Posted on 12/06/2003 4:21:49 PM PST by Happy2BMe
The truth, at last
(Filed: 07/12/2003)
"The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," Lt Col Dabbagh tells the Telegraph's intrepid Con Coughlin in today's newspaper. "If the army had used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." The weapons Col Dabbagh was referring to are Saddam Hussein's stocks of chemical and biological warheads. A senior officer at the heart of Saddam's armed forces, the colonel was the conduit of the now-infamous claim in the intelligence dossier which Tony Blair presented to Parliament and to the country: the claim that Saddam had the capacity to unleash weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons, within 45 minutes of ordering their use.
Col Dabbagh told Mr Coughlin that the 45-minute claim was "100 per cent correct". He added that Saddam had hidden huge stocks of arms, including his chemical and biological munitions, at secret sites across Iraq. The colonel's claims must be taken very seriously. He has no reason at all to make them up, or to lie to Mr Coughlin, by whom he was reluctant to be interviewed. Yet it is important to be clear about what Col Dabbagh's testimony does - and what it does not - establish. There can now be little doubt that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons. Col Dabbagh saw those weapons for himself when they were delivered to his unit, and indeed received instructions on how they were to be used.
The means of delivery for those weapons were, however, extremely primitive: they could only be used on the battlefield, where range was very restricted and their accuracy minimal. That seems to have been one reason why they were not used during the war. The American advance was so rapid that the Iraqis could only deploy chemical weapons around Baghdad: that would have killed the Iraqi civilian population - who did not have masks - but not the US soldiers, who did. Even Iraqi officers loyal to Saddam Hussein balked at that.
It is clear that Saddam Hussein did not have the ability to launch missiles which could carry chemical or biological weapons reliably to most sites in Iraq - never mind to places as far away as Cyprus or London. Yet when the Prime Minister presented the intelligence dossier setting out the case for war to Parliament, he described the threat to Britain from Saddam as "current and serious". He allowed the impression to be given that Saddam's ability to launch chemical and biological weapons "which could be activated in 45 minutes" meant that British troops in Cyprus, or even civilians in Britain itself, could be targeted. This was not true, and many of those in the intelligence services knew it was not true. When, however, the newspapers published stories wrongly claiming that British bases in Cyprus were at risk from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, no one in the Government did anything whatever to correct them.
Mr Blair's determination to confront Saddam Hussein was admirable and right, but New Labour's addiction to spin, and an inability to tell the truth without embellishing it, meant that, in making the case for war, he misrepresented to the public the intelligence that he had been given. Dr David Kelly conveyed, albeit in a somewhat mangled and self-serving form, the concern of some members of the intelligence world about that misrepresentation to the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan. The Prime Minister then insisted to Parliament that the BBC had been completely wrong to suggest that there was any unhappiness within the intelligence community about the Government's interpretation of the information given to them about Iraq's WMD capability: but as was revealed during the Hutton Inquiry, there was in fact considerable unhappiness on precisely that point.
Mr Blair's exaggerations and misrepresentations were unnecessary, because there is no doubt that, in the context of the global war on terror, and of al-Qaeda's determination to obtain weapons of mass destruction with which to terrorise the West, Saddam posed a clear threat. Contrary to the claims of those who said it was "inconceivable" that religious fanatics from al-Qaeda could ever make common cause with Saddam and his supporters, precisely that has happened since the Americans liberated Iraq from his grip. There were good reasons for going to war with Iraq. But protecting British bases or cities from missiles launched by Saddam Hussein was not one of them.
"For the preparation of the dossier we had a real concern not to exaggerate the intelligence that we had received," the Prime Minister told Parliament on September 24. Yet he did exaggerate that intelligence. If Lord Hutton cuts to the heart of the matter, Mr Blair will pay a heavy political price for it.
Just damn.
If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
To reasonable people, yes. To deomcrat, no.
If I were Dubya, I'd bring him on over for a cup of Turkish coffee and a sit down with a congressional interview.
In your face - UN, France, Germany, Russia, and the entire Democrap party!
I want it to be true,but the facts on the ground show no evidence of this. We find billions of dollars and incredible amounts of hidden munitions but no WMD.
There are plenty of captured Iraqui higher-ups who would lead us to WMD knowing they could benefit monetarily and freedom wise for giving us that info.
People whose family members were killed by Saadam's men would rat them out in a heartbeat. -Tom
We shall see.
If one apple falls out of the tree, it just takes a little shaking to get a whole bushel.
Maybe the apples are just now getting ripe enough to come down.
By Andrew Clennell
07 December 2003
Independent (UK)
An Iraqi colonel said yesterday that he was the source of the Government's "dodgy dossier" claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh, who said he was the head of an Iraqi air defence unit in the desert, outed himself. But he explained that the weapons he was talking about were battlefield weapons to be fired from rocket-propelled grenades, and were not for use in missiles.
"They arrived in boxes marked 'Made in Iraq' and looked like something you fired with a rocket-propelled grenade," Col al-Dabbagh told The Sunday Telegraph.
"They were either chemical or biological weapons; I don't know which, because only the Fedayeen and the Special Republican Guard were allowed to use them. All I know is we were told that when we used these weapons we had to wear gas masks."
When shown the information about the 45-minute claim in the Iraq WMD dossier issued by the Government in September 2002, he said: "I am the one responsible for providing this. Forget 45 minutes, we could have fired these within half an hour."
The 45-minute claim led to the death of scientist Dr David Kelly, after BBC journalist -Andrew Gilligan reported a source telling him the dossier was "sexed up" by Downing Street and that the 45-minute claim was included against MI6's wishes.
Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, told the Hutton inquiry into Dr Kelly's death on 22 September that he knew the claim in the dossier referred to battlefield weapons only.
Andrew Caldecott QC, for the BBC, then asked: "A number of newspapers had banner headlines suggesting this [the 45-minute claim] related to strategic missiles. Why was no corrective statement issued for the benefit of the public?" Mr Hoon replied: "I don't know."
Col al-Dabbagh, who was described as an advisor to the Iraqi Governing Council, said he was not prepared to release his first name for safety reasons. But he said he was willing to give evidence to the Hutton inquiry. British intelligence previously said it relied on a single senior officer from the Iraqi military for the WMD claim.
A Downing Street spokesman would not confirm or deny last night whether Col al-Dabbagh was the source of the 45-minute claim.
However, Col al-Dabbagh doubted Saddam developed missiles that could carry WMD and hit targets such as Israel or Britain's Cyprus military bases.
Col al-Dabbagh said he had no idea what became of the weapons he was describing. He believed the weapons would not be found until Saddam was caught or killed, as people would then feel freer to speak about them.
Mohammed Atta and Osama Bin Laden delivered 80,000 pounds of flaming jet fuel into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Quibbling over, or minimizing, the ragheads' capability to use the weapons they possess is rather silly.
"They were either chemical or biological weapons; I don't know which, because only the Fedayeen and the Special Republican Guard were allowed to use them. All I know is we were told that when we used these weapons we had to wear gas masks."
This is not proof. It is evidence he was trying to convince his troops he had capability, but it is not truth. Saddam could of been deceiving his own regulars.
At this point in time, I think the statements do need to be backed up wit physical evidence.
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