26 April 2005Information Clearing House Katherine Schrader
Wrapping up his investigation into Saddam Hussein's purported arsenal, the CIA's top weapons hunter in Iraq said his search for weapons of mass destruction "has been exhausted" without finding any. Nor did Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, find any evidence that such weapons were shipped officially from Iraq to Syria to be hidden before the U.S. invasion, but he couldn't rule out some unofficial transfer of limited WMD-related materials. He closed his effort with words of caution about potential future threats and careful assessment of this and other unanswered questions.The Bush administration justified its 2003 invasion of Iraq as necessary to eliminate Hussein's purported stockpile of WMD. "As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible," Duelfer wrote in an an addendum to the report he issued last fall. "After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted." In 92 pages posted online Monday evening, Duelfer provided a final look at an investigation that, at its peak, occupied more than 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts. His latest addenda conclude a roughly 1,500-page report released last fall. Among warnings sprinkled throughout the new documents, one concludes that Saddam's programs created a pool of weapons experts, many of whom will be seeking work. While most will probably turn to the "benign civil sector," the danger remains that "hostile foreign governments, terrorists or insurgents may seek Iraqi expertise." "Because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern," one addendum said. Another addendum noted that military forces in Iraq may continue to find small numbers of degraded chemical weapons most likely misplaced or improperly destroyed before 1991. In an insurgent's hands, "the use of a single even ineffectual chemical weapon would likely cause more terror than deadlier conventional explosives," the addendum said.
