Iraq's nuclear non-capability (1)

The war storm swirled by the American and British governments against Iraq, particularly the issue of Iraq's nuclear capability, raises serious doubts about the credibility of their intelligence sources as well as their non-scientific and threadbare interpretation of that information. It is often stated that insider information on this matter is scarce. Perhaps it is not too late to rectify this misinformation campaign.

I worked with the Iraqi nuclear programme from 1968 until my departure from Iraq in late 1998. Having been closely involved in most of the major nuclear activities of that programme, be it the Russian research reactor in the late 1960s, the French research reactors in the late 1970s, the Russian nuclear power programme in the early 1980s, the nuclear weapons programme during the 1980s and, finally, the confrontations with UN inspection teams in the 1990s, it behoves me that I may ridicule the present American and British allegations about Iraq's nuclear capability.

It would be interesting to start my discourse in 1991. A week before the cessation of two months of saturation bombings of the target-rich Iraq, it came to the attention of the Americans that a certain complex of buildings in Tarmiah that was carpet bombed, for lack of any other remaining prominent targets, exhibited unusual swarming activity by rescuers the next morning. When they compared the photographs of that complex with other standing structures in Iraq, they were surprised to find an exact replica of that complex in the north of Iraq, near Sharqat, which was nearing completion. They directed their bombers to demolish that complex a few days before the end of hostilities. My family, along with the families of most prominent Iraqi nuclear scientists and the top management of that complex, were residing in the housing complex. These two complexes were designed for the Calutron separators, the method used by the American Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic weapons that were dropped by the Americans on Japan.

At the end of 1991, and after the infamous UN inspector David Kay got hold of many of the nuclear weapons programme's reports, whose documentation and hiding I was in charge of until the start of the war, the Americans realized that their saturation bombing had also missed a most important complex of buildings, at al-Atheer, that was the centre for the design and assembly of the nuclear bomb. A mere one bomb, thermally guided, had hit the electric substation outside the perimeter of the complex, causing little damage.

The telling revelation about these two events is the dearth of any information, until 1991, in the coffers of the heavily subsidized American and British intelligence services about these building complexes. More importantly, they had no idea of the programmes that they harboured, which were on full steam for the previous 10 years.

What really happened to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme after the 1991 war?

Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the entire organization that was responsible for the nuclear weapons project was directed to the reconstruction of the heavily damaged oil refineries, electric power stations and telephone exchange buildings. The developed expertise of the several thousand scientific, engineering and technical personnel manifested itself in the impressive restoration of the oil, electric and communications infrastructure in a matter of months.

Then, the UN inspectors were ushered in. The senior scientists and engineers among the nuclear personnel were instructed many times on how to cooperate with the inspectors. We were also asked to hand in to our own officials any reports or incriminating evidence, on pain of severe punishment, including the death penalty, for failing to do so. In the first few months, the clean sheets were hung up for all to see. When the scientific questioning mounted, our scientists asked to refer to the scientific and technical reports that had been amassed during the 10 years of activity. But a crucial error was committed, in that an order was issued to return the project's documents, which had been travelling up and down Iraq in a welded train carriage, for depositing in their original location. That is where David Kay pounced on them in the early morning hours in September 1991. Among the documents were those of al-Atheer and the bomb specifications.

In the following few years, the nuclear weapons project organization was slowly disbanded; by 1994, its various departments were either elevated to independent civilian industrial enterprises or absorbed into the Military Industrial Authority under Hussein Kamil, who later escaped to Jordan in 1996 and then returned to Baghdad where he was murdered.

Meanwhile, the brinkmanship with the UN inspectors continued. At one heated encounter, an American inspector remarked that the nuclear scientists and engineers were still around, accusingly hinting that they may be readily used for a rejuvenated nuclear programme. The retort was, "What do you want us to do to satisfy you? Ask them to commit suicide?"

In 1994, a report surfaced claiming that Iraq was still intent on manufacturing a nuclear bomb and had been continuing this work since 1991. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors brought the report to Baghdad, demanding a full explanation. Being responsible for the proper issuance and the archiving of the scientific and engineering reports for the nuclear weapons project during the 1980s, my opinion on the authenticity of the report was requested. The report was well written, most probably by someone who had detailed knowledge of the existing documentation procedures. However, it was immediately pointed out to the IAEA inspectors that certain words used in the report would not normally be used by us, but by Iranians, and an Arabic-Iranian dictionary was brought in to verify our findings. The IAEA inspectors never referred back to that report.

During these years, the spectre of hyperinflation began to appear. In the following years it would spell the end of the careers of most of Iraq's nuclear scientists and engineers.

In 1996, Hussein Kamil, who was in charge of the spectrum of chemical, biological and nuclear programmes, announced from his self-imposed exile in Amman that there were hidden scientific caches in his farm in Iraq. Apparently, he had his security entourage stealthily salvage what they thought were the most important pieces of information and documentation in these programmes. The UN inspectors pounced in, and a renewed, strenuous series of confrontations unfolded until they were asked to leave Iraq in 1998.

In the final years of the 1990s, we struggled hard to produce a satisfying report, to the best of our knowledge (and sometimes memory), for the IAEA inspectors on the whole gamut of Iraq's nuclear activities, including the weapons programme. The IAEA finally issued its report in October 1997 mapping in great details these activities and vaguely raising some "politically correct" queries.

In the meantime - and this is the gist of my discourse - the economic standing of the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers (along with the rest of the civil servants and the professional middle class) had crumpled pathetically to poverty levels. Even with occasional salary inducements and some flimsy benefits, many of this highly educated elite had been forced to sell their possessions just to keep their families alive. Needless to say, their spirits had sunk very low and their cynicism had risen high. A relatively few had managed to leave Iraq. But, because of family ties, poverty and fear of the brutal security apparatus, the majority are too frightened even to consider a plan of escape. Their previous determination and drive of the 1980s have been crushed by the harsh economic realities, their knowledge and experience rusting with age and distance from research and work in their fields.

Until my departure from Iraq in late 1998, and having often visited most of the newly created industrial enterprises commandeered by the previous nuclear scientists and engineers, as well as the barely-functioning Nuclear Research Institute at Tuwaitha, one cannot but notice the pathetic mere shadow of their former selves. The dreaded fear of those who work in them is that of retirement - on a pension equivalent to 2 US dollars per month.

Yet, the American and British intelligence services, more likely tainted by war-hungry political considerations, seem to blow a balloon full of holes. A consignment of aluminium pipes may, perhaps, could and might possibly end in kilometres-long (according to Western scientists) highly technical centrifugal spinners. One would hope not to put it beyond the intelligence of the US and British intelligence services to, for once, point out to their leaders that there are no remaining qualified Iraqi staff to set up and run these supposed enrichment spinners. Last month, on a recent guided tour by journalists to a suspected, maybe, possible uranium extraction plant in Akashat in western Iraq, an Iraqi pointed to the demolished buildings and asked a rhetorical, tongue-in-cheek question: "Who would make any use of these ruins? Maybe your experts would tell us how."

While the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers have not committed suicide, the difference between that and their present existence is, by now, is academic.

Bush and Blair are pulling their publics by the nose, once again covering their hollow, patriotic jingoism with shoddy intelligence. But the two parading emperors have no clothes.

(1) This article was originally published by YellowTimes,org on 21 November 2002.

Saddam's bombmaker is full of lies (2)

The book Saddam's Bombmaker, recently published by Khidhir Hamza, recounted the author's 22 years of experience with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Hamza exaggerated to a great extent his own role in the nuclear weapons programme. As I personally know the author and have worked with him during these two decades, I wish to clarify the following untruths and misinformation that have been postulated by him in his book.

There is a huge difference between those who worked with the government for scientific and professional reasons despite being under the sharp sword of government security agencies, and those who try to hide their fear with a fig leaf. A few scientists who believed in their work realized the slippery road they were treading and tried to leave before and after the 1991 Gulf War. While some were able to flee Iraq, others, such as Dr al-Shahrastani (who was also charged with other offences), ceased his work despite the penalty of death given to such rebellious actions.

But when the bells of fear first started to ring in Hamza's mind in 1974, when he prepared the first nuclear weapons project report at the request of the government, he decided to stay in Iraq until it was convenient for him to go abroad. In the 1970s and 1980s, it would have been much easier and less risky to leave, yet he wallowed in Iraq in nice Mercedes cars while attending scientific conventions with lavish stipends. He kept deluding himself, as he naively mentions in his book, that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the CIA would contact him and magically whisk him out of Iraq as if on a flying carpet.

Even though he was the head of the physics department in the nuclear research centre for 10 years during the 1970s, his deep inner fear of radiation prevented him from ever entering the reactor hall or touching any scientific instruments, probably because of his continual fear of an electric jolt that he experienced as a child, as his book mentions.

Hamza's aversion to scientific experimentation drove him to insist on working solely on the highly theoretical three-body-problem during the 1970s, far removed from any of the initial work on fission that was carried on during that period at the Iraqi Nuclear Research Centre. He did not, even remotely, get involved in any scientific research, except for journalistic articles, dealing with the fission bomb, its components or its effects. The testimony to this is the recorded archive of the IAEC for the 1970s that point to the efforts of others in this field, and none to the self-proclaimed "bombmaker".

At the end of the 1970s, he completely refused to take any responsibility in the Iraqi-purchased French research reactor, and left that task to the great Egyptian scientist, Dr Yehya El-Meshad, who was assassinated by the Israeli secret service Mossad in Paris in 1980.

After he again withdrew from any leadership responsibility for the nuclear weapons project which started in earnest in 1980 in direct response to the Israeli attack on the OSIRAK reactor, leaving it to one of Iraq's great physicists, Hamza was merely assigned the gaseous diffusion project. He did, in fact, spend some effort in buying the fine filters needed for that project, but his fear of entering the project hall was a cause of many hilarious puns.

In the mid 1980s, Hamza was asked by Hussein Kamil to write a report on the progress of the weapon programme to present to the government. In response to this report, the whole programme was put under the control and guidance of Hussein Kamil himself in 1987. The pace of work accelerated immensely until 1991. However, during that time, the "bombmaker" was kicked out of the programme at the end of 1987 after he was accused of stealing a few air conditioning units from the building assigned to his project. This he conveniently omitted to mention in his book, but cited frequent travels abroad to garner assistance and equipment, while in fact he was an outcast in the project and did not attend any seminar or brainstorming sessions during that intense period.

The "bombmaker" did make a great deal in his book of his role in building the al-Atheer weapon manufacturing centre during the late 1980s, while in fact he was going round in circles doing nothing at the Tuwaitha Research Centre, as a mere has-been, and did not even have office space in al-Atheer. He was, in fact, assigned the peripheral job of writing a report on the American Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) project and spent his time collecting whatever information was available in the library from newspapers and scientific journals. He spent all his time during these critical years in the library and, in 1989, was made a sort of consultant, still loosely attached to the IAEA, but also taught at a university two days a week, far removed from any bomb making.

In addition, he was thoroughly annoyed and bitter because of the CIA's rejection of his appeal for them to take him, through the auspices of the Iraqi National Congress representative in the north of Iraq, where he fled alone, leaving his family behind, in 1994. He pathetically thought that the CIA was not aware of his miniscule role in bomb making, especially after the weapon programme's scientific report fell in the hands of the IAEA inspectors in 1991. He claimed to be a repository of secrets while in fact he was only regurgitating them. Worse than that, he claims in his book that in 1995 the CIA fabricated a story published in an English newspaper about his submitting a report on the supposedly continuing Iraqi nuclear programme just to ferret him out of his hiding place. Being a teacher at that time at a Libyan university is not a place to hide, to say the least.

The extent of his fear climaxed when the Iraqi government sent his son to Libya to persuade him to return. He rejected his son's appeals and again scrambled to Europe, knocking desperately at the doors of the IAEA and the CIA, who again gave him the cold shoulder. But then, it is most probable, the CIA reconsidered his case in the light of the escape of Hussein Kamil to Jordan and his revelation of yet more hidden technical reports at his chicken farm in Iraq. The CIA thus hoped that Hamza might fill in some small gaps in information and took him under their wings, helping him and his family to settle in the US under their protection and strings.

I can only recall the image of "the bombmaker" straggling for two decades during the 1970s, the 1980s and early 1990s with his tail between his legs, looking over his shoulders and running to whomever gave him a piece of bone with some meat on it, then suddenly springing from his cocoon at the end of the 1990s as a Don Quixote with an American mask. Brandishing his wooden sword in the small arena afforded to him by the CIA, he counted on the silence of his colleagues, either out of fear of the Iraqi security agencies or the blind cruelty of the American ones, not to expose his phoney claims in his book, which may be rendered as a repayment to the CIA for their services to him. His appearances on the weekly American talk shows are truly a reflection of his present allegiances.

The reader might question the motive of my writing on this sensitive subject and the personal tack apparent in it. All I can say is that, even if silence is golden, not to speak out at this time against such fallacies would be the stuff of cowards.

(2) This article was originally published by YellowTimes.org on 27 November 2002.

The nuclear bomb hoax (3)

In his speech in front of the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell did not offer any credible new evidence concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons capability, which Bush and his entourage continue to wave as a red flag in front of the eyes of the American people to incite them shamefully into an unjust war.

On the contrary, the few flimsy so-called pieces of evidence that were presented by Powell regarding a supposed continued Iraqi nuclear weapons programme serve only to weaken the American and British accusations and reveal their untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their threadbare arguments and misinformation campaign. The false and untrue pieces of evidence follow:

Powell, in a theatrical query, asked why the Iraqi scientists were asked to sign declarations, with a death penalty if not adhered to, not to reveal their secrets to the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) inspection teams. Exactly the opposite is true. The four or five, as I recall, such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession! Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on the testimonies of "defectors" who are motivated solely by the desire for self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders", and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any way been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence".

This is exactly the cause of the second untruth brandished by Powell: that Iraq is hiding or is still working (it is hard to discern from the tangle of his word what is really meant) on its "third" uranium enrichment process by referring to the cache of documents seized in the house of Faleh Hamza.

Faleh, according to my interpretation of the above declarations, did not consider the reports on his work to be covered under this declaration for the following reason: Faleh did dabble during the 1980s at the Physics Department in the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre itself - but not under the nuclear weapon programme activities which came under the label of the PetroChemical 3 (PC3) programme - with the uranium laser enrichment process using a couple of medium range copper lasers.

His low-key research concluded that it was not yet viable to pursue this line of enrichment on a production scale and the whole project folded up after it reached a cul-de-sac in 1988. He packed up and then joined the PC3 working on the Calutron enrichment method in 1989. Furthermore, this was well documented and explained in our final report to the IAEA inspectors in late 1997, which they confirmed and referred to in their own final report on the matter.

Yet, fully aware of this fact, the James Bondian and insulting manner with which UNMOVIC (following in the footsteps of their CIA-infiltrated UNSCOM predecessors) invaded the home of Faleh and searched it, even the private belongings of his family, in the glare of the cameras, added insult to injury and exponentially increased Faleh's position vis-a-vis the authorities who were trying to protect the scientists from such American theatrics.

Arrogantly, the Americans are wondering why other scientists are not coming forward. Even worse, Blix chose to wave this torn flag in front of the Security Council in his report on 27 January 2003. This fact alone was one of the reasons I have decided to come out. Even Mohamed Baradei, the head of the IAEA, chided Blix the following day for not taking into account the IAEA's knowledge on this matter, which was that the 3,000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapons programme. That is why he kept them at his home. It was becoming apparent that Blix was succumbing to the American pressure tactics and leaned over backwards to provide them with flimsy "proof" at the expense of his supposed fairness and mandate as a UN official. Powell grasped even this straw.

Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear-grade fissile material since 1998. He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and that the atomic bomb would be rolling out of the other door. He did not bother to ask himself the following questions:

Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving simply to feed their families on 20 US dollars a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of 2 US dollars a month?

Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for the livelihood of their families.

Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a programme? The entire nuclear weapons programme of the 1980s has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapons facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realize the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight.

Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the UN upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above. Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth.

Finally, the infamous aluminium pipes that are supposed to be used in a centrifugal enrichment process. Powell and Bush should be able to relax regarding this point, for they would have at least a 10-year attack period before Iraq would be able to militarize these pipes. According to the "American experts" themselves, such a process would need kilometres of strung out, highly tuned, delicately controlled spinners to fulfil their ill-wish for Iraq. Not to be noticed by their satellites, PowerPoint presentations and coloured arrows would then be an intelligence folly. This is not even mentioning the lack of a stable electric power supply in Iraq or the phantom of highly technical staff to run these kilometres long "very high grade and expensive" mortar casings that are not made to US military standards. Perhaps Powell's grievance was, "How dare Iraq think of such expensive mortars?"

Powell said: "Let me now turn to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons programme." This verges on being humorous. But as the Arabic proverb goes: The worst kind of misfortune is that which causes you to laugh.

(3) This article was originally published by YellowTimes.org on 7 February 2003.

The demise of the nuclear bomb hoax (4)

On 14 February 2003 Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), submitted, in accordance with UN Resolution 1441, his second report to the Security Council on Iraq's nuclear non-capability.

Much to the chagrin of President Bush and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the nuclear inspection chief's findings not only cleared the smoke from the imagined "smoking gun", but also dissipated the smog of misinformation with which the American government, hungry for war, has surrounded this issue.

The matters raised by ElBaradei merit further comment.

The inspectors, the IAEA head reported, collected hundreds of soil, air and water samples, and installed and reinstalled dozens of radioactivity detectors - including gamma-ray surveillance instruments, both airborne and ground-based - during 177 inspections and visits to 120 nuclear-related locations in the past nine weeks.

What is not generally known is that when Hans Blix, the head of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, a month ago challenged Bush and Blair to put up or shut up, in effect challenging them to produce their "sensitive" intelligence on suspected sites in order to allow the inspectors to verify the vociferous claims of the likes of White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's - "we know they have it" - a list of 25 sites was quietly provided.

The inspectors visited each one of these sites and found nothing. The total sum of all these samples, detectors and visits, as far as the nuclear weapon programme is concerned, was nil.

Powell's insinuations about Iraq's imagined nuclear capabilities (fissile ore imports, secret laser enrichment techniques, nefarious aluminium tubes, etc.) now echo with a hollow ring. One wonders what sort of scientific information he availed himself, if any, before presenting such flimsy allegations as "evidence". Perhaps he confined himself to advice from "consultants" in ivory think tanks such as the Nuclear Control Institute.

One might humbly ask what is stopping his "scientists" and consultants now from "advising" their government regarding the extreme unlikelihood that ongoing work related to research and development of a nuclear weapons programme would not leave a trace, even in minute amounts, of certain half-life isotopes that would surely be susceptible to detection by the latest highly-touted, ultra-sensitive instruments employed by the IAEA inspectors?

In succinct terms, should not the "no finding" be a finding in itself, especially in a place where something was specifically alleged to be a major finding?

Having raised the false spectre of an Iraqi mushroom cloud for a decade, Powell's scientists should consider it a matter of conscience to enlighten their government with their expertise in these matters.

The aluminium tubes fanfare so brazenly trumpeted by Powell is reduced to whether the reverse-engineering attempt by Iraqi military engineers amounted to anything more than extra precaution on the part of the engineers. They were most probably demanding definite tolerances in order to ensure the success of their attempt to manufacture locally the combustion chamber for a solid propellant rocket. Powell's only claim to annoyance is that they were more expensive than American aluminium tubes used for this purpose.

The fact is that aluminium tubes have been used to build tens of thousands of rockets. The hypothesis is that the tubes might be diverted for centrifuges. The "coating" applied to the tubes found in Iraq confirms the reason why they were purchased.

It was also amusing to realize, while I watched the generous outpouring by American "scientists" of detailed technical information in support of Powell's fallacious claim, that they were, in fact, explaining to Iraqi ears actually how to convert these aluminium tubes to centrifugal isotope enrichment cylinders! I can only hope that the "scientists" will not want to be paid for their generous technical advice from the oil-for-food programme revenue.

ElBaradei confirmed in his report that it was "intelligence" information that led UNMOVIC to the invasion of the private home of Faleh Hamza - the supposedly "secret" keeper of the laser enrichment technique - and the consequent confiscation of 2,000 pages of personal documents. Powell had pursued this case in a pathetic attempt to provide "evidence" for the third enrichment process. One wonders what kind of arm-twisting was applied to UNMOVIC (reminding me of their CIA-infiltrated UNSCOM predecessors) to carry out this James Bond-style fiasco, since the IAEA itself was already fully aware of the insignificance to the Iraqi nuclear programme of Faleh Hamza's work on laser enrichment.

We, the Iraqi nuclear team, declared as much in our final report to the IAEA in 1997, pointing clearly to the demise in 1988 of Faleh Hamza's line of research. ElBaradei confirmed that fact the day after Blix brought it up in his first report to the Security Council two weeks ago. He pointed to the personal nature of the seized papers and even chided Blix for referring to it.

One wonders whether this rejuvenated "intelligence" might not have been the stale information provided by CIA mouthpiece, Khidhir Hamza, perhaps in an attempt to stay on their payroll.

In his report to the Security Council two weeks ago Powell referred to information gleaned from "another defector in 1995. This prompted Hamza to boast, in an interview published in the Washington Post on 6 February 2003, "he was referring to me".

If Khidhir Hamza has indeed managed, through his connections with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, to bypass the entire intelligence community, which disposed of him years ago, if his information is false or silly, if he was not there when Iraq began its serious weaponization programme, if he has no new sources, if his testaments are filled with personal diatribes against Iraq, why would the secretary of defence turn to him for information?

The US could save billions in the intelligence budget if it would just use what it does find and discard what it knows is false!

At the end of his report, ElBaradei unequivocally stated that the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme was "neutralized" and that there is "no evidence" of its rejuvenation. Being part of the UN system, he felt the need to add a few politically correct question marks concerning "speed", "assurance" and "patterns" of intentions and actions.

Certain European countries are rightly asking how long Bush and Powell can blow into a balloon full of holes. One might also reasonably ask about Bush's and Powell's "speed", "assurances" and "patterns" in the misinformation game.

Powell is certainly not new to it.

According to Geoff Simons's book The Scourging of Iraq "Washington lied persistently and comprehensively to gain the required international support [for the Gulf war]. For example, the US claimed to have satellite pictures showing a massive Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi-Iraqi border. When sample photographs were later obtained from Soyuz Karta by an enterprising journalist, no such evidence was discernible."

Simons makes reference to an article by Maggie O'Kane, published in the Guardian Weekend on 16 December 1995, which revealed that the enterprising journalist was Jean Heller of the St Petersburg Times in Florida.

Eventually, the US commander - none other than Colin Powell himself - admitted that there had been no massing of Iraqi troops. But by then, the so-called evidence had served its purpose.

Yet with his tongue in his cheek, Powell claimed on 14 February 2003 in the Toronto Star, while still blistering under Blix's and ElBaradei's reports, that "force should always be a last resort - I have preached this for most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat".

