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The WMD evidence Blair ignored


December 22, 2009 - Tony Blair's self-serving assertion that he would have found a pretext to invade Iraq even if he had known Saddam Hussein had not possessed WMD is another example of the ex-PM distorting the truth over Iraq. Blair knew Saddam had no WMD at least six years before he colluded with George Bush to illegally invade Iraq. This was reported originally in US magazine Newsweek in its March 3 2003 edition, but it then disappeared from the pre-invasion public debate. The evidence came from Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Corporation, which was in charge of Iraq's weapons programme...

[61323]



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The WMD evidence Blair ignored

David Lowry

December 22, 2009


Tony Blair's self-serving assertion that he would have found a pretext to invade Iraq even if he had known Saddam Hussein had not possessed WMD is another example of the ex-PM distorting the truth over Iraq.

Blair knew Saddam had no WMD at least six years before he colluded with George Bush to illegally invade Iraq.

This was reported originally in US magazine Newsweek in its March 3 2003 edition, but it then disappeared from the pre-invasion public debate.

The evidence came from Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialisation Corporation, which was in charge of Iraq's weapons programme.

Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan in 1995 together with his brother Colonel Saddam Kamel. They took with them crates of documents revealing past weapons programmes and provided these to UNSCOM, the United Nations WMD inspection team.

Hussein and Saddam Kamel ill-advisedly agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated on February 23 1996.

Fifteen days after Hussein Kamel left Iraq he was interviewed by UNSCOM director Rolf Ekeus, International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director and head of the inspections team in Iraq Professor Maurizio Zifferero and Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led UNSCOM's ballistic missile team.

In the transcript of the interview, Kamel states categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed."

Kamel specifically discusses the significance of anthrax, which he portrays as the "main focus" of the biological programme.

Smidovich asks Kamel: "Were weapons and agents destroyed?"

Kamel replies: "Nothing remained."

He also describes the elimination of prohibited missiles.

"Not a single missile left, but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed."

On VX nerve gas, he claims: "They put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the programme was terminated."

Ekeus asks Kamel: "Did you restart VX production after the Iran-Iraq war?"

Kamel replies: "We changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine ... We gave instructions not to produce chemical weapons."

The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported.

Former Labour MP Llew Smith, who represented Blaenau Gwent in south Wales, also raised these matters in an unreported parliamentary debate on Iraq held in June 2003, barely a month after Bush proclaimed "mission accomplished."

Smith pointed out that "we continue to be told that war with Iraq was necessary because Iraq had those weapons of mass destruction which were a threat to the world and because it was willing to use them and could deliver them within 45 minutes, yet we have still not found those weapons."

In fact Smith was the first MP to raise doubts over the now infamous 45-minute claim.

As long ago as October 2002 - just a month after the government's "dodgy dossier" on Iraq's fantasy WMD was published - Smith challenged Blair on the basis of the dossier's assertion that Saddam was determined to retain the weapons of mass destruction that the dossier discusses.

And Smith asked him if he would "set out the technical basis for the assertion ... that chemical or biological weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order to do so." Blair disingenuously and shamefacedly lied: "These points reflect specific intelligence information."

Smith later put the above quotes from Kamel on the parliamentary record and revealed that on March 26 2003, just days after the invasion began, he had asked Blair if he would place the text of Kamel's interview in the parliamentary library.

The prime minister replied: "Following his defection ... Kamel was interviewed by UNSCOM and by a number of other agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the interviews."

However, Smith revealed that the BBC had those transcripts and he asked: "Why then were the prime minister, the security services and president Bush's administration prepared to believe the defector Kamel's information on the extent of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction procurement and development network but not to listen to information on the Iraqi regime's destruction of weapons of mass destruction?"

Sir John Chilcot should surely obtain the text of the interview from M16 - or the BBC - at the earliest opportunity and put its contents to Blair when he appears before the Iraq inquiry early next year.






:: Article nr. 61323 sent on 22-dec-2009 15:10 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=61323

Link: www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/84807



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