Posted on 10/07/2004 12:31:17 PM PDT by mojito
KEY FINDINGS - REGIME STRATEGIC INTENT (Excerpt)
Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.
• The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.
• By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
LOL ... you'll be here all day!
Saddam clearly wasn't complying, no matter how harsh the sanctions put on him were or how high a pile of BS Kerry wants to pile on top of the facts.
Thanks for posting this. Kerry/Edwards disinformation campaign (LIES) are really maddeningand the lamestream media are just too lazy to read and report facts.
John Kerry just now said that the sanctions would keep Saddam from restarting his WMD program.
Gerald Ford also said that there was no Soviet domination of eastern Europe.
Can anyone explained to me what John Kerry was talking about, when he referenced the Duelfer Report? This was right before he ducked the reporters question on "how can you say Saddam wasn't a threat, then say he was a threat"?
"John Kerry just now said that the sanctions would keep Saddam from restarting his WMD program."
LOL yeah right!
And France, Germany and China and would have continued to profit (after breaking their on UN Edits not to mention ol Kofi & Son, Inc.)
Just more proof the UN is worthless.. but wait, they have tons more data that will take "months and months" to decipher. Wonder why the Duelfer Report was not considered preliminary with so much information still outstanding?
I agree with your analysis. There was a story this week or last in the MSM regarding the "war" between the administration and the CIA. I think it was posted here, and you might be able to search for it. All I can say is, after this display, the "reorganization" of the CIA will be top Bush priority in his second term.
Good question - but didn't both Bremer and the CIA take a hit over Iraq - perhaps this is payback -
just a thought - I never did trust the CIA - and wondered why G.T. was allowed to stay - but Rum. was a surprise -
Now, one has to wonder how many other hidden people there are(lifers) - and when they will hit with their attack -
just an opinion -
Duelfer Damns U.N.
With a presidential election less than a month away and the press and the Democrats eager to discredit the Bush administration, most of what we've been hearing about the final report of Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, issued yesterday, has centered on the question of whether Saddam Hussein's regime possessed stockpiles of mass-destruction weapons. The U.S. and most other world intelligence services believed it did, and this was among the justifications for Iraq's liberation last year. The absence of such stockpiles is supposed to prove that the U.S.-led coalition was wrong to liberate Iraq--that Saddam Hussein did not deserve to be toppled and George W. Bush does not deserve to be re-elected.
It won't surprise anyone to learn that we disagree. This column has long supported the liberation of Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction were in our view at most a secondary part of the case (see here and here). To our mind, the main lesson to be drawn from the ISG report is that the United Nations is ill suited to manage international crises.
Consider where things stood preliberation. As we noted in January 2003, Saddam Hussein had been technically at war with the U.S. and "the world" for more than a decade. There was never a peace agreement to end the Gulf War, only a cease-fire conditional upon Saddam Hussein's compliance with 17 U.N. resolutions. These resolutions required not only that Saddam not possess weapons of mass destruction, but also that he prove to the world that he had destroyed all such weapons programs. Resolution 1441 enumerated his other obligations:
"The Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism, pursuant to resolution 688 (1991) to end repression of its civilian population and to provide access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in Iraq, and pursuant to resolutions 686 (1991), 687 (1991), and 1284 (1999) to return or cooperate in accounting for Kuwaiti and third country nationals wrongfully detained by Iraq, or to return Kuwaiti property wrongfully seized by Iraq."
The alternatives to military intervention were continuing the 12-year status quo, in which the U.N. applied sanctions designed to force compliance, or lifting the sanctions. In either case, the U.N.--and the U.S., had it continued to cooperate--would have been complicit in keeping this vicious dictator in power.
Twelve years of sanctions should have been enough to prove that they were ineffective in forcing Saddam to comply with his obligations--except, it now seems, for his obligation not to possess weapons of mass destruction. And of course because Saddam failed to verify the destruction of those weapons, he could not be trusted even on that score.
