and Pincus report that an anodized coating actually was
an argument for rocket use. It would have protected rockets
"from the sort of corrosion that ruined Iraq's previous rocket
supply" -- and, moreover, would have needed to be removed for
the Iraqis to use the tubes in a centrifuge.
In fact, even then the tubes were next to useless for enriching
uranium: They were too narrow, too thick and too long. Houston
G. Woods III, retired founder of the centrifuge physics
department at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and "among the
most eminent living experts," told Gellman and Pincus that
"it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes
into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up
with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts that
feel differently. . . . I don't see how you do it."
On every piece of evidence in the U.S. indictment of Iraq, the
story is the same: With a weak case on the most powerful argument
for war -- preventing Saddam Hussein from going nuclear -- the
Bush administration exaggerated and twisted information, and
frequently just made stuff up.
In the antiwar camp, one of the most popular sayings is,
"Bush lied, soldiers died." That's strong stuff, but there's
more than a suggestion that it's true. When the Senate
Intelligence Committee returns from its August recess and
delves into these questions, it should strive hard to expose
and make public the complete truth. The president's party
controls the Senate and will likely try to limit the
investigation. But senators have a higher calling than to
party; it's to the American people whose sons and daughters
are paying the price for the invasion of Iraq.
© Copyright 2003
Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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Last Modified:
January 13, 2007