A Review of the Evidence

Last October in Cincinnati, President Bush delivered what could stand as the most concise summary of why the United States might go to war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s regime, he said, “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people.”

Today, more than a month after Bush declared that the United States and its allies had “prevailed” in the war against Hussein, there still is no consensus over whether the threat was as great as described.

A careful review of the evidence marshaled by the Bush administration and the staff of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the months leading up to the war suggests that some of the claims were overstated, others have been proved wrong, and still others -- particularly those involving Hussein’s human rights abuses against his own people -- have been amply validated.

But the charges that many found the most troubling, those involving Hussein’s alleged production of chemical and biological weapons, remain largely unsupported. As a rule, the more specific the claim, the more likely it is to have been debunked, or at least called into question. Factories cited by the administration have been inspected and found to be clean; evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from an African country was found to be based on a forgery.

Since the war, the administration has subtly shifted its rhetoric against Hussein’s fallen government, with Bush even moving away from the claim -- made repeatedly and vehemently -- that Iraq was actively producing and stockpiling chemical and biological weapons, saying instead that it “had a weapons program.”

The failure of the United States and its allies to come up with undisputed proof that Iraq was a storehouse of dangerous, illegal weapons has become political fodder for opponents of Bush and Blair as well as Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose government also supplied troops for the war. In this country, some members of Congress have called for an investigation of the intelligence that underpinned the administration’s drive to war. Senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, have continued to predict that they will be vindicated and have counseled patience while teams of weapons hunters scour Iraq.

But there also has been an effort to downplay the issue, with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz noting in a recent interview in Vanity Fair magazine that the administration had stressed unconventional weapons before the war “for bureaucratic reasons,” when in fact they were just one of several reasons to attack Iraq.

In an interview with The Times last week, a senior administration official spoke of “connecting the dots” and uncovering weapons programs but repeatedly stopped short of saying any weapons would be found.

“I believe we will put together a picture that will be quite specific,” the official said. “But let me ask you something: Is a capacity to put together precursors into a chemical weapon simply a program? Or is that a weapon?”

The charges against Iraq predate the current administration. Well after Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, went to war against Iraq in 1991, President Clinton accused Hussein of thwarting U.N. inspections so Iraq could continue to build chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Clinton ordered U.S. forces to bomb Iraq in December 1998 after declaring that Hussein not only possessed unconventional weapons, but “has used them -- not once, but repeatedly.... I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.” Operation Desert Fox, as the Pentagon called that mission, lasted four days and hit nearly 100 targets, including suspected chemical or biological weapons sites.

The current Bush administration began escalating its rhetoric about Iraq not long after the Sept. 11 attacks. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush included Hussein’s government in an “axis of evil” with Iran and North Korea.

“The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade,” Bush charged then. And he warned: “America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation’s security.”

The rhetorical assault picked up last August. Its arguments fell into several categories: that Iraq was a champion of terrorism, that it stockpiled chemical and biological weapons, that it sought to produce nuclear weapons, that it maintained illegal missiles, and that it committed wholesale violations of human rights against its people. All but the last of these were portrayed as threats against the United States.

At the time, many of the charges were met with widespread skepticism internationally, causing a rift between the United States and two of its closest allies, France and Germany. The U.S. now has the opportunity -- or burden -- to enhance its credibility by proving that it did not overstate the threat. The outcome could also color Bush’s reelection prospects.

The following is a summary of what was alleged before the war in Iraq, and what is known today:

Terrorism

In a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, Bush charged: “Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder.... And Al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq.”

Some of this was, or has become, verifiable. Iraq made no effort to hide its financial support of Palestinian groups that carried out suicide bombings against Israelis. Hussein’s government was implicated in assassinations of Iraqi dissidents and Iranian Shiite leaders.

And a Times reporter who visited a northern Iraq training camp of the Ansar al Islam extremist group after the war found evidence that members of Al Qaeda had been there after fleeing Afghanistan. The camp, however, was in an autonomous Kurdish region not ruled by Hussein.

As the Bush and Blair governments tried to connect the dots between Hussein and Al Qaeda to demonstrate that Iraq was a threat to the U.S., the evidence became more open to debate.

In his State of the Union address in January, Bush flatly stated that “Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell elaborated in a Feb. 5 speech to the U.N. that laid out a detailed indictment of Iraq.

Powell focused on an Al Qaeda operative, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was suspected of heading Osama bin Laden’s chemical weapons unit and has been implicated in the assassination of a U.S. diplomat, Laurence Foley, in Amman, Jordan, last year.

Powell charged that Zarqawi had been at the Ansar camp in northern Iraq and came to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment. While he was there, the secretary of State said, nearly two dozen Al Qaeda associates converged on the capital to establish a base of operations. Iraq’s denials of ties with Al Qaeda “are simply not credible,” Powell said.

But since then, some U.S. and European intelligence officials have downplayed any ties between Al Qaeda and Hussein, saying that Bin Laden’s operatives were contemptuous of Hussein’s secular government and that Zarqawi’s trip to Baghdad may have been purely medical.

Chemical and

Biological Weapons

Perhaps the most serious charge leveled against Iraq was that it had failed to destroy its stocks of chemical and biological weapons, which it indisputably possessed -- and used -- in the past. These were often grouped with nuclear weapons under the catchall term “weapons of mass destruction.”

“Simply stated,” Vice President Dick Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars last August, “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

“We know they have weapons of mass destruction,” Rumsfeld told reporters a month later. “There isn’t any debate about it.” In fact, he said, it was “beyond anyone’s imagination” that U.N. inspectors would fail to find such weapons if they were given the opportunity.

