Saddam destroyed WMDs, report says

WASHINGTON – An extensive U.S. investigation has found that Iraq destroyed virtually all its chemical and biological munitions in 1991, a dozen years before President Bush ordered U.S. troops to invade based largely on the alleged threat posed by those weapons.

The report will be presented today to a Senate committee by chief U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer. It says Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein believed in the deterrent power conferred by weapons of mass destruction but ordered them destroyed in an effort to end sanctions imposed on his country after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The key findings of the report were described Tuesday by a high-level administration official who has been briefed on its contents.

The report is based on extensive interviews with senior officials in Saddam’s regime and interrogation of the ousted dictator. The official said the report shows that Iraq planned to revive its banned weapons programs once United Nations sanctions were lifted. But by dating the destruction of Iraqi weapons to 1991, the Duelfer report raises new questions about how U.S. intelligence agencies and the Bush administration were so far off the mark in their assessment of the Iraqi threat.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House wants to brief Congress before discussing the report’s details with the media. Duelfer is to testify today before the Senate Armed Services Committee on his 1,500-page report.

The basic conclusion of the report – that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and a moribund nuclear weapons development effort – strengthens the preliminary findings of Duelfer’s predecessor, David Kay, and undercuts the main Bush administration argument for war. A weapons inspection team that at one point included 1,500 members conducting field searches, document examinations and interrogations did uncover evidence that Iraq wanted to develop improved missiles. But none of the Scud missiles the Bush administration alleged Saddam was hoarding has been found.

The search began during the U.S. and coalition invasion in March and April 2003. U.S. troops have uncovered a handful of decaying mustard gas shells but no evidence of weapons stockpiles or production capability, such as the mobile biological weapons trailers cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a prewar presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The failure to find proof of the Bush administration’s prewar allegations has become a thorny campaign issue for the Bush White House, particularly as insurgent violence has intensified in Iraq.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to discuss the report in detail before the congressional testimony. But McClellan told reporters Tuesday that although no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons were found, the report paints a damning picture of Saddam’s clandestine efforts to prepare to revive his weapons programs as soon as possible.

The report concludes that “Saddam Hussein had the intent and the capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the sanctions” by appearing to comply with the weapons ban while engaging in “illegal financing procurement schemes,” McClellan said.

The high-level administration official said the Duelfer report shows that Saddam approved an effort to use front companies to conceal Iraqi plans to purchase illegal weapons components, including rocket engines from Poland. Under questioning, Saddam did not directly admit to defying U.N. sanctions but made clear that he believes Iraq’s chemical arsenal helped him avoid disaster in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and helped persuade the first President Bush not to order coalition troops to march to Baghdad after Iraq was forced out of Kuwait in 1991, the official said.

U.N. inspectors, and later U.S. intelligence, noted Iraq’s public destruction of banned weapons after the Gulf War but maintained that Iraq hid an illegal stockpile and retained the ability to build more. Iraq repeatedly denied it had retained any of its weapons of mass destruction but may have encouraged uncertainty to avoid appearing weak to hostile neighbors such as Iran.