Symposium: Proving Saddam’s WMDs

Despite the antiwar Left's favorite mantra about how Bush lied regarding WMDs in Iraq, the evidence now proves there were WMDs after all.

According to recent announcement made by Senator Rick Santorum and Rep. Peter Hoekstra , approximately 500 weapons munitions, containing degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent, have been discovered in Iraq since 2003. Saddam, therefore, had the means to put WMDs into terrorists' hands.

So what is the primary significance of these revelations? And why are these developments not front page news in our media? Where are all of Bush's critics who called him a liar?  Where are their apologies? And why isn't the administration using this information to legitimize itself?

To discuss these and other questions with us, Frontpage has assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests are:

Michael Ledeen, a resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. An NRO contributing editor, he is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He prosecuted the Blind Sheik and his organization for seditious conspiracy in 1995.

Dave Gaubatz, a former U.S. Federal Agent (Arabic linguist/counter-terrorist specialist) who was deployed to Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His mission was to search for WMDs.  Four sites he identified were not searched by ISG (Iraq Survey Group) and he has waged a three year battle to get them searched. He is currently the Chief Investigator with the Dallas County Medical Examiner, Dallas, TX. He can be contacted at [email protected].

and

Thomas Joscelyn, an expert on the international terrorist network. Much of his research has focused on the role that nations such as Saddam's Iraq and the mullah's Iran have played in providing support, training and funding for terrorist entities such as al Qaeda, al Qaeda's affiliates, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. He has written extensively about these connections for the Weekly Standard and in several other publications. Currently, he is organizing a research project to review and translate the millions of documents captured from the fallen Iraqi regime and the Taliban.
FP: Michael Ledeen, Thomas Joscelyn, Andrew McCarthy and Dave Gaubatz, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Mr. Ledeen, let's begin with you. What do you make of the recent developments?

Ledeen: There are two separate issues, I think.  The first is the continued reluctance of the Intelligence Community to share important information with the American public.  Hoekstra pointed out that he did not learn about this document from the IC, and was very unhappy that the DNI (Negroponte) only declassified a few fragments.  He implied that there was additional important information, and he promised to keep pushing for further declassification.  Perhaps he will even hold hearings on the matter.

The second issue is the question of WMDs.  Those who have followed the press releases carefully certainly knew that our soldiers and marines had found many weapons with sarin, and others designed to deliver sarin.  The artillery shells described in the declassified fragments are old, but even the fragments state that they are dangerous, and Rumsfeld underlined this fact:  our men and women are at risk from WMDs.  I think the quibbling about their date of manufacture is beside the point, given the assessment of their danger.

I think we should all be pushing for further declassification, just as we did regarding the Saddam documents, which continue to trickle out at nowhere near the rate we had hoped.  But even so, much of the information in those documents is extremely important, suggesting that claims of Iraq/terrorist collaboration was quite active, and also that the WMD program was at least in part hidden, not dismantled.

The truly amazing fact is that the White House is very obviously opposed to revisiting these questions.  They say they want to look forward, not back into the past.  But this wrongheaded view undermines a good deal of potential support for moving forward aggressively, because it deprives them of the ability to say that a good deal of what they said in the past was true.  Once again, the White House fails to tell its own story effectively.

FP: Mr. Gaubatz?

Gaubatz: I agree they are dangerous, but it is just as dangerous to not inform the American troops that hundreds of more dangerous chemicals and/or biological weapons are within a couple of miles from the base in Nasiriyah, Iraq. Congressmen Hoekstra & Weldon have known about the old shells, and also the new 4 sites.  Why would they not inform our troops to be aware of these sites?

