From what I am being told, the UNSC will not make a decision about UNMOVIC’s future during its upcoming meeting.

Whether or not to keep UNMOVIC or a similar organization has been a matter of debate for quite a while now. For example, Hans Blix “has argued”:http://www.armscontrol.org/events/blixinterview_june03.asp that such an organization could be useful in dealing with future proliferators.

However, the prospect that previously WMD-free Iraq could pursue nasty weapons may keep UNMOVIC in business a while longer.

John Barry “writes”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8940843/site/newsweek/ in _Newsweek_ article:

In case a future Iraqi leader decides that Iran’s nuclear ambitions next door mean Iraq should restart Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-, chemical- or biological-weapon program, what kind of international monitoring should the country be subject to? “The question is starting to bubble up,” says a British official who is not allowed by his government to speak for attribution.

Demetrios Perricos, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the agency probing Iraq’s WMD work before the U.S. invasion, raised the issue in the United Nations Security Council in June. France and Russia both indicated that they thought Iraq would need to accept continued special inspections. The United States did not comment because Iraqi politicians are reportedly adamant that the new, sovereign Iraq will accept no special constraints or monitoring. “They are demanding the same treatment as any other nation,” says a U.N. official who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of his position.

So we may end up with an Iraq that has no WMD, but is subject to a UN monitoring system intended to prevent Baghdad from reconstituting its WMD programs – the same thing we _could_ have had without the invasion.

Ick.

Since verification and inspections will likely continue to be a topic of discussion for the foreseeable future, I thought UNMOVIC’s “21st quarterly report”:http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/quarterly_reports/s-2005-351.pdf might be of interest. It contains an appendix describing some “lessons learned” from UNMOVIC and UNSCOM’s experiences in Iraq.

There are no international verification schemes for either biological weapons or missiles, but UNMOVIC has encouraging lessons for monitoring both.

Here are some excerpts.

Regarding the ever-contentious issue of BW verification, UNMOVIC concludes that states cannot hide BW programs under a comprehensive inspections regime:

The account of international verification in the period from 1991 to 1995 exemplifies that even the most clandestine biological warfare programme, such as the one in Iraq, cannot be hidden in its entirety from a comprehensive inspection regime.

It also shows the complexity of the determination of past biological warfare activities and provides lessons that are important to consider in cases when concealment policies and practices are actively employed. Prior to the arrival of international inspectors, Iraq cleaned all sites involved in the production of biological warfare agents, removed evidence of past activities, including relevant documents and records, reconfigured equipment, decontaminated and renovated buildings and structures and prepared convincing cover stories.

The report _does_ acknowledge that UNMOVIC inspectors initially missed a dual-use facility that was producing BW, until Iraq came clean in 1995. UNMOVIC suggests extensive sampling and analysis, combined with documents, records and staff interviews, could defeat such chicanery:

Unlike Al Hakam, which was built as a dedicated biological warfare facility, the foot-and-mouth disease vaccine plant at Al Dawrah was constructed as a legitimate turnkey facility by a foreign company in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The plant was designed for the production of vaccine for three foot-and-mouth disease strains endemic to Iraq. United Nations inspectors, who visited the plant from September 1991 to 1995, identified capabilities existing at the facility to produce biological warfare agents, but concluded that the site was a legitimate facility since no modifications to its original design had been made by Iraq. No evidence of its involvement in Iraq’s biological warfare programme was found until Iraq declared its past involvement in 1995. Sampling at this facility was not performed prior to 1995.

23. The most important lesson learned with regard to the experience of the foot-and- mouth disease vaccine plant is that Iraq indeed carried out large-scale production of a biological warfare agent at a legitimate civilian facility. Conversion of a legitimate facility for biological warfare purposes is difficult to detect, especially when such activities take place only for a short period of time, and when the site requires only very minor adjustments for the production of a biological warfare agent. Similar experience was gained regarding another legitimate facility at Fudaliyah also utilized by Iraq’s biological warfare programme.

24. It was also found that if a deception campaign is actively pursued, the probability of finding hard evidence of activities related to biological warfare is minimized. The major technical tool that could have helped to identify such facilities is extensive sampling and analysis. Other verification methods, such as the evaluation of documents and records and interviews with staff, are also important, but could be influenced by deception efforts.