Perhaps this time history should not be allowed to repeat itself.

(4) This article was originally published by YellowTimes.org on 16 February 2003.

The fig leaf of moral impotence (5)

On 7 March 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), submitted, in accordance with UN Resolution 1441, his third report to the Security Council on Iraq's nuclear non-capability.

ElBaradei's report unequivocally disproved most of US Secretary of State Colin Powell's alleged "evidence" of Iraq's continued nuclear weapons programme after the end of the 1991 war - "evidence" which Powell so brazenly offered in a theatrical presentation to the same Security Council just a month earlier, on 5 February 2003. Powell's pathetic response to ElBaradei's report would be laughable was it not for the moral crime the Bush administration is about to commit in Iraq.

ElBaradei's report confirmed the following:

The alleged Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Niger in the late 1990s was based on inauthentic documents supplied by American and British intelligence. This brings to mind the "scientific report" hurriedly brought by UNSCOM inspectors to Baghdad in 1994 demanding an explanation of the report's claims of a continued effort by Iraq to develop its nuclear bomb design in the years following the 1991 war. Having had responsibility for the issuance and archiving of all scientific reports emanating from the nuclear weapons development programme before the 1991 war (except for the centrifugal enrichment process), it was not difficult for me to discern the intimate knowledge and accuracy of the authors' competence in preparing that fake report with regards to the intricacies of our own documentation procedures. However, the telltale use of Iranian synonyms for key words employed in that fake report, such as the reference to the two-part core of the atomic bomb as a "dome" in Iranian parlance instead of the "hemisphere" as used by Iraqi scientists, quickly laid to rest the authenticity of that fake report. With the aid of an Iranian-Arabic dictionary that we provided to the UNSCOM inspectors, they left without further ado.

The aluminium tube fiasco, so widely publicized on America's CNN and FOX networks, has been proven to be a reverse-engineering attempt by Iraqi military engineers to locally manufacture the combustion chamber for a solid propellant rocket. That attempt extends back to the mid-1980s. The extra tolerances, that Powell so desperately clung to in his unabashed retort, were no more than extra precautionary steps on the part of the engineers to ensure the success of their attempts. One may assume that these engineers would have indeed been surprised to learn from the American "experts" that such tolerances, if further pursued, would be suited for equipment in a uranium centrifuge process.

Having forbidden, under the economic sanctions, the import of pencils to Iraq for fear that the graphite inserts might be used for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons, the attempt to locally produce small magnets for all sorts of civilian use was interpreted in the fertile imagination of the American "experts" as proof of a possible rejuvenation of a uranium centrifugal enrichment process. ElBaradei's team of scientific experts in the field of uranium centrifugal enrichment, which probably has cost millions of dollars paid by Iraqi funds from the Oil for Food programme, confirmed the simple and evident truth: the unfettered civilian use of such magnets.

Only the fourth and final fictitious piece of "evidence" presented by Powell in his 5 February 2003 report to the Security Council was unfortunately missing from ElBaradei's exposition. Powell deliberately lied, either knowingly or because he was deceived by Iraqi defectors' lies, when he claimed that the declarations we, as Iraqi scientists, had signed several times on pain of death prevented the Iraqi scientists from exposing sensitive information to the inspectors. The truth of the matter is that these declarations ordered us not to hide any sensitive reports and documents in our homes. The Iraqi government did not want to be held responsible for hidden documents when the UN began to inspect Iraq. We signed four or five such declarations starting in 1992. The last such pledge was conducted in the middle of 1997. The head of the Military Industrialization Corporation, the agency in charge of all chemical, biological and nuclear weapons development, convened and headed a meeting of about 600 senior Iraqi scientists and engineers from all walks of activities in the above fields. He pointed to the fact that we had already signed a few of these declarations. He was willing to forgo all of the previous declarations if we would sign one final such declaration. In order to save us any further embarrassment or unintended folly, he urged us to go back to our homes, farmhouses and family lodgings and do one final thorough search for these documents. In the event that we did find some documents that we had inadvertently missed during our initial searches, we were to put them in a nameless envelope and deposit them on a table in an empty assigned room, without any questions asked, with full reprieve from the previously signed declarations. He gave us three days to carry out that final search. We signed the final declaration as we left that meeting in 1997. Is the information provided by American intelligence services that systematically distorted?

During my recent FOX TV Heartland show interview with John Kasich about a week ago, I was one-dimensionally bombarded with flimsy arguments by the anchor on the abundance of "Iraqi defectors [who] have told of nuclear weapon sites" and who am I to refute Khidhir Hamza, the infamous "bombmaker", who has been claiming the existence of an Iraqi nuclear weapon programme for a year now on CNN, as well as speaking to American congressional committees and right-wing "think tanks". What is stopping these defectors from informing ElBaradei and the UNMOVIC inspectors on the ground in Iraq of the locations of these phantom establishments for the production of these weapons or their components?