Why, it comes down to politics.  When the time is right for political gain you will see Hoekstra, Weldon, & Santorum come flying across the desert in a nice new Humvee.  They will get out, have the sites excavated Dave Gaubatz identified 3 years ago, and wave an American flag and have Neil Cavuto (Fox) announce they have found it. Keep in mind Cavuto is a puppy Weldon bought. They will write a book and get re-elected (except for Santorum). The White House is not involved because they know Hoekstra and Weldon are involved in a strategy that does not benefit the American public; only themselves. I also must inform the readers that HQ AFOSI has 36 of my Intelligence reports and have offered them to the Congressmen. They still haven't obtained them it is much easier to whine that DOD want release classified information.

When we went to war with Iraq two of the goals were to remove Saddam Hussein and to capture him if possible.  The second goal was to locate WMD.  Mr. Ledeen makes an excellent point pertaining to classifying WMD being found in Iraq.  Any WMD found should not be classified.  The American people need to be aware of any updates in regards to these weapons.  When Saddam Hussein was captured we did not classify this and release it several months later.  The announcement was made immediately.  The WMD issue is no different.  If we locate one chemical shell or 500 chemical shells an announcement must be made.

Although the find of 500 WMD shells is important, very dangerous, and they prove Saddam lied about WMD, these are not the WMD that I and other Agents were searching for.  Charles Dulefer admitted the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) only searched less than 10% of all suspected sites.  The four sites myself and other Agents identified in 2003 were not pre-1991 weapons.  I will not be satisfied until all sites are inspected. I do not want to see WMD fall into the hands of terrorist.  I do not want our children or troops experience a WMD attack.

Joscelyn: I think Dr. Ledeen hits the nail on its head when he says, “we should all be pushing for further declassification, just as we did regarding the Saddam documents, which continue to trickle out at nowhere near the rate we had hoped.” I think the main question that arises from the discovery of these 500 chemical weapons shells is this: What else don't we know about Saddam's Iraq?

Much of the Washington bureaucracy – including, oddly enough, many within the Bush administration – seem all too comfortable in letting the conventional wisdom stay where it is. But what few appreciate is just how shaky the conventional wisdom's foundation is. In the decade leading up to the war, the U.S. intelligence community had no significant intelligence assets within Iraq. There was a last minute crash course to recruit some regime members, but this led to uneven results at best. Simply put, we didn't know much about what was going on inside Saddam's Iraq.

Many have trumpeted the failure to find significant quantities of WMD as evidence that the Bush administration “lied.” This is demonstrably false on its face as anyone could quickly locate similar claims being made by any number of foreign governments, members of the Clinton administration including the former president himself, as well as members of the U.S. intelligence community long before the current Bush administration even came into being.

These Bush “lied” claims obscure the fundamental issue: Because our intelligence capability was so poor prior to the war, we don't really know what happened to Saddam's WMD capability. Saddam never accounted for significant stockpiles of VX nerve gas and other nasty agents. And while there have been investigations into Saddam’s WMD capability, primarily the one done by the Iraqi Survey Group, there are a number of open questions. For example, the CIA reported for several years that Saddam had moved some of his WMD capabilities into Sudan. The Clinton administration even destroyed a factory where Iraqi scientists were suspected of working with al Qaeda to produce VX nerve gas. But, if you search the ISG’s report, you won’t find any of this mentioned, despite the fact that it is all a matter of the public record. This was one of the few instances in which the U.S. intelligence community put together multiple threads of intelligence, but it has never been revisited.

In addition, a careful reading of the ISG’s report reveals a number of intriguing details. One detail that escapes wide attention is that the regime had retained a dozen or more small-scale labs for chemical and biological weapons research under the auspices of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. And as the ISG report concedes, even if Saddam didn’t have a full-scale WMD capability, he still certainly maintained much of the infrastructure to regenerate that capability quickly once sanctions eroded.

One final point: while there have been investigations into Saddam’s WMD capability, there has been no rigorous investigation into his terrorist ties. An impartial, bipartisan investigation into that matter is much needed because while Saddam’s WMD capability may have been overstated in some ways, his ties to terrorism – including al Qaeda – were drastically understated.

