M Maloof on Iraq WMD Intel

Michael Maloof, former Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group official during the GW Bush administration, explained during this interview published in 2006 that the 2002 case for Iraqi WMD possession was, in his opinion, weak:

The argument for WMD, however, all of a sudden began to emerge. Some of us who had been following Iraq for years, particularly on the export control side, thought, well, that’s not the best argument. … In fact, I had sent a memo saying this was not our strongest argument. Simply because you had inspectors going in and out, we would see elements going in, because we were watching the transfer and the diversion of technologies — we knew they were going through front companies and countries in Africa. They were going to be building it back up and saving it, holding it, until which time the sanctions could be lifted. Then they’re going to go back into production, into their nuclear production, into their chemical/biological and missile productions. … But never did they have a program constituted and operational that we could determine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *