Associated Press
September 17, 2004
WASHINGTON —
Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no
weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to
people familiar with the findings.
In a 1,500-page report, the head of
the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned
materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements
and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs
for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing
touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons
programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international
community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United
States has found no weapons of mass destruction -- its chief argument for
overthrowing th e regime.
An intelligence official said Duelfer could
wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to
declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government
did so on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and
is not yet completed.
If the report is released publicly before the
Nov. 2 election, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another
opportunity to criticize the Bush administration's leading argument for war in
Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.
Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized the president's handling of the
war in Iraq, but has also said he still would have voted to authorize the war
even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.
Duelfer's report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his
predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October.
Kay left the post in January, saying , "We were almost all wrong" about Saddam's
weapons programs.
The new analysis, however, is expected to fall
between the position of the Bush administration before the war -- portraying
Saddam as a grave threat -- and the declarative statements Kay made after he
resigned.
It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October
findings. Then, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited
evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found
substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic
missiles beyond prohibited ranges.
He also said there was almost no
sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.
Duelfer's report doesn't reach firm conclusions in all areas. For
instance, U.S. officials are still investigating whether Saddam's fallen regime
may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the
border to Syria. That has not been confirmed, but remains an area of interest
to th e U.S. government.
The Duelfer report will come months after the
Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing assessment of the prewar
intelligence on Iraq.
After a yearlong inquiry, the Republican-led
committee said in July the CIA kept key information from its own and other
agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the
assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush
and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.
The Iraq
Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam's weapons
and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian
and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been
devoted to the effort.