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20 years after the war... Dramatic details about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The moment Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in 2003
2023-03-14 00:38
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Shafaq News / Today, Tuesday, the British BBC announced the production of a series entitled: Shock and War: Iraq after 20 years, which is based on conversations with dozens of people directly concerned, while showing new details about the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The British Network said, in a report it published, that after twenty years of the war on Iraq, the debate is still raging about the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" that provided the justification for the UK's intervention in the military operation.
The report states that "CIA officers also remember the shock of their British counterparts." Louis Rueda, head of the CIA's Iraq operations group, recalled their reactions, saying, "I thought they were going to have a heart attack in front of me on the table." Soon a message of plans arrived. The invasion into Downing Street. It was intelligence men, not diplomats, who handed it over."
Prepare for the Iraq War
In a rare interview with the BBC, the then head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, who was a frequent visitor to Washington, said: "I was probably the first to say to the prime minister: 'Like it or not, you will make all the necessary preparations, because it seems as if they They are preparing for an invasion.
For the United States, the issue of weapons of mass destruction was secondary to a deeper attempt to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "We would have invaded Iraq even if Saddam Hussein had only a rubber band and a paper clip," says Luis Rueda, head of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group.
For the UK, when it came to convincing a skeptical public of the necessity of invading Iraq, the alleged threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - was central.
At times it has been alleged that the UK government has fabricated claims relating to weapons of mass destruction. But ministers at the time say they were reassured by their spies that the weapons were there.
reliance on intelligence information
Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair said: "It's really important to understand that the intelligence I was getting was what I was relying on." On the eve of the invasion, Blair indicated that he sought and received reassurances from the Joint Intelligence Committee. He refuses to criticize the intelligence services for having received false assurances, while other ministers say they had doubts at the time.
When asked if he viewed the invasion of Iraq as an intelligence failure, Sir Richard replied simply: "No". He still believes that Iraq had some kind of weapons program and that its personnel may have been moved across the border into Syria.
But others disagree with this view. "It was a huge failure," says Sir David Omand, then the UK's security and intelligence coordinator. He says that confirmation bias led government experts to hear bits of information that supported the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and to rule out anything else.
Fears of the British Secret Intelligence Service
Some within Britain's Secret Intelligence Service say they had concerns, too. "At the time I felt like what we were doing was wrong," says one of the officers who served in Iraq, who has not spoken before and asked not to be named.
Speaking of early 2002, the former officer added, "There was no intelligence and no new or credible assessment that Iraq had restarted its WMD programs and that they posed an imminent threat. I think from the government's perspective that was the only justification they could find." On it.. the weapons of mass destruction were the only excuse they could hang the legitimacy of the invasion on.”
Until the spring of 2002, existing intelligence was patchy. The old Secret Intelligence Service agents in Iraq had little or no information about weapons of mass destruction, and there was a desperate search for new intelligence from fresh sources to support the case, especially when planning a dossier for the month of September.
On the 12th of September Sir Richard entered Downing Street with news of an important new source. This person claimed that Saddam Hussein had resumed his weapons programs, and promised to provide new details soon. Although this source has not undergone full vetting processes and its information has not been shared with experts, the details have been handed over to the Prime Minister.
Other intelligence sources say that in the following months, this new source never delivered the details he had promised, and the government eventually saw him as fabricating the information he provided. Sources argue that information quality control was breaking down.
fabricating information
It was possible that some of the new sources made up the information for money or because they wanted to see Saddam Hussein removed from office. In January 2003, BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera interviewed a defector from Saddam's intelligence service in Jordan, who claimed he had been involved in developing mobile biological weapons laboratories, out of sight of UN inspectors.
His allegations made it into Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations in February 2003, even though some within the administration had already issued an intelligence notice that the information could not be trusted.
It is worth remembering that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, according to the BBC report. A few weeks before the 2003 war, security reporter Gordon Correra visited the village of Halabja in northern Iraq and heard locals describe a day in 1988 when Saddam's army dropped chemical weapons. on them. The truth about what happened to those weapons did not emerge until after the war.
Saddam had ordered the destruction of a large part of his weapons of mass destruction program in the early nineties after the first Gulf War, according to the British BBC; This was in the hope of getting a clean bill of health from UN weapons inspectors, a senior Iraqi scientist said later.
