Back in 2003, Charles Hanley of the Associated Press took a close look at Secretary of State Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and at how well his claims there were holding up after half a year:
Powell's case for Iraq war falls apart 6 months later 08/10/03.
Hanley looks at Powell's claims in several different areas and finds that they all were, well, false: satellite photos, audiotapes, hidden documents, desert weapons, U-2s and scientists, anthrax, bioweapons trailers, unmanned aircraft, "four tons" of VX, the embedding of chemical weapons infrastructure in civilian industry, "500 tons" of chemical agent, chemical warheads, deployed weapons, a revived nuclear programs, the now-infamous aluminum tubes, magnets (remember the magnets of mass destruction?) and scuds/new missiles.
Hanley's piece is a valuable summary of what many Americans and many foreign leaders took to be the most persuasive case the American side made for the existence of WMDs. Which of, course, didn't exist any more, as we know now. As Hanley describes it:
It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors and other intelligence sources.
The defectors and other sources went unidentified. The audiotapes were uncorroborated, as were the photo interpretations. No other supporting documents were presented. Little was independently verifiable.
Still, in the United States, Powell's sober speech was galvanizing, swinging opinion toward war. "Compelling," "powerful," "irrefutable" were adjectives used by both pundits and opposition Democratic politicians. Editor & Publisher magazine found prowar sentiment among editorial writers doubled overnight, to three-quarters of large U.S. newspapers.
His article goes into quite a bit of detail of how badly off-base Powell's claims were. It also gives a good idea of how flimsy the bases for many of the claims were at the time.
Take anthrax, for instance. Here was Powell's scary picture of Iraq's alleged anthrax:
Less than a teaspoon of dry anthrax, a little bit -- about this amount. This is just about the amount of a teaspoon. Less than a teaspoonful of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down the United States Senate in the fall of 2001.
This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount, just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.
Iraq declared 8500 liters of anthrax. But UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably accounted for even one teaspoonful of this deadly material. And that is my third point. And it is key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they admitted they had and we know they had.
They have never accounted for all the organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the weapons filled with these agents such as their R-400 bombs. This is evidence, not conjecture. This is true. This is all well documented.
And what did we know about it a year ago? Hanley:
No anthrax has been reported found.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, in a confidential report last September [2002, prior to Powell's UN presentation], recently disclosed, said that although it believed Iraq had biological weapons, it didn't know their nature, amounts or condition.
Three weeks before the invasion, an Iraqi report of scientific soil sampling supported the regime's contention that it had destroyed its anthrax stocks at a known site, the U.N. inspection agency said May 30. Iraq also presented a list of witnesses to verify amounts, the agency said. It was too late for inspectors to interview them; the war soon began.
And how about that scary frightening VX chemical toxin? Powell:
It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent VX. A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons. The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law.
UNSCOM also gained forensic evidence that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery, yet to this day Iraq denies it had ever weaponized VX. And on January 27, UNMOVIC told this Council that it has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX program.
Four tons, people! FOUR TONS!! And one teensy little drop will kill you in a matter of minutes!! We gotta git Sad-dum! We gotta git him now!!
The reality? Hanley:
Powell didn't note that most of that four tons was destroyed in the 1990s under U.N. supervision. Before the invasion, the Iraqis made a "considerable effort" to prove they had destroyed the rest, doing chemical analysis of the ground where inspectors confirmed VX had been dumped, the U.N. inspection agency reported May 30.
Experts at Britain's International Institute of Strategic Studies said any pre-1991 VX most likely would have degraded anyway. No VX has been reported found since the invasion. (my emphasis)
Bogus. Just bogus stuff. Go look at Powell's speech, with all it's official-looking charts and satellite photos and circles and stories about devious vehicle movements. All of it hokum. And on the basis of this, we went to war and undertook a long-term occupation of the country.
And what are the consequences of this kind of grandly deceptive statesmanship? Here's one:
Penn Hills soldier killed in Iraq Pittsburg Tribune-Review 08/16/04
A soldier from Penn Hills was killed in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol vehicle, the Department of Defense announced Sunday.
Army 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, 24, was killed Friday in Khalidiyah. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division based in Fort Riley, Kan.
"My son was a hero," said Neil Santoriello, who declined further comment. ...
Members of Santoriello's Boy Scout troop were saddened by the news of his death.
"When I heard someone from our troop died, I didn't think it could be him," said John Hackett, of Verona, who was Santoriello's Scout master when he earned his Eagle Scout rank about seven years ago. "As a Scout master, he was like a son. It's a real loss."
Yes, a loss much more real than the claims in Powell's report to the United Nations.
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