McCarthy: As usual, I am fully in agreement with my friends Michael and Tom.  While I admire the work Dave Gaubatz has done, I'm puzzled by the attacks on Sen. Santorum, Reps. Hoekstra and Weldon, and Fox's Neil Cavuto.  There are broad swaths of government and media which are incorrigibly dedicated to suppressing and obstructing the thorough accounting of Saddam's terror ties and weapons that is so desperately needed.  I don't see what is served by slamming the few officials who are actually trying to bring some sunshine to the equation.  (Mr. Gaubatz's slam at Mr. Cavuto is so gratuitously nasty and irrelevant to what we are discussing, I can't even wrap my brain around it.)

The only thing we really know about Iraq (and much of the region) is that our intelligence there was grossly inadequate.  The bizarre and sad thing about all of this is that we appear willing, as a nation, to have the history of matters of great consequence “definitively” written on the basis of this blatantly insufficient record.  That is not history; it is fiction.  Obviously, if there are matters of operational intelligence that need to be withheld due to bonafide military necessity, then that has to be done.  But if, due to an insurgency with a strong jihadist component, we are still (over three years after Saddam's fall) considering to be “operational” intelligence about terror ties and weapons, there must be plenty there of interest.  On the other hand, if we are withholding information because it would be embarrassing to the intelligence community or other officials because the positions they took prior to March 2003 are unsustainable, that similarly means what passes for the conventional wisdom is wrong and must be corrected.

The legacy of what we have done in Iraq is a matter of great significance, not only for those who have laid down their lives but for our future willingness (and effectiveness) in engaging other theaters and phases of what Michael has compellingly urged is a much wider war against the terror masters.  It is vitally important that we have an accurate accounting.

FP: So what steps do each of you now think are crucial in order for there to be an accurate accounting?

Ledeen: I'm not sure I know the full range of research, and it probably won't be possible to do a lot of it until and unless the situation on the ground is much better than it is today.  As I said before, it's important to encourage the administration to declassify the captured Iraqi documents, which are a real treasure trove of information.  As Ed Morrissey has written at “Captain's Quarter” blog, recently released documents–released late on a Friday afternoon, by the way, which is a sure sign that Negroponte's office didn't want them to get top billing–show a far more active relationship between Saddam (in this case handled by no less than Saddam's son) and al Qaeda (Osama himself).  And they also strongly suggest–and I'm understating the case–that there was a considerable store of chemical weapons and nuclear materials.

It's hard to justify the continued classification of these documents.  I suspect that some in the administration are trying to protect the Russians, Germans, and French from embarrassment, because they were involved in the WMD programs in Iraq.  But there is clearly a desire on the administration's part to avoid revisiting a subject that has caused them so much political pain.  Too bad!  It's very bad for the country to leave this question surrounded by a bodyguard of lies, which is the current situation.

Lots of very good military people who really want to know the facts tell me that so far as they can tell, the (considerable quantity of) WMDs thus far uncovered do not represent a serious military threat to our troops.  They agree that these things could be wired into IEDs, but they doubt that such IEDs would be more lethal than those with explosives alone.  On the other hand, they are quite prepared to believe that we have simply failed to find more up-to-date WMD artillery shells.  If those exist—and knowledgeable people like Mr Gaubatz insist that they probably do–they would be very worrisome indeed.

So we also need to check out reports that chemical weapons have been hidden in Iraq.  I have been told by highly professional foreign service officers that they were informed of such sites, but they were never able to get the CIA teams to go and look.  I myself was contacted by a very well informed Iraqi who claimed knowledge of a site of enriched uranium, but CIA couldn't be bothered.  It is worth investigating, but if the administration insists that “history” isn't important, then we are not going to get to the truth of this very important matter for a long time.

