BY ROHAN PEARCE

Despite the abject failure to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, Pentagon officials remain upbeat on the issue. After testifying to the US Senate's armed services committee on July 31, US Army Major-General Keith Dayton, who heads the US “weapons inspectors” in Iraq, told journalists: “Every week, it is phenomenal what we're finding, and I am much more optimistic and confident every week that we're going to come to a very good resolution of this in due time.”

This is despite the fact that much of the pre-invasion “evidence” of Iraqi possession of WMD was supplied by members of the US-funded Iraqi National Congress (headed by convicted bank embezzler Ahmad Chalabi). Intensive UN inspections before the US invasion found no evidence at all that Iraq was engaged in the production of WMD, and senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime taken prisoner by the US since then — including Amer al Saadi, described by Associated Press after his arrest on April 12 as the “No. 1 Iraqi official wanted for questioning about chemical and biological weapons in the country” — all deny that Iraq had any WMD. The options open to the White House and the Pentagon are either to admit they were wrong and pass this off as an “intelligence failure” (an option almost certainly unthinkable given the pressure they are coming under as the US body count mounts), or to declare facilities already inspected by the UN and assessed as being for civilian purposes as “dual use” and thus evidence of WMD “programs”. The latter course of action however has serous credibility risks.

Dr Thomas Inch, a British ministry of defence scientist, told the British parliament's foreign affairs committee on June 18 it would not be possible to disguise the manufacture of chemical weapons at sites inspected by the UN.

From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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