Scary Reading Deep In the Duelfer Report | Disasters Depicted as Triumphs

ntroducing two new papers from Foreign Policy In Focus

For Scary Halloween Reading, Dig Deeper into the Duelfer Report
By Michael Roston

America received a frightening jolt when the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that heavy-duty explosives perfectly suited for terrorist bombing attacks had gone missing from critical sites in Iraq.  But a far more terrifying revelation was made in the Central Intelligence Agency’s publicly released Duelfer Report on October 6.  It took some effort, but anyone who dug deep enough into this document submitted by Charles Duelfer, fully titled the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, found reading far more scary than any of the ghost stories you might hear this Halloween.
 
If you thought the missing explosives were bad, just turn to the annex labeled “Al-Abud Network” buried in the report’s third volume.  In plain language, the Iraq Survey Group reports on the activities of insurgents who worked with a civilian Iraqi chemist to build chemical weapons to use against Coalition forces. Fortunately, these insurgents foundered before they were caught by U.S.-led troops.  But, the report menacingly warns that al-Abud is “not the only group planning or attempting to produce or acquire CBW agents … availability of chemicals and materials dispersed throughout the country, and intellectual capital from the former WMD programs increases the future threat to Coalition Forces.”

So, since we toppled Saddam Hussein for threatening us with WMD that weren’t there, terrorists in Iraq have started working with Saddam’s intellectual dream team to build new WMD to use against American forces?

Michael Roston (mr2302@columbia.edu) is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org). He previously covered the issue of Iraqi scientists for the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. This article represents his own personal views.

See new FPIF commentary online at:
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410halloween.html

With printer friendly PDF version at:
http://www.fpif.org/pdf/gac/0410halloween.pdf

For More Information:
Duelfer Report
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/

Bush Administration Disasters Depicted as Triumphs
By Stephen Zunes

Even putting aside the many important legal and moral questions about the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, it has been a disaster even on practical terms. Mainstream to conservative strategic analysts and retired generals--along with the majority of career professionals in the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA--recognize that the invasion and occupation has made America less secure rather than more secure.

Still, the Bush administration continues to defend its actions and public opinion polls still show that a majority of Americans trust George W. Bush more than John Kerry to defend America. This is in large part because, throughout this fall’s campaign, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been making demonstrably false and misleading claims about what motivated administration decisions as well as the results of their actions.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.  He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project (online at http://www.fpif.org) and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) available for purchase online at http://www.irc-online.org/content/books/zunes.tinderbox.php.

See new FPIF Policy Report online at:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/0410gopiraq.html

With printer friendly PDF version at:
http://www.fpif.org/pdf/reports/PR0410gopiraq.pdf

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