Gaubatz: In order for there to be an accurate accounting of WMD we must go into Iraq and start from the beginning. It wasn't safe in 2003 and it still isn't but who ever said war was safe?  I respect every Iraq Survey Group member, but their marching orders were poor at best. Mr. Charles Duelfer seems satisfied less than 10% of all WMD sites were ever inspected. If we have a team of experts who will take all of the intelligence obtained initially in 2003 from “on the ground field intelligence officers” we will understand the current issues in the Middle East. What is happening now in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and with Hezbolla, is only a surprise to people who never listened in 2003.

Many of my fellow intelligence officers stated in our intelligence reports in 2003 that a civil war would evolve in Iraq, and terrorism against Americans would increase, not decrease.  We also wrote about the Iranian, Russian, and Hezbolla influence in Iraq, and about the WMD.  Our President was correct and I have always supported him. Many of the managers he counted on to do their jobs in 2003 (Republican and Democratic) failed him and the American people (specifically Charles Duelfer).

I would like to briefly explain to my friends and others why I came down hard on Congressmen Hoekstra, Curt Weldon, and Senator Santorum.  I was in a closed door meeting with Congressman Weldon on 16 Mar 2006, and in teleconference with both Congressmen on 4 May 2006.  I had respect for these gentlemen, but it was made very clear their search for the WMD was more for personal/political gain than for national security of America.  Does this really surprise anyone that a politician would have personal agendas?  I had been told verbatim by Congressmen Weldon that he did not trust the U.S. military and he subsequently provided the intelligence I had given him to private companies to verify.  He was afraid DOD would take credit for finding the WMD and not himself.  I wanted nothing to do with this and informed each.  Although a conservative, I am no politician and will not allow politics to endanger my children or any child.

In regards to Mr. Neil Cavuto. He asked me to speak after the NY Times (Scott Shane) wrote an extensive article about my continued efforts to locate WMD in Iraq. The article was on 23 June 2006.  Coincidence, no. After my detailed interviews with Scott Shane he was very much convinced WMD was/is in Iraq.  Scott Shane also asked Congressmen Weldon and Hoekstra some tough questions about not inspecting the sites.  They in turn asked Neil Cavuto to interview me and throw in the remark that I had left Federal Service on bad terms. They knew this was false & Cavuto did.  I left Federal Service after 23.5 years. When I returned from Iraq my daughter (who was 5) asked me to never leave her again.  I promised her I never would.  I had been informed by people behind the scenes Weldon and Hoekstra had done this to now discredit me because I exposed and stopped their personal exploits of finding WMD. By doing so they were left with 500 “pre-1991” shells. This is when I lost respect for each of the gentlemen to include Cavuto. America will not be safe until “all” (not 10, 25, 50, or 75%) of WMD sites in Iraq are inspected.

Joscelyn: In conclusion, I think there are three principle points that we have all touched upon in one way or another:

(1) The documents and other evidence collected in Iraq are not just a matter of history or justifying the war to the American public. They are important for understanding the enemy and his capabilities.

(2) The documents that have already been released to the public reveal interesting details that were previously unknown. In part, this is because our intelligence inside Iraq and the Middle East as a whole was “grossly inadequate,” as Andy puts it.

(3) Finally, there is another dimension to the documents and other evidence collected in Iraq that many often miss. The intelligence community has been badly in need of reform for decades. In the wake of 9/11, there was an attempt to reform some corridors of the intelligence community as well as a complete restructuring of the intelligence community’s infrastructure, highlighted by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Many of the reforms deal with bureaucratic responsibilities and improving the flow of information among the various agencies. But there was, and remains, a need to reform the way our intelligence analysts and operatives approach their work. This aspect of intelligence reform has received far less attention. Here, too, the information collected in Iraq is valuable.

I’ll briefly comment on each of these three points.

As for the first, many of the documents illuminate various aspects of the insurgency that we face in Iraq today. There are documents detailing Saddam’s support for jihadists coming into Iraq to confront American forces prior to the war (including an order to “utilize” Arab suicide bombers), Saddam’s orders for his paramilitary forces (including the fanatically loyal Fedayeen Saddam) and other elite conventional military forces to create small resistance cells, and offers to support Iraq’s jihad against America from terrorist groups such as Hamas. There are a lot of additional examples that can be found in the documents as well.