Perhaps the Iraqi leader was hoping to restart the programs at a later date. But he secretly destroyed everything; In part, according to the BBC report, it was to maintain an illusion that he might still have something he could use against neighboring Iran, with which he had just gone to war. So when UN inspectors later asked Iraq to prove that he had destroyed everything, he couldn't.
Search for weapons of mass destruction
By the end of 2002, UN inspectors returned to Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. Some of those inspectors who first spoke to the BBC recalled looking at sites where intelligence from the West suggested the mobile laboratories might be located. But they find nothing but what they might call a "great ice cream truck" covered in cobwebs.
Little did the public know at the time that with war looming, sources failing to deliver promised information and inspectors unable to obtain evidence, there were concerns. “Panic” is the word an insider used to describe the situation at the time. "My future is in your hands," Blair said half-jokingly to Sir Richard in January 2003, as pressure was mounting to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
"It was depressing at the time," Sir Richard now recalls. Sir Richard accused the inspectors of being "incompetent"; For their failure to find any evidence. Hans Blix, who led the UN's chemical and biological inspections, told the BBC that until early 2003 he believed there were weapons, but began to suspect them after intelligence failed to provide firm evidence. He wanted more time to get answers, but he didn't get it.
The failure to find "conclusive evidence" will not stop the war in March 2003.
Avoid military action
While Tony Blair told the BBC: "I tried until the last minute to avoid military action." President George Bush, fearing that his ally might lose a vote in Parliament on the eve of the war, offered him, in a video call, the chance to back out of the invasion and only participate in its aftermath, but the British Prime Minister refused.
He also defended his decision as a matter of principle in terms of the need to deal with Saddam Hussein, and also because of the need to preserve the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. "The withdrawal could have had a huge impact on the relationship," Blair said.
But no weapons of mass destruction were found after that. “It all fell apart,” says a former British Secret Intelligence Service officer, recalling an internal review of sources after the war. This would have deep and lasting consequences in the work and relationships of both spies and politicians.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The moment Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in 2003
2023-03-14 00:38
Share
Font
Shafaq News / Today, Tuesday, the British BBC announced the production of a series entitled: Shock and War: Iraq after 20 years, which is based on conversations with dozens of people directly concerned, while showing new details about the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The British Network said, in a report it published, that after twenty years of the war on Iraq, the debate is still raging about the existence of "weapons of mass destruction" that provided the justification for the UK's intervention in the military operation.
The report states that "CIA officers also remember the shock of their British counterparts." Louis Rueda, head of the CIA's Iraq operations group, recalled their reactions, saying, "I thought they were going to have a heart attack in front of me on the table." Soon a message of plans arrived. The invasion into Downing Street. It was intelligence men, not diplomats, who handed it over."
Prepare for the Iraq War
In a rare interview with the BBC, the then head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, who was a frequent visitor to Washington, said: "I was probably the first to say to the prime minister: 'Like it or not, you will make all the necessary preparations, because it seems as if they They are preparing for an invasion.
For the United States, the issue of weapons of mass destruction was secondary to a deeper attempt to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "We would have invaded Iraq even if Saddam Hussein had only a rubber band and a paper clip," says Luis Rueda, head of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group.
For the UK, when it came to convincing a skeptical public of the necessity of invading Iraq, the alleged threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - was central.
At times it has been alleged that the UK government has fabricated claims relating to weapons of mass destruction. But ministers at the time say they were reassured by their spies that the weapons were there.
reliance on intelligence information
Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair said: "It's really important to understand that the intelligence I was getting was what I was relying on." On the eve of the invasion, Blair indicated that he sought and received reassurances from the Joint Intelligence Committee. He refuses to criticize the intelligence services for having received false assurances, while other ministers say they had doubts at the time.
When asked if he viewed the invasion of Iraq as an intelligence failure, Sir Richard replied simply: "No". He still believes that Iraq had some kind of weapons program and that its personnel may have been moved across the border into Syria.
But others disagree with this view. "It was a huge failure," says Sir David Omand, then the UK's security and intelligence coordinator. He says that confirmation bias led government experts to hear bits of information that supported the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and to rule out anything else.
