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August 25, 2003
Ritter on Iraq Nuc.-Bact.-Chem prog review
Ritter has a fine little opinion piece in the NYT regarding the review of the Iraqi NBC weapons programs. It includes yet more disturbing claims of the inattention and poor organization for occupation.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
A Weapons Cache We'll Never See
By SCOTT RITTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/25/opinion/25RITT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
To quote the article:
"Some 1,500 American investigators are scouring the Iraqi countryside for evidence of weapons of mass destruction that has so far eluded them. ...
It is a daunting task. And according to many Iraqi scientists and officials I have spoken to, it is not being done very well.
A logical starting place for such a mission is in the Jadariya district of downtown Baghdad, adjacent to the campus of Baghdad University: the complex that housed the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate. ...
As such, the directorate was the repository for every Iraqi government record relating to its weapons programs, as well as to the activities at dozens of industrial sites in Iraq that were "dual-use" — used to manufacture permitted items but capable of being modified to manufacture proscribed material.
For 12 years the Iraqis collected and collated this data. If we inspectors had a question about a contract signed between country A and Iraqi factory B, the directorate could produce it at short notice. The 12,500 page "full, final and complete declaration" provided by Iraq to the United Nations in the fall of 2002 was compiled using this archive. And the directorate's holdings went well beyond paperwork: every interview conducted by the United Nations inspectors with Iraqi scientists throughout the 1990's was videotaped and available for review.
....
And it seems that after the coalition troops moved into Baghdad, the records were all there for the taking. ....
Yet these eyewitnesses have provided me with a troubling tale. On April 8, they say, the buildings were occupied by soldiers from the Army's Third Infantry Division. For two weeks, the Iraqi scientists and administrators showed up for work but, according to several I have spoken to, no one from the coalition interviewed them or tried to take control of the archive.
Rather, these staff members have told me, after occupying the facility for two weeks, the American soldiers simply withdrew. Soon after, looters entered the facility and ransacked it. Overnight, every computer was stolen, disks and video records were destroyed, and the carefully organized documents were ripped from their binders and either burned or scattered about. According to the former brigadier general, who went back to the building after the mob had gone, some Iraqi scientists did their best to recover and reconstitute what they could, but for the vast majority of the archive the damage was irreversible.
....
Why was this allowed to happen? I am as puzzled as the Iraqis. Given the high priority the Bush administration placed on discovering evidence of weapons of mass destruction, it seems only logical that seizing the directorate archive would have been a top priority for the coalition forces — at least as important as the Iraqi Oil Ministry or the National Museum. And it seems highly unlikely that coalition leaders didn't know what the archive contained. I was one of many international inspectors who led investigations of the facility — and the data we produced was used by the American government as part of its case that Saddam Hussein was hiding prohibited programs."
Posted by The Lounsbury at August 25, 2003 11:05 AM
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Jan-Dec 2003
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