All of this information is valuable for understanding how the enemies we face on the ground today in Iraq came together. This is not mere “history.” We are in a hot war against an enemy that our intelligence community never really understood.

As for the second, part of the reason that the Pentagon’s war planners and other analysts did not adequately plan for this insurgency was that they underestimated Saddam’s relationship with various terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. As I have mentioned previously, one of the documents details a series of contacts between Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda in the mid 1990’s. Osama bin Laden even requested Iraq’s support in conducting “joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz [Saudi Arabia].” The document indicates that Saddam’s operatives “were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up.” [I would note that one of the “doors of cooperation” that opened up years later was jointly working against American forces in Iraq. There is a wealth of evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his goons were working with Saddam’s regime prior to the war in order to set up cells for “resisting” American troops.]

This document provides new details on the meetings that were taking place between Iraqi operatives and al Qaeda in the mid-1990’s. The intelligence community and especially some within the CIA knew that there were meetings taking place, but they didn’t have any agents inside the meetings so they simply dismissed the threat.

This brings me to the final point: how the documents can help reform the way our analysts and operatives think about terrorism and other intelligence problems. Robert Baer was one of the CIA’s men in Khartoum in the mid-1990’s when Iraqi intelligence was meeting with bin Laden. In Sleeping With The Devil, Baer explains, “Iraqi intelligence had met with bin Laden on several occasions. Although we couldn’t be positive, we assumed the emissaries were only taking bin Laden’s measure, making sure he wasn’t about to turn on them.”

That’s one heck of an assumption. But now we have a document authored by Iraqi Intelligence that summarizes what they were thinking in their meetings with bin Laden, the same ones Baer discusses. There is no mention of being worried about bin Laden turning on them. This was just an ad hoc rationalization that Baer and his cohorts invented. So, I would argue, this is one example of how the documents can help our intelligence folks understand that they should be more careful about the assumptions they make.

In sum, whether it is the discovery of 500 chemical weapons shells or an analysis of the documents created by Iraqi intelligence, the evidence collected in Iraq can begin to fill in the blanks. This isn’t a matter of “selling the war,” as some critics will argue. It is a matter of getting it right, helping the men and women on the ground in Iraq with a better information about their enemies, and understanding why our intelligence services have failed so frequently.

McCarthy:  The longer this conversation goes on, the more it becomes clear that the information which has been withheld is vital for prospective as well as retrospective purposes.  That worries me as much as it intrigues me.

Prospective usefulness is a major justification typically relied on by government to withhold information, the unassailable truism being that we don't want to enhance the enemy's ability to inflict harm by educating him as to our knowledge and capabilities.  People who work in government are only human.  If they stand to be embarrassed in some way by revelation, they will be apt to find reasons not to disclose — and to make use of any ostensibly valid justifications available … even if they are just a fig leaf for less worthy motivations.

Powerfully suggested by our conversation, for example, is something perspicacious observers have suspected for some time:  viz., that Iraq does not present a textbook post-war mop-up insurgency (like Germany circa 1945-46) but is, instead, the war Saddam and his cohorts planned to fight all along.  That is, knowing they could not go toe-to-toe with the American military, they have engaged in a sort of rope-a-dope strategy:  giving up the body (in this case Baghdad, where the regime seemed to collapse so quickly in Spring 2003), and opting for a long, drawn-out conflict which would combine (a) the effectiveness of modern terrorism (viz., diffuse cells and weapons seeded among civilian populations which are very difficult to retaliate against), and (b) the Achilles heel of modern western democracy (viz., international law and the media which, respectively and over time, empower terrorists and play on our innate aversion as civilized people to the inevitable gore and collateral damage of warfare).