Two weeks ago, CBS declined to interview me for the "60 Minutes" show after they were "counselled" by a well-paid consultant from Washington D.C., who claimed to be a former UNSCOM inspector. The consultant warned CBS that the CIA had a wealth of information, unknown to me, on the existence of a continuing nuclear weapons development programme in Iraq throughout the 1990s. If this were true, why wouldn't the CIA save Colin Powell's face and provide this information to the IAEA and UNMOVIC? The American and British intelligence services did in fact provide, upon Blix's challenge to them in mid-December 2002, with a list of about 25 suspected sites, one of them marked red for extra "hush hush" care in case the Iraqis got wind of the information and hid the evidence. The inspectors duly visited and inspected each one of these sites and they found nothing incriminating. In fact, they even stated that US intelligence was providing them with nothing but "garbage after garbage after garbage". Is the American media manipulating the American people that systematically?

Unabashedly, Bush gave a speech on 7 March 2003, portraying the gathering dark clouds of a criminal war against Iraq in terms of a poker card game. He challenged other countries opposed to the criminal war to "show their cards" while the US and the UK would conveniently keep their cards hidden.

Lest he misses the point, he is playing a game of Russian roulette, and his fig leaf has fallen.

(5) This article was originally published by YellowTimes.org on 10 March 2003.

Cheney's bogus nuclear weapon (6)

On NBC's "Meet the press" last Sunday, 16 March 2003, Vice-President Cheney audaciously reiterated an ominous note.

NBC: "And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear programme, we disagree?"

Cheney: "I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community disagree. Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute... We know that, based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr ElBaradei [head of the Atomic Energy Agency] frankly is wrong."

After 218 inspections of 141 sites over three months by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei charged that the US had used faked and erroneous evidence to support the claims that Iraq was importing enriched uranium and other material, notably aluminium tubes and small magnets for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq," the chief atomic weapons inspector had told the UN Security Council on Friday 7 March 2003.

In December 2002, the American and British intelligence communities did provide, under [UN chief weapons inspector Hans] Blix's insistence, a list of 25 sites garnered from Iraqi defectors and other intelligence sources. The inspectors visited all of these sites, including one site that intelligence communities had claimed would be a promising find. Tellingly, the inspectors found nothing and their "hush hush" information was referred to by one inspector as "garbage after garbage after garbage".

So why is Cheney, after the total discrediting of all American misinformation about a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons programme, still claiming that the US has untold intelligence information about this programme?

I now tend to believe there is a more sinister implication behind Cheney's continued assertions so late in the misinformation campaign and so close to the war.

Iraq claims it has no nuclear weapons-related components left. Cheney claims that US intelligence can prove that Iraq does have these components. What if the US goes in and, after killing possibly hundreds of thousands, cannot find any components?

Would they not want to reiterate up until the last minute, as Cheney seems to be doing, that their "intelligence" does confirm that Iraq has nuclear weapons components to justify their criminal war?

However, in the event that no such components are to be found in Iraq, would it not be past the American intelligence community's bag of dirty tricks to place some bogus evidence (in places where the inspectors have not been so they cannot be refuted by them) to vindicate the tens of billions of dollars spent on this war crime and the devastation it will undoubtedly incur?

It would otherwise be hard to challenge the timing and triviality of Cheney's claim of 16 March, with Bush declaring war only one day later on 17 March.

(6) This article was originally published by YellowTimes,org on 19 March 2003.

The mirage of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (7)

In late August 2002, I listened with trepidation to President Bush's burgeoning false allegations about Iraq's nuclear military capability. Even then, one could discern that the sustained use of misinformation to support the invasion of Iraq showed that the president's claims were not based on any facts. I, having worked with Iraq's nuclear programme for 30 years, reacted with a series of articles expounding on the fact that Iraq had ceased its nuclear weapons programme at the start of the 1991 war. I refuted the claims and evidence most famously, or infamously, branded by secretary of state, Colin Powell, to the Security Council in February 2003 in which Powell argued that Iraq had rejuvenated its nuclear weapons programme after the Gulf War.

With heightened apprehension, I listened to Vice-President Dick Cheney's claim on MSNBC that the US does not accept the results of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) extensive inspections nor its failure to find any evidence of a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear weapons programme. The IAEA explicitly exposed the fact that a uranium procurement document provided by British and American intelligence as a piece of evidence proving Iraq's nuclear weapon capability was, in fact, a planted forgery. Cheney provocatively claimed, on the day before Bush's 48-hour ultimatum to invade Iraq, that US intelligence had proof otherwise. My last retort to that incredible plain lie was that some bogus evidence might be planted once US forces were on the ground in Iraq.

