Posted on 02/11/2003 10:14:29 PM PST by Republican_Strategist
Let me talk now about the systems Iraq is developing to deliver weapons of mass destruction, in particular Iraq's ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
First, missiles. We all remember that before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's goal was missiles that flew not just hundreds but thousands of kilometers. He wanted to strike not only his neighbors, but also nations far beyond his borders.
While inspectors destroyed most of the prohibited ballistic missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past decade from sources inside Iraq indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud-variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles with a range of 650 to 900 kilometers.
We know from intelligence and Iraq's own admissions that Iraq's alleged permitted ballistic missiles, the Al-Samoud 2 and the Al- Fatah, violate the 150-kilometer limit established by this council in Resolution 687. These are prohibited systems.
UNMOVIC has also reported that Iraq has illegally imported 380 SA-2 rocket engines. These are likely for use in the Al-Samoud 2.
Their import was illegal on three counts. Resolution 687 prohibited all military shipments into Iraq. UNSCOM specifically prohibited use of these engines in surface-to-surface missiles.
And finally, as we have just noted, they are for a system that exceeds the 150-kilometer range limit. Worst of all, some of these engines were acquired as late as December, after this council passed Resolution 1441.
What I want you to know today is that Iraq has programs that are intended to produce ballistic missiles that fly over a thousand kilometers. One program is pursuing a liquid-fuel missile that would be able to fly more than 1,200 kilometers. And you can see from this map as well as I can who will be in danger of these missiles.
As part of this effort, another little piece of evidence, Iraq has built an engine test stand that is larger than anything it has ever had. Notice the dramatic difference in size between the test stand on the left, the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the large exhaust vent. This is where the flame from the engine comes out.
The exhaust vent on the right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left. The one on the left was used for short-range missiles. The one on the right is clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers.
This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it, so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath the test stand.
Not for Defense
Saddam Hussein's intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.
Now, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs. Iraq has been working on a variety of UAVs for more than a decade. This is just illustrative of what an EAV -- UAV would look like.
This effort has included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the MiG-21 and, with greater success, an aircraft called the L-29. However, Iraq is now concentrating not on these airplanes but on developing and testing smaller UAVs, such as this.
UAVs are well-suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons. There is ample evidence that Iraq has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that [are] being adapted for UAVs. And in the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth.
One of these lies is graphically and indisputably demonstrated by intelligence we collected on June 27th last year. According to Iraq's December 7th declaration, its UAVs have a range of only 80 kilometers.
But we detected one of Iraq's newest UAVs in a test flight that went 500 kilometers, nonstop, on autopilot in the racetrack pattern depicted here. Not only is this test well in excess of the 150 kilometers that the United Nations permits, the test was left out of Iraq's December 7th declaration.
The UAV was flown around and around and around in this circle, and so that its 80-kilometer limit really was 500 kilometers, unrefueled and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations under 1441.
The linkages over the past 10 years between Iraq's UAV program and biological and chemical warfare agents are of deep concern to us.
Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States.
Abetting Terrorism
My friends, the information I have presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq's continued flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on, and that has to do with terrorism.
Our concern is not just about these illicit weapons; it's the way that these illicit weapons can be connected to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using such devices against innocent people around the world.
Iraq and terrorism go back decades. Baghdad trains Palestine Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives. Saddam uses the Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in order to prolong the intifada. And it's no secret that Saddam's own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks or attempted assassinations in the 1990s.
'Sinister Nexus' With al-Qaeda and bin Laden
But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder.
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan War more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp.
One of his specialties and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq. You see a picture of this camp.
The network is teaching its operative how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch -- imagine a pinch of salt -- less than a pinch of ricin -- [gestures] -- eating just this amount in your food would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote; there is no cure. It is fatal.
Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq, but Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels of the radical organization Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq.
In 2000, this agent offered al-Qaeda safe haven in the region. After we swept al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain there today.
Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of northeast Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.
During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These al-Qaeda affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with al-Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible.