Now, if this actually was a planned enemy strategy, it would obviously be very valuable for the country to know that.  There may be many conflicts to come in which we see this model again (especially given how patently effective it has been in terms of public opinion).  If what is happening in Iraq is understood as a function of enemy planning rather than spontaneous mismanagement of a conflict, not only might there be more public support for the war effort but, at least equally important, there would be a surge of support for rethinking: (a) military strategy, (b) our international law obligations (e.g., do the Geneva Conventions make sense in their totality for 21st Century conflicts?), and (c) the way the press reports wars (e.g., would at least some reporting be different if the media understood beyond cavil that they were being used quite intentionally as part of the enemy arsenal?) (And, yes, I understand that some would be delighted to be used this way.)

But, declassification of information revealing that this was the enemy's strategy (if, in fact, it was) could plainly be very embarrassing.  Not only would our intelligence have missed it a priori; it would have continued to miss it even as it was happening — and the “Mission Accomplished” business, which the administration understandably does not want to be reminded about, would be more politically damaging than it has been to this point (for it would underscore that we declared victory before the enemy, for all practical purposes, had even started to fight).

Michael's right:  Too bad.  Tom is right:  This has too much consequence for national security going forward to be suppressed.  And Mr. Gaubatz is right in what I take to be his major point:  This situation screams out for effective congressional oversight because without that kind of pressure the executive branch will always be inclined to withhold intelligence.  On that last, Mr. Gaubatz and I simply disagree on the minor point:  I think Senator Santorm and Congressmen Hoekstra and Weldon have done extraordinarily valuable work here, and if it happens to be the case that they benefitted politically from some of it, that doesn't deflate the value.  (In point of fact, I think a lot of what they have done has been at great political cost to themselves — the war is very unpopular in the media, which promotes the screwy conventional wisdom that there were no WMD and no “operational relationship” between Saddam and al Qaeda.)  But I agree that effective oversight is crucial.

FP: Dave Gaubatz, a final word?Gaubatz: On July 27, 2006, Senator Rick Santorum was interviewed by Sean Hannity.  Senator Santorum announced there have been suspected WMD sites in Iraq that were never inspected since 2003. 

He went on to say WMD has now been confirmed at some of these sites.  Sean Hannity put Senator Santorum on the hot seat.  He asked him why have the WMD not been retrieved if it has been confirmed.

Senator Santorum stumbled and could only say the Administration has confirmed WMD is at a location, but could not explain to Hannity why it hasn’t been retrieved.

Now for the complete story: I have battled politicians for 3 plus years to have 4 suspected WMD sites searched.  I have always said the U.S. need only take my grid coordinates and review satellite images before the war at these sites.  The images would reveal WMD being buried at the sites. Finally on 14/15 June 2006 I was able to present the intelligence to the DIA (outstanding organization).  We also reviewed some satellite images of the areas.

Hannity had asked Santorum why the U.S. just doesn’t retrieve the WMD.  The answer is what I have said for years.  The satellite images have confirmed WMD was buried at the locations I identified.  In order to retrieve the WMD the U.S. must drain sections of the Euphrates River, dig many feet under the riverbed, and then open the concrete bunkers.  Not an easy task and very time consuming.

This is why it has not yet been retrieved.  It will be and Senator Santorum, Congressman Curt Weldon, and Congressman Pete Hoekstra know this.

Congressman Michael Burgess (Tx) called me on Thursday, July 27, from his DC office.  He recently returned from Iraq as did Congressman Pete Hoekstra.  Congressman Burgess asked to meet with me in his Dallas office.

Eventually all of this will be acknowledged by Senator Santorum, Congressman Hoekstra, and Congressman Weldon.  We have disagreed on the methods, but I respect these gentlemen and know they will inform the public with the truth.

The big question is why it has taken me 3 plus years to get this done which has put our troops and America in danger? Possibly politics?

FP: Well, one day we will have a symposium to dig deeper into this question. And hopefully you will join us.

Michael Ledeen, Thomas Joscelyn, Andrew McCarthy and Dave Gaubatz, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.