Bush Allegations about Iraq Dubious: US Paper

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Bush Allegations about Iraq Dubious: US Paper

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As the Bush administration prepares this week for an attack on Iraq, many of the allegations made against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to justify the attack have been challenged -- and in some cases disproved -- by the United Nations, European governments and even United States intelligence reports, The Washington Post said on Tuesday.

For months, President George W. Bush and his top lieutenants have produced a long list of Iraqi offenses, culminating on Sunday with Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Iraq has "reconstituted nuclear weapons," the influential newspaper said in a report.

Previously, administration officials have tied Iraq to al Qaeda,to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and to an aggressive production of biological and chemical weapons, the paper added.

Although President Bush reiterated many of these charges in his nationally-televised address on Monday night, the paper said, some of the assertions are hotly disputed.

According to the newspaper, some of the administration's claims-- such as Bush's assertion that Iraq sought to purchase uranium --has been refuted by subsequent discoveries. Other claims have been questioned, though their validity will only be fully known after US forces occupy Iraq.

In outlining his case for war in an interview with NBC on Sunday, Vice President Cheney focused on how much more damage al Qaeda could have done on Sept. 11 "if they'd had a nuclear weapon and detonated it in the middle of one of our cities, or if they had unleashed ...biological weapons of some kind, smallpox or anthrax." He then tied that to evidence found in Afghanistan of how al Qaeda leaders "have done everything they could to acquire those capabilities over the years."

But in October CIA Director George J. Tenet told Congress that President Saddam would not give such weapons to terrorists unless he decided helping "terrorists in conducting a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

As to Cheney's claim that Iraq has "reconstituted nuclear weapons," The Washington Post noted that the claim not only contradicted Cheney's own remarks moments later but also Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei's report that "there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities" in Iraq.

Earlier this month, ElBaradei said information about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium was based on fabricated documents. Further investigation has found that top CIA officials had significant doubts about the veracity of the evidence, linking Iraq to efforts to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, but the information ended up as fact in Bush's State of the Union address.

In another embarrassing episode for the administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited evidence about Iraq's weapons that originally appeared in a British intelligence document. But it later emerged that the British report was based in part on academic papers and trade publications, The Washington Post said.

The newspaper said the embarrassment does not cease here, saying that information offered by Bush and his top officials sometimes is even questioned by administration aides.

It said that the administration's claims about Iraq's continued production of Al Samoud-2 missiles, the exact range of the missiles and the possible impact of a regime change in Iraq on the Middle East are controversial even within the administration itself.

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