Fears of the British Secret Intelligence Service
Some within Britain's Secret Intelligence Service say they had concerns, too. "At the time I felt like what we were doing was wrong," says one of the officers who served in Iraq, who has not spoken before and asked not to be named.
Speaking of early 2002, the former officer added, "There was no intelligence and no new or credible assessment that Iraq had restarted its WMD programs and that they posed an imminent threat. I think from the government's perspective that was the only justification they could find." On it.. the weapons of mass destruction were the only excuse they could hang the legitimacy of the invasion on.”
Until the spring of 2002, existing intelligence was patchy. The old Secret Intelligence Service agents in Iraq had little or no information about weapons of mass destruction, and there was a desperate search for new intelligence from fresh sources to support the case, especially when planning a dossier for the month of September.
On the 12th of September Sir Richard entered Downing Street with news of an important new source. This person claimed that Saddam Hussein had resumed his weapons programs, and promised to provide new details soon. Although this source has not undergone full vetting processes and its information has not been shared with experts, the details have been handed over to the Prime Minister.
Other intelligence sources say that in the following months, this new source never delivered the details he had promised, and the government eventually saw him as fabricating the information he provided. Sources argue that information quality control was breaking down.
fabricating information
It was possible that some of the new sources made up the information for money or because they wanted to see Saddam Hussein removed from office. In January 2003, BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera interviewed a defector from Saddam's intelligence service in Jordan, who claimed he had been involved in developing mobile biological weapons laboratories, out of sight of UN inspectors.
His allegations made it into Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations in February 2003, even though some within the administration had already issued an intelligence notice that the information could not be trusted.
It is worth remembering that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, according to the BBC report. A few weeks before the 2003 war, security reporter Gordon Correra visited the village of Halabja in northern Iraq and heard locals describe a day in 1988 when Saddam's army dropped chemical weapons. on them. The truth about what happened to those weapons did not emerge until after the war.
Saddam had ordered the destruction of a large part of his weapons of mass destruction program in the early nineties after the first Gulf War, according to the British BBC; This was in the hope of getting a clean bill of health from UN weapons inspectors, a senior Iraqi scientist said later.
Perhaps the Iraqi leader was hoping to restart the programs at a later date. But he secretly destroyed everything; In part, according to the BBC report, it was to maintain an illusion that he might still have something he could use against neighboring Iran, with which he had just gone to war. So when UN inspectors later asked Iraq to prove that he had destroyed everything, he couldn't.
Search for weapons of mass destruction
By the end of 2002, UN inspectors returned to Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. Some of those inspectors who first spoke to the BBC recalled looking at sites where intelligence from the West suggested the mobile laboratories might be located. But they find nothing but what they might call a "great ice cream truck" covered in cobwebs.
Little did the public know at the time that with war looming, sources failing to deliver promised information and inspectors unable to obtain evidence, there were concerns. “Panic” is the word an insider used to describe the situation at the time. "My future is in your hands," Blair said half-jokingly to Sir Richard in January 2003, as pressure was mounting to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
"It was depressing at the time," Sir Richard now recalls. Sir Richard accused the inspectors of being "incompetent"; For their failure to find any evidence. Hans Blix, who led the UN's chemical and biological inspections, told the BBC that until early 2003 he believed there were weapons, but began to suspect them after intelligence failed to provide firm evidence. He wanted more time to get answers, but he didn't get it.
The failure to find "conclusive evidence" will not stop the war in March 2003.
Avoid military action
While Tony Blair told the BBC: "I tried until the last minute to avoid military action." President George Bush, fearing that his ally might lose a vote in Parliament on the eve of the war, offered him, in a video call, the chance to back out of the invasion and only participate in its aftermath, but the British Prime Minister refused.
He also defended his decision as a matter of principle in terms of the need to deal with Saddam Hussein, and also because of the need to preserve the relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. "The withdrawal could have had a huge impact on the relationship," Blair said.
But no weapons of mass destruction were found after that. “It all fell apart,” says a former British Secret Intelligence Service officer, recalling an internal review of sources after the war. This would have deep and lasting consequences in the work and relationships of both spies and politicians.
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