According to the Duelfer report (at page 63 of this PDF document), Saddam "used to say privately that the 'better part of war was deceiving,' according to Ali Hasan Al Majid," the Saddam henchman known as "Chemical Ali." The report says that al-Majid, in coalition custody since August 2003, "stated that Saddam wanted to avoid appearing weak and did not reveal he was deceiving the world about the presence of WMD."
The sanctions regime had the effect of punishing the Iraqi people while allowing Saddam to remain in power. Saddam was able to circumvent the sanctions by misusing the Oil for Food program. At the same time, he sought to end the sanctions by offering material inducements to sympathetic countries with permanent U.N. Security Council seats.
According to the report (pages 68-69 of the above PDF, which we've reproduced here), Saddam's regime "sought a relationship with Russia to engage in extensive arms purchases and to gain support for lifting the sanctions," and "in order to induce France to aid in getting sanctions lifted, [Baghdad] targeted friendly companies and foreign political parties that possessed either extensive business ties to Iraq or held pro-Iraqi positions."
Had sanctions been lifted, the report makes clear, Saddam was preparing to rebuild his weapons capabilities. "According to Abd Hamid Mahmud [his private secretary], Saddam privately told him that Iraq would reacquire WMD post-sanctions" (page 76). "Saddam asked in 1999 how long it would take to build a production line for CW [chemical weapons] agents, according to the former Minister of Military Industrialization. . . . An Iraqi CW expert separately estimated Iraq would require only a few days to start producing mustard--if it was prepared to sacrifice the production equipment" (page 88).
The end of sanctions might have meant a nuclear-armed Iraq. "Saddam would have restarted WMD programs, beginning with the nuclear program, after sanctions, according to [Deputy Prime Minister] Tariq Aziz. Saddam never formally stated this intention, according to Aziz, but he did not believe other countries in the region should be able to have WMD when Iraq could not. Aziz assessed that Iraq could have a WMD capability within two years of the end of sanctions" (page 80).
If President Bush had decided not to liberate Iraq without yet another U.N. resolution, it seems clear that Saddam's coalition of the bribed would have continued to balk. The Iraqi people would have continued suffering under dictatorship or sanctions, while Saddam bluffed the world by pretending to have weapons of mass destruction.
Had the sanctions been lifted, Saddam likely would have acquired such weapons for real. Given that he had used them in the past, against both Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, there's no assurance he would have employed them only as a "deterrent"--or that he would not have given them to terrorists.
As it is, Saddam is in prison, and Iraq is disarmed and moving toward democracy. Can there be any doubt that America is safer--or that it would imperil both America and the world if a president were to subject U.S. national security to a "global test"?
-- BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
I saw Taranto today. Thanks for reposting.
This is the key right here. Saddam would have restarted his WMD program. As soon as sanctions were lifted he would have proceeded with them and the report itself noted the UN sanctions had collapsed by the end of 1999. One can in fact make a good argument the Duefler report bolsters rather than undermines the central premise of the Iraq War. But you wouldn't know that from the way the partisan media has mentioned the report, including omitting highlighting this critical and key sentence.
it's not laziness, if it's detrimental to Bush they would find the energy, I promise. they just don't want us to know anything that could hurt little johnnie.
This in the report clearly. However, the mainstream press just quotes Kerry and doesn't do anything to point out Kerry is LYING.
This report is clear that it was only a matter of time before Saddam had the resources to rebuild his arsenal and that he had the intent to do so. The fact that no stockpiles were there does not make him less of a threat given those other facts.
It's nothing new, but it is so frustrating the press is basically running free campaign ads for Kerry.
It is the most important part of the report and the one that was totally ignored.
And author on Fox today who has interviewed and written about Iraq said he talked to Duelfer and that they found out that only when the entire force of the United States military was around the borders of Iraq, poised to strike -- literally on the even of the invasion -- did Saddam Hussein admit to his "cabinet" that they didn't have anything.
All of this rests on the assumption of course, Saddam told his lackies the truth. A dictatorship is founded on lies and deception. At times our partisan media's selective re-writing of history is Orwellian.
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