The report also discusses UNMOVIC’s efforts to ensure that Iraq kept its missiles within UN-permitted ranges, first describing persistent problems in determining missile range/payload capabilities:

bq. It is well understood that the range of a missile is affected by the payload. However, a payload may vary depending on military requirements. Thus, it is more complicated to establish the possible maximum range of a missile system under development or at the modification stage, since the results of flight tests woulddepend on multiple parameters, such as fuel load, payload and engine shut-off (burn time), that could be changed at a later stage and could thus affect the range value. Therefore, range alone is an insufficient criterion to make a judgment on a missile under development.

UNMOVIC also suggests that technical limits placed on ballistic missiles, when verified by inspectors, constrained Iraq’s ability to develop proscribed missiles:

Additional technical parameters applied in the course of ongoing monitoring and verification, that could be practicably verified with a minimal degree of ambiguity, have proven to be effective tools that prevented Iraq from developing proscribed missiles in the presence of international inspectors.

10. These parameters included a 600-millimetre limit for the diameter of the airframe of all liquid propellant missiles, the prohibition of any modifications of SA-2 missiles relevant to their conversion into a surface-to-surface mode, the prohibition of tests of SA-2 engines with shut-off valves or modified for extendedflight duration and the prohibition of the use of original or modified parts and components of SA-2 missiles for use in a surface-to-surface role. While Iraq did not formally accept these restrictions, it refrained from the production of missile systems that would violate them in the presence of international inspectors until December 1998, when inspectors withdrew from Iraq.

11. After 1991, Iraq retained capabilities to develop indigenously or modify missiles with a range close to 150 kilometres and, due to the nature of missile technology, was technically able to produce missiles that could exceed the prohibited range. However, it did not do so while under ongoing monitoring and verification. The record of ongoing monitoring and verification in the missile area shows that monitoring goals can be achieved through an enhanced verification system comprising on-site inspections, static and flight test observation, use of remote cameras, documents and computer search, tagging of missile hardware in combination with an export/import monitoring mechanism and restrictions on the reuse of missile parts and components from other permitted-range missiles. The absence of international inspectors, the accessibility of critical foreign missile parts and components, and accumulated experience from past missile projects werecrucial contributing factors in the resumption of proscribed missile activities by Iraq in the period from 1999 to 2002.

UNMOVIC also describes the conclusions of an international group of experts who were tasked with revising the UN’s ongoing BW monitoring and verification plan in Iraq. It’s worth reading if only to get a sense of what some BW verification experts are currently thinking.

I “wrote”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=485 about this around a month ago, but thought I’d raise the issue again.

Why didn’t the SFRC ask about Bolton’s role in composing the December 2002 State Department “fact sheet”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118.htm that stated — for the first time — that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger?

The Senate Intel Committee’s “Iraq investigation”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=527 came up “today”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7452510/ on Meet the Press. It seems that Roberts has now said publicly that he will do as he promised a while back – investigate the Exec. Branch’s use of the intel it received:

bq. SEN. ROBERTS: Tim, we’re going to do that. I will bring it here. We’ll have the 50 statements. We’ll have the intelligence. We can match it up and you can do it with members of Congress, who are very, very critical, who made the same things, and you can say, “OK,” and you’ll say “Well, Pat, it just looks to me that the intelligence was wrong and that’s exactly why they said what they said.”

Unless, of course, Mr. Russert even kind of knows WTF he’s talking about…

Although the Robb-Silberman report didn’t get into the question of Bush administration officials’ statements RE: Iraq’s supposed WMD, the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be looking into the question.

Supposed to be. Apparently, there’s a bit of controversy about the matter, which I wrote about “here”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/Iraq.asp. And a reader kindly pointed me to a “TNR editorial”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050418&s=editorial041805 calling out Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) (_right_) for trying to scotch the whole investigation.

One example of Roberts-as-shill: He issued a “31 March press release stating”:http://intelligence.senate.gov/050331.htm that it “would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further.”

In other related news: the House Intel Committee ended its investigation quite a while ago without telling anyone.

Solid. Obviously the wrong month to quit sniffing glue…

You’ve likely noticed that the office of Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a “letter”:http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20050301112122-90349.pdf describing State Department efforts to “conceal unclassified information about the role of John Bolton … in the creation of a [December 2002] “fact sheet”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118.htm distributed to the United Nations that falsely claimed Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.”

