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All the Bush Claims

Weapons of Mass Deception

 

Excerpt from Extensive Washington Post Expose

According to outside scientists and intelligence officials, the most important factor in the CIA's nuclear judgment was Iraq's attempt to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The tubes were the core evidence for a centrifuge program tied to building a nuclear bomb. . . .Wood, founder of the Oak Ridge centrifuge physics department, is widely acknowledged to be among the most eminent living experts ...Speaking publicly for the first time, Wood said in an interview that "it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts that feel differently." Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus 8/10/03

Old News:  Most of what Washington and London knew about Saddam Hussein's suspected mass weapons programs before the war was based on old intelligence. The few new details, which garnered the most attention, are now under serious scrutiny and in question. Dafna Linzer, Associated Press, 7/13/2003 Boston.com

 

Scud Missiles:  Tenet said in prepared testimony to lawmakers that Iraq "retains, in violation of U.N. resolutions, a small number of Scud missiles that were produced before the Gulf War." Four months earlier, a declassified intelligence estimate said only that discrepancies in Iraqi reporting "suggest that Iraq retains" a small Scud force.  John Diamond, USA TODAY 7/13/03

 

Aluminum Tubes for Nuclear Weapons:  Among the reports, the senior intelligence official said, was that Iraq was seeking to purchase aluminum tubes and ring magnets to manufacture centrifuges for enriching the uranium. These claims, too, have been challenged by nuclear experts and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which say the specification for the tubes indicate they were intended to be used in manufacturing rockets.  Knut Royce, Newsday 7/11/03


Mobile Weapons Labs:  Why would a former UN inspector categorically state that two lorry trailers could never be used as mobile labs as both had walls of sheets of tied-down canvas, making it impossible to contain dangerous pathogens?  Oonagh Blackman, Mirror-UK 6/30/03

 

Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say.  DOUGLAS JEHL, NY Times 8/8/03

 

Saddam's Link to al-Qaida   "There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said this week. AP in USA Today, 7/13/03

 

WMD Deployment in 45 Minutes "I don't know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes in the dossier of September last year. That seems pretty far off the mark to me," Blix said. "I think that was a fundamental mistake. CNN.com 7/13/03

 

Uranium from Africa  Almost a year before the speech in February 2002 in response to questions by Vice President Cheney’s office, the CIA dispatched Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat with experience in both Iraq and Africa, to check out the story. He reported to the CIA and the State Department that reports of uranium sales from Niger to Iraq were extremely unlikely because of intrusive national and international oversight of Niger’s uranium industry.  V. Walston, The Independent Institute, 7/8/013

Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus, Washington Post 8/10/03
Bush's Statement The Washington Post says...
"A report came out of the... [International Atomic Energy Agency], that [the Iraqis] were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." Camp David, 9/7/02 "There was no new IAEA report... Bush cast as present evidence the contents of a report from 1996, updated in 1998 and 1999. In those accounts, the IAEA described the history of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program that arms inspectors had systematically destroyed."
Bush's Statement The Washington Post says...
"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." United Nations, 9/12/02 "Gas centrifuge experts consulted by the U.S. government said repeatedly for more than a year that the aluminum tubes were not suitable or intended for uranium enrichment. By December 2002, the experts said new evidence had further undermined the government's assertion. The Bush administration portrayed the scientists as a minority and emphasized that the experts did not describe the centrifuge theory as impossible."
Bush's Statement The Washington Post says...
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Cincinnati OH, 10/7/02 "What Hussein did not have was the principal requirement for a nuclear weapon, a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium. And the U.S. government, authoritative intelligence officials said, had only circumstantial evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain those materials."
Bush's Statement The Washington Post says...
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group of his 'nuclear mujahedeen,' his nuclear holy warriors." Cincinnati OH, 10/7/02 "Bush and others often alleged that President Hussein held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, but did not disclose that the known work of the scientists was largely benign. Iraq's three top gas centrifuge experts, for example, ran a copper factory, an operation to extract graphite from oil and a mechanical engineering design center."