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CIA details botched hunt for Iraq's WMD
By India Daily
04/27/05 - - US military interrogators botched the questioning of Iraqi scientists in the search for weapons of mass destruction and their detention "serves no further purpose", a new CIA report has found.
The report says that in many cases the wrong people were detained, and subjected to questioning by "inexperienced and uninformed" interrogators. It estimates that 105 scientists and officials suspected of involvement in WMD programmes are still in detention. "Others may have reasons for not letting them go. I wanted to be on the record that, in respect to the WMD inquiry, we''re done," the report's author, Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told the Guardian.
The report is an addendum to a more comprehensive document published last September, which concluded that Iraq had abandoned almost all of its WMD programmes over 10 years before the 2003 invasion. The addendum finds no evidence to support a theory raised by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and still circulating in rightwing circles, that Iraqi WMDs were smuggled to Syria before the invasion. Mr Duelfer adds that the deteriorating security situation made it impossible for the ISG to carry out further investigation. The report suggests the threat to coalition forces from explosives looted from unguarded sites after the invasion was probably far greater. It also found that dual-use equipment, which could be used to build chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons, had gone missing.
The report reserves its most scathing remarks for the manner in which military intelligence went looking for weapons immediately after the war. First, the US "black list" of scientists wanted for questioning was full of holes. "Some very despicable individuals who should have been listed were not, while many technocrats and even opponents of the Saddam regime made the list and hence found themselves either in jail or on the run." Mr Duelfer wrote, adding that some of the former had been released in the first few months after the war. He found that military interrogation techniques, designed to acquire quick tactical battlefield intelligence, were ill-suited to gaining a broad understanding of complex weapons programmes. Standard military intelligence reports on interrogations were also inadequate, Mr Duelfer found. They were often late, and were narrowly focused, providing little context.
A US military spokesman was contacted in Baghdad and asked for comment on the ISG findings and its recommendation that many of the detainees be released, but had not responded last night. However, the report concludes that Iraqi scientists would be of little use to other states pursuing WMD programmes because their expertise would have eroded over the long years of sanctions.
The ISG report finds that Saddam Hussein was frequently deceived by impoverished academics seeking funds for far-fetched weapons schemes, such as an air defence system using sound waves, and a "centrifugal force gun", and officials pretending the Iraqi arsenal was stronger than it was. To add to the confusion, Saddam encouraged ambiguity about Iraqi weapons, in the hope of keeping his most feared enemy, Iran, at bay. "Saddam told us he was most concerned about the Iranian threat, with good cause," Mr Duelfer said on Tuesday.
Copyright: India Daily.
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