That fact sheet, by the way, was the first public mention about this attempted uranium transaction.

While writing a “chronology”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_09/Iraquraniumchronology.asp about the Iraq/Niger uranium fiasco a while back, I looked into Bolton’s role in the creation of that fact sheet, but couldn’t get anyone to confirm his involvement. Members of Congress apparently faced similar obstacles.

Anyway, the relevant portion of the chronology reads as follows:

December 19, 2002: A State Department fact sheet charges Iraq with omitting its “efforts to procure uranium from Niger” from its December 7 declaration to UN weapons inspectors. UN Security Council Resolution 1441, adopted November 8, 2002, required Iraq to submit a declaration “of all aspects of its [weapons of mass destruction] programmes.” The declaration is supposed to provide information about any prohibited weapons activity since UN inspectors left the country in 1998 and to resolve outstanding questions about Iraq’s WMD programs that had not been answered by 1998.

The fact sheet is “developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department,” according to an April 29, 2003, letter from the State Department to Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA). Boucher later says July 14, 2003, that the Niger information was “prepared in other bureaus of the State Department,” but he does not say which bureaus were involved. The fact sheet was not cleared by the State Department’s intelligence bureau, according to knowledgeable sources.

A State Department official interviewed August 21, 2003, however, said the State Department’s Public Affairs Bureau developed the fact sheet from a draft of a speech U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte gave December 20, 2002, to a closed session of the Security Council. The State Department would have discussed the information for that speech “at several levels with the National Security Council (NSC),” the official added. The final draft of Negroponte’s speech did not contain the reference to Niger.

The IAEA requests information from the United States on the uranium claim “immediately after” the fact sheet’s release, according to a June 20, 2003, letter from the IAEA to Waxman. This information is not supplied until February 4, 2003, according to a July 1, 2003, State Department letter to Waxman.

(Thanks to “Steve Clemons”:http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/ via “Laura Rozen subbing for Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005848.php)

It’s late, so I thought I’d take aim at this barrel of fish.

Someone asked a question at the ACA meeting about how, given the Iraq intel debacle, the US can build a credible case regarding Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. As part of his answer, Assistant SecState Stephen Rademaker stated that:

MR. RADEMAKER: … I guess it’s the received wisdom now that the Bush administration was all wrong in its assessment of Iraq. I think it’s important to just recall that – I mean, errors may have been made but they were not simply made by the Bush administration. The judgments of the Bush administration with respect to weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq were the same judgments that the Clinton administration reached prior to the Bush administration. They were the same judgments that the Congress and its intelligence committees reached based on their review of the evidence. It’s the same conclusion that the intelligence agencies of virtually every other government that was paying attention reached. And today, now that we’ve been to Iraq and seen the situation on the ground, the question arises, how could all of these intelligence agencies have been so wrong?

[snip]

Perhaps that’s what was going on, but I do think it’s quite unfair to single out the Bush administration and say those guys were all wrong; they’re a bunch of liars. I mean, the historical record here is quite clear that the Bush administration was hardly alone in the judgments it reached.

I’m sorry if it strikes Rademaker as unfair, but those guys were all wrong; they _are_ a “bunch of liars.”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=401

Not that this is news to anyone, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people that the UN inspections were a nifty way of finding out how good our intel was, but “those guys” refused to listen. In that respect, the Bush administration was nearly “alone.”

While we’re on the subject, Cheney lied about this same issue during a 6 February appearance on Fox News:

Chris Wallace: You said, in the run-up to the war, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. You said we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons, and then clarified that to be “nuclear weapons capability.” You said U.S. forces will be greeted as liberators.

I’m less interested, because I think it’s somewhat plowed ground, what you said and what you knew and all of that. I’m more interested in what you took away from the experience. Has it changed the way that you rely on intelligence? Are you more skeptical, perhaps, than you were before, having seen that it isn’t always right? And has it changed your attitude, your approach toward making pronouncements to the American people?

CHENEY: Well, what I said there, Chris, was, in fact, based on the status of the intelligence at the time. That’s what we had been told. It’s what the National Intelligence Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had shown and so forth.