And Blair said that the Iraqi military needed only 45 minutes’ notice to deploy some chemical and biological weapons.

Based on intelligence, much of it apparently supplied by Iraqi defectors, Britain and the U.S. pinpointed sites they suspected of producing the illicit weapons. Among the chemical materials named were VX nerve agents, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. Biological agents included ricin and anthrax.

The CIA specifically pointed to the Fallouja II chlorine and phenol production plants, which it said were capable of making the raw materials needed to produce blister and nerve agents, and the Al Dawrah Foot-and-Mouth-Disease Vaccine Facility, the Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, and the Fallouja III Castor Oil Production Plant, all of which were allegedly used for the production of biological weapons.

Before the war, U.N. inspection teams visited all these sites repeatedly and found no clear evidence that they were being used to produce banned weapons. Chief inspector Hans Blix, however, left open the possibility that Iraq had concealed the weapons elsewhere.

As the war began, U.S. and British forces were on high alert, fully expecting Iraq to use banned weapons. At several points during the war, troops came across caches of what appeared to be chemical weapons, but testing revealed them to be benign industrial or agricultural products. Discoveries of gas masks and chemical suits pointed more clearly to Iraq’s familiarity with the banned weapons -- but not to any actual stockpiles.

Nevertheless, when, on March 30, midway through the war, Rumsfeld was asked about the illicit weapons, he replied: “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”

None have yet been found. Seven “sensitive site teams,” each consisting of 25 inspectors, have visited about 330 sites, about 230 from target lists and the rest from local tips and other intelligence. Having effectively run out of targets, they have put much of the hunt on hold. A new U.S. search group will take over in July, hoping to develop fresh intelligence through interviews with Iraqi scientists and others.

Rumsfeld has said that U.S. forces would find unconventional weapons “only when they find people who will say precisely where things are.” That apparently hasn’t happened so far.

To the contrary, Gen. Amir Saadi, the main Iraqi liaison to the U.N. inspection teams, insisted after surrendering to U.S. forces that Iraq had destroyed all illicit weapons in the years after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to U.S. intelligence. So did another senior scientist, Emad Ani, who directed Iraqi’s program to produce VX nerve gas in the 1980s, U.S. officials have said.

There are indications that many Iraqis who might have knowledge of weapons systems are still wary of cooperating with Americans because they believe that Hussein is alive and could return to power.

Rumsfeld, Powell and others have pleaded for patience, reminding critics that Iraq is a large country and Hussein’s government had the time and motivation to effectively hide any banned weapons. And inspectors in the field, while frustrated, express confidence that they will eventually hit pay dirt.

Still, doubts have arisen about whether biological or chemical weapons in any significant quantities will ever be found.

Late last month, the top Marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said he was surprised that his forces had not uncovered stockpiles of banned weapons. “We were simply wrong,” he said, although he held out hope that the weapons would yet be found.

Earlier this month, the Bloomberg news agency reported the existence of a September 2002 classified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency that said it had no reliable evidence that Iraq possessed chemical weapons.

Absent any other hard evidence, Bush and Blair have pointed to the discovery of two tractor-trailers in northern Iraq as evidence that Hussein had an illicit weapons program.

The leaders have said the trailers were mobile germ labs capable of producing biological weapons. Powell had described such vehicles in his presentation to the U.N. in February. Lab tests have so far failed to reveal any sign of suspicious materials in the trailers.

In an interview last week with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Blix was quoted as saying he “remains agnostic” about the prospects for finding chemical or biological weapons. “We know for sure that they did exist ... and we cannot exclude they may find something,” he said.

Nuclear Weapons

Bush told the United Nations in September that “Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.”

Twelve days later, Blair released a dossier that said Iraq had “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power program that could require it.” With fissile material, the dossier concluded, Iraq “could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years.”

Blair’s reference to Africa was fleshed out by the State Department on Dec. 19, when it said Baghdad had tried to buy uranium in the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the allegation in his State of the Union speech.

Both charges -- that Iraq tried to buy the aluminum tubes to enrich uranium, and that it had tried to buy uranium from Niger -- have since been either refuted or cast in doubt.

In March, just before the start of war, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the claim about a uranium deal in Niger was based on forged documents. U.S. national security advisor Rice has since acknowledged as much.

In April, the IAEA reported that “extensive field investigation and document analysis” had failed to turn up any evidence that Iraq intended the aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons and that they apparently were intended for use in rockets. The agency said it could find “no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”

Human Rights

In his speech to the U.N., Bush charged that Iraq was continuing to commit widespread human rights abuses, arresting political opponents and ordinary citizens, and subjecting them to torture, summary execution, starvation, mutilation and rape.

Hussein’s human rights record was presented as an example of his ruthlessness and willingness to stop at nothing to achieve his aims.

Referring to a recounting of Hussein’s human rights record, Blair told his Parliament in September: “Read it all, and again I defy anyone to say that this cruel and sadistic dictator should be allowed any possibility of getting his hands on more chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.... The history of Saddam and WMD is not American or British propaganda. The history and the present threat are real.”

In the unclassified dossier he released, Blair cataloged Hussein’s abuses in detail, citing the execution of 4,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in 1984, 122 at the same prison in March 2000, the methods of torture used by Iraqi security police, and the confinement of prisoners in metal boxes “the size of tea chests.”

If not every allegation has been proved, the pattern of abuses has been confirmed in dozens of interviews conducted since the end of the war, along with box after box of government records made available to reporters in Iraq and hundreds of bodies unearthed from mass graves throughout the country.

Times staff writer Bob Drogin in Baghdad contributed to this report.