The Boston Globe discloses that later this month David Kay, head of the 1200-person Iraq Survey Team, will report that although US troops and experts have been unable to find any hard evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or long-range missiles, they have uncovered a vast conspiracy to deceive United Nations inspectors. According to Globe reporter Bryan Bender, Kay "will build a strong, but largely circumstantial case that Hussein dispersed his weapons programs." Kay will say that he has found evidence of intentions to possibly build such weapons after inspectors left the country.

If the newspaper is correct, the Kay Report will mark the official retreat of US and British pre-war claims. However unintentionally, it will be a direct refutation of official assertions that we had to go to war to prevent Saddam Hussein from using massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and possibly nuclear weapons. Though weapons stocks may still be found, Kay will focus on "dual-use" capabilities that could quickly be reconfigured to manufacture weapons. Though such plans would have been a violation of UN resolutions, this will also be an indication that UN inspections were working. As long as inspectors were in the country, Iraq apparently did not expect to get away with active weapons production.

Pre-war Claims
Before the war, officials spoke repeatedly of imminent dangers. President Bush said that Iraq had stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, warning explicitly in October 2002 in Cincinnati that Saddam Hussein had "more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents" and likely "two to four times that amount." "This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons," he said, "that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions." On December 31, he told reporters ominously, "We don't know whether or not he has a [nuclear] bomb."

CIA Director George Tenet told Congress in February, "we will find caches of weapons of mass destruction, absolutely." He also said then that Saddam's "biological-weapons capability is far bigger that it was at the time of the Gulf War, and he has a chemical-weapons capability that he hasn't declared." Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations on February 5 that "Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud-variant ballistic missiles," and that U.S. intelligence had tracked the movement of missile warheads filled with biological agent from outside Baghdad to western Iraq." He repeated in March, "We know that in late January, the Iraqi intelligence service transported chemical and biological agents to areas far away from Baghdad, near the Syrian and Turkish borders, in order to conceal them…from the prying eyes of inspectors."

On the eve of the war, President Bush told the nation, "Intelligence fathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

In the early days of the war, officials believed the discovery of weapons caches was imminent. "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them," said General Tommy Franks on March 23. "I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction," said Defense Policy Board Member Ken Adleman on the same day. Two weeks later, Adleman was still confident, saying on April 10, "People will step forward pretty fast [and identify Iraq's weapons stores.] It should be pretty soon, in the next five days."

The Climb Down
By May, officials were lowering expectations, talking of "weapons programs" and "capabilities" not weapons themselves. "In some cases, they'll be larger and smaller parts of, say, the missile and delivery systems. I think we're going to find that they had a weapons of mass destruction program. Now, how it was configured and how they intended to use it is part of the hard work that they're going through right now," said Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone on May 7. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith explained to Congress in June 4, "The Iraqis possessed the capability to use chemical weapons, biological weapons" and "they had a program that was aiming toward the development of nuclear weapons."

The Kay report will apparently try to document this program. There will inevitably be criticism of the report for its lack of independence. There is little doubt that the US would be better served if the assessment had been performed by an objective, international agency and not headed by an advocate of the war and an opponent of continuing the UN inspections. Others will point out that the United Nations never intended to leave Iraq free to pursue new weapons programs. The plan was always to establish an on-site verification and monitoring regime after the initial inspections were completed, as indicated by the inspection team's formal name, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). The larger point, however, may be that Kay will belabor the obvious.

Prior to 2002, many national and international officials and experts believed that Iraq likely had research programs or some stores of hidden chemical or biological weapons and maintained interest in a program to develop nuclear weapons. The debate that began in 2002 was not over weapons, but over war. The issue was whether Iraq's failure to cooperate fully with United Nations inspections and adequately account for its activities posed such a severe threat as to require military invasion and occupation. There the Kay Report may do more harm to the administration's case. Even if it puts the worst spin on all the available evidence, it may still end up showing that that Iraq had far less than anyone imagined, and certainly less than officials claimed.

If all Saddam had were intentions and fragments of programs, there was no need for war in March 2003. Thousands of deaths could have been avoided and the dangerous chaos that now pervades the region could have been prevented.

Additional Resources:

• "US Says Iraq Arms Plan Relied on Deceit," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, 28 August 2003
• "Intelligence on Iraq," Carnegie Web Page
• Carnegie Iraq Country Resources Page

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