Umm…no.

Cheney made the reconstitution claim just a few days before we invaded Iraq. By that time, all of the relevant intel about the nuclear weapons program had been “shown to be inaccurate.”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_09/Nuclearclaims.asp

Dave Ruppe at _Global Security Newswire_ has a “great article on how Bush and Rice are spinning”:http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_1_25.html#FC33CA97 the “Duelfer Report”:http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/. At least one media outlet decided the fact that the Bush Administration keeps blatantly lying is news.

As an aside, I hope that some with influence in the journalism profession are reconsidering just how they cover events in an age where an administration engages in straight-up propaganda – “staying on message” regardless of the facts. The administration has played the press and something needs to be done about it. Actually, the _press_ needs to do something.

Anyway, things I would add to Dave’s article:

1. The Bush administration line that “Iraq had no weapons, but they had programs” implies that Saddam was on the verge of churning out weapons. Dan Bartlett “told Wolf Blitzer”:http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0501/16/le.01.html that Saddam “had the capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction on a moment’s notice.”

Bull-shit.

Read Dave’s summary of “the Duelfer Report”:http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/ (or my modest contribution “in ACT a few months back”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Duelfer.asp ). Suffice to say, the report states that, in the case of nuclear and biological weapons, Iraq had neither weapons nor programs.

2. Little has been written about the ongoing monitoring and verification mechanisms that would have remained on Iraq even if sanctions were lifted. The idea that lifting sanctions would force us to trust Saddam is another lie. (We asked super-dove David Kay about this in an “interview”:http://www.armscontrol.org/aca/midmonth/2004/March/Kay.asp.)

3. Bush et al do not get to say that the war was justified for any reason other than WMD without also admitting that they initially lied to the public about the justification for war. Why? Because the decision to go the UN meant that Saddam would stay in power if he complied with the resolution, tyranny and all. Therefore, regime change and disarmament through the UN were *mutually exclusive.* Simple, but I have yet to see anyone make this argument.

4. This is a bit off-topic, but I think Bartlett should be forced to repeat this gem to every wounded U.S. soldier:

CNN, 16 January 2005

BLITZER: But Europeans, other critics have suggested that he [Saddam Hussein] was contained, he was in a box. The U.S. had a no-fly zone in the north, a no-fly zone in the south. Sanctions were being imposed. He represented very marginally, at that moment in time, a threat to anyone other than his own people.

BARTLETT: Well, that might be easy to say for people who are not actually putting young lives at risk every day flying those no-fly zones. They’re being shot at almost on a daily basis, U.S. pilots.

Bartlett obviously meant they _were_ being shot at. I think the rest speaks for itself.

Reading Kevin Drum’s recent “take”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005419.php on DepSecDef Wolfowitz’s “laughable prewar testimony”:http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm inspired two not-terribly-original thoughts.

1. Everyone who supported the Iraq invasion should be embarrassed. They should really rethink their qualifications to speak about any foreign policy issue, or at least learn from their mistakes. They should also start apologizing profusely to war opponents. The latter is especially true for people who “made their living during the 1990s by trash-talking arms control”:http://www.twq.com/spring00/232cambone.pdf, as well as for liberals (like the New Republic’s Peter Beinart) who still feel entitled to “slander those who disagreed with him about the war”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=whKP5U%2BbbaxbirV9FQhQuh%3D%3D.

2. Watching the administration and its minions pontificate about foreign policy is like watching David Brent opine about management — only it’s tragic rather than funny.

One nice example is contained in a slide that was part of a briefing about Iraq and terrorism that some folks in OSD Policy (wearing floppy shoes) shopped around to the SecDef, the NSC, the CIA, and the Office of the Vice President. (Senator Levin’s staff issued a “report”:http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2004/102104inquiryreport.pdf this past October that nicely summarizes the issue.)

This particular slide is special because it was left out of the briefing shown to the CIA. Entitled *Fundamental Problems with How Intelligence Community is Assessing Information,* it includes this highlighted gem.

And so the circle is closed: evidence of a partnership, as well as the lack of such evidence, proves that Iraq and al-Qaeda were buddies.

Note to OSD: absence of evidence is still absence of evidence.

Only in this administration could you present something like this to senior policymakers and not be a laughing stock.