Last year an al-Qaeda associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, "good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly.
We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters.
And they are involved in moving more than money and materiel. Last year, two suspected al-Qaeda operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in Afghanistan on how to use cyanide.
From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.
The Murder in Jordan
We in the United States, all of us at the State Department and the Agency for International Development, we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October. A despicable act was committed that day -- the assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of Jordan.
The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder. After the attack, an associate of the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for further operations.
Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates.
Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.
And now, let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi.
The network remains in Baghdad; Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go.
Targets: France, Germany, Russia, Britain ...
As my colleagues around this table and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.
According to detainees, Abu Atiyah, who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasked at least nine North African extremists in 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct poison and explosive attacks.
Since last year, members of this network have be apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested. The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe.
We know about this European network, and we know about it's links to Zarqawi because the detainee who provided the information about the targets also provided the names of members of the network. Three of those he identified by name were arrested in France last December.
In the apartments of the terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of ingredients to make toxins. The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence again proved him right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.
Active in Russia and Georgia
We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia, and in Chechnya, Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.
We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades-long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an al-Qaeda source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al-Qaeda would no longer support activities against Baghdad.
Early al-Qaeda ties were forged by secret high-level intelligence service contacts with al-Qaeda -- secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with al-Qaeda. We know members of both organizations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s.
In 1996, a foreign security service tells us that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
Saddam became more interested as he saw al-Qaeda's appalling attacks. A detained al-Qaeda member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist al-Qaeda after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by al-Qaeda's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Training al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaeda members on document forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001 the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al Qaeda organization.
Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and al-Qaeda's religious tyranny do not mix.
I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al-Qaeda together, enough so al-Qaeda could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that al-Qaeda could turn to Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.
And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.
Al-Qaeda continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaeda.
Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he himself described it.
This senior al-Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes first hand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaeda.
He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al-Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else; they had to look outside of Afghanistan for help.
Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
The support that Husseini describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda associates, beginning in December 2000.
He says that a militant known as Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdullah al-Iraqi characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as "successful."
As I said at the outset, none of this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by Saddam for decades.
'Lethal Combination': Iraq, Poisons, Terror
Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these terrorist networks had a name, and this support continues. The nexus of poisons and terror is new; the nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is lethal.
With this track record, Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take their place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.
When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting an even more frightening future.
My friends, this has been a long and a detailed presentation, and I thank you for your patience. But there is one more subject that I would like to touch on briefly, and it should be a subject of deep and continuing concern to this council: Saddam Hussein's violations of human rights.
Abuses of Human Rights
Underlying all that I have said, underlying all the facts and the patterns of behavior that I have identified, is Saddam Hussein's contempt for the will of this council, his contempt for the truth and, most damning of all, his utter contempt for human life.
Saddam Hussein's use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century's most horrible atrocities. Five thousand men, women and children died. His campaign against the Kurds from 1987 to '89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary jailing, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of some 2,000 villages.
He has also conducted ethnic cleansing against the Shi'a Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs, whose culture has flourished for more than a millennium.
Saddam Hussein's police state ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more forced disappearance cases than any other country -- tens of thousands of people reported missing in the past decade.
Nothing points more clearly to Saddam Hussein's dangerous intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbors. Clearly, Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.
For more than 20 years, by word and by deed, Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows: intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way.
For Saddam Hussein, possession of the world's most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he must hold to fulfill his ambition.
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction. He's determined to make more.
Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a time and a place and in a manner of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?
The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
My colleagues, over three months ago, this council recognized that Iraq continued to pose a threat to international peace and security, and that Iraq had been and remained in material breach of its disarmament obligations.
Today, Iraq still poses a threat, and Iraq still remains in material breach. Indeed, by its failure to seize on its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious consequences for its continued defiance of this council.
My colleagues, we have an obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our resolutions are complied with.
We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war; we wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance. Iraq is not, so far, taking that one last chance. We must not shrink from whatever is ahead of us.
We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility for the citizens of the countries that are represented by this body.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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