CIA: No Iraqi stockpile

Says Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction for years, although he intended to revive programs

BY BOB DROGIN
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein did not produce or possess any weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the U.S.-led invasion last year to disarm the Iraqi regime of suspected stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to a comprehensive CIA report released yesterday.

Hussein intended to reconstitute his illicit programs and rebuild at least some of his weapons if United Nations sanctions were eased and he had the opportunity someday, the report concludes. But the Iraqi regime had no formal written strategy or plan to revive the banned weapons programs after sanctions, and no programs, staff or infrastructure to do so, the investigators found.

Although more work is planned, the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group weapons hunting teams, was presented on Capitol Hill as the definitive account of Iraq's long-defunct weapons programs after a 16-month investigation.

The three-volume report answers major unresolved questions from previous reports by United Nations weapons inspectors and by Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay.

The report comes in the final weeks of the presidential campaign that increasingly has focused on President George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq to disarm Hussein of weapons of mass destruction.

Democrats seized on Duelfer's report as proof that Hussein was not a grave or growing danger before the war, as the White House still argues.

The report says, for example, that Hussein's illicit weapons capability was "essentially destroyed" after the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and never rebuilt. It says Hussein considered the UN sanctions "an economic stranglehold" that curbed his ability to build or develop weapons over the next 12 years.

Republicans, however, pointed to portions that say Hussein "wanted to re-create" his weapons program someday. Hussein "aspired to develop a nuclear capability" despite international pressure, although he first "intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare," the report concludes.

Among the report's other highlights:

The Iraqi dictator had abandoned his nascent nuclear program and had destroyed all but a handful of his chemical and biological weapons by December 1991. No infrastructure or other evidence was found showing the weapons programs were revived before the 2003 war.

Hussein knew he had no weapons before the war and believed Washington ultimately would make peace with his secular regime to counter the growing power of what he considered his main enemy: Iran's Islamic government.

Iraqi insurgents now battling U.S. troops have sought illegal weapons. In March of this year, investigators found active efforts to recruit former Iraqi weapons scientists to develop nerve gases and at least one biological toxin, ricin. The discovery led to a series of raids.

The CIA report identified numerous individuals and companies around the world, as well as government agencies and officials in Syria and Yemen, who broke UN trade sanctions to funnel conventional weapons and other goods to Iraq.

Widespread kickbacks and other corruption in the UN's Oil-For-Food program "rescued Baghdad's economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions" and helped subsidize the Iraqi regime. Overall, Iraq amassed more than $11 billion from oil smuggling and other illicit programs.

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