Bombing to waste, yet again, the main Nuclear Research Centre at Tuwaitha, and foolishly allowing American soldiers to break IAEA protective seals and opening Tuwaitha's radioactive burial mound for looters, who then contaminated themselves and their families, the Americans have yet to produce their "evidence" of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. Why is Cheney now silent about Iraq's nuclear weapons programme? With US troops in control of Iraq, this information cannot be a "national security" issue any more.

In addition to the non-existent nuclear weapons programme, two developments in the past two months have convinced me that, since 1991-1992, Iraq did not rejuvenate its chemical or biological weapons programmes, either.

The first development was a Newsweek story on 3 March 2003 unveiling, after eight years of suppression, the transcript of Hussein Kamil's debriefing by officials from the IAEA and the UN inspection team known as UNSCOM; this debriefing took place after Kamil defected to Jordan in 1995. In it, he affirmed that Iraq had indeed destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles after the Gulf War. All that remained were "hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches". The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hope of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. According to John Barry, who broke the story, the CIA and [the British foreign intelligence service] MI6 were told the same account and "a military aide who defected with Kamil ... backed Kamil's assertions about the destruction of WMD stocks". But these statements were "hushed up by the UN inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more".

On 26 February 2003, a complete copy of Hussein Kamil's transcript - an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" - was obtained by Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University analyst who in early February revealed that Tony Blair's "intelligence dossier" was plagiarized from a student's thesis. This transcript can be seen at .

On page 7 of the transcript, an UNSCOM Russian expert, with the name of Smidovich, asked the direct question: "Were weapons and agents destroyed?"

"Nothing remained," was Kamil's reply.

Smidovich insisted: "Was it before or after inspections started?"

Hussein Kamil replied: "After visits of inspection teams"

Smidovich insisted: "We could not find any traces of destruction."

Hussein Kamil reiterated: "Yes, it was done before you came in. The place they buried them was found by you."

Smidovich recollected: "Is this the place north of Baghdad where they were buried?"

Hussein Kamil replied: "It was in the month you came in. Destruction of warheads started but I could not remember the details."

Tellingly, in January 2003 Iraq collected and provided access to UNMOVIC to more than 20 personnel who actually participated in the events of the above revelation. UNMOVIC then carried out further extensive excavations at that site.

Hussein Kamil also had a few remarks on the bottom of page 5 on the habitual liar, Khidhir Hamza, who kept claiming throughout the 1990s, on CNN and FOX as well as to Congressional committees, that Iraq was on the verge of producing nuclear bombs. His accusations continued up until March 2003 when he suddenly quieted down and headed for Kuwait to receive his new post in the new "Iraqi" government.

The revelation of Hussein Kamil's detailed confession, by itself, did not induce me to endorse his assertion bluntly or publicly, though it was illuminating and historically authentic. Previously, we had heard of his confession, but not of its contents.

It was the second event, which took place two weeks ago, which convinced me of the futility of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Amer al-Saadi, the chemical engineer and senior scientific consultant to the Iraqi government, was the first prominent personality to surrender to the American forces after his German wife interceded with a German TV station to arrange for his surrender. For the past decade, he had been a polished, dignified and assured spokesman. He participated in the biological weapons programme since its start in the early 1980s. I knew him personally and had great admiration for his scientific integrity. In a 10-minute interview with German TV, al-Saadi asserted: "I was always telling the truth. Iraq does not have chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. I have nothing to hide. Time will bear me out."

Indeed, time is bearing him out to the chagrin of Bush and Blair. The American and British hopes of finding any WMDs in Iraq, not planted by them, are vanishing mirages.

Bush, Blair and their senior officials knowingly lied to their people and waged a criminal invasion in lieu of this reason. Is this the democracy model for a "liberated" Iraq?

(7) This article was originally published by YellowTimes,org on 30 April 2003.

Iraq's free fall (8)

There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This apparently became the case a few months after the end of the 1991 war when Hussein Kamel, the man in charge of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in Iraq, ordered the destruction of the chemical and biological materials and their warheads. The nuclear weapons programme had already come to a halt on the first night of bombing in January 1991. The weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of one day resuming production after inspections had finished. Hussein Kamel even disclosed the location of the hidden documents relating to the remnants of the chemical and biological programmes during his futile escape to Jordan in 1995.

Yet Bush, Blair and their senior cohorts kept brandishing their "intelligence sources" in order to whip up a fervour over the danger of Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction up until the last day before the invasion of Iraq. Once they were in Iraq, with their hundreds of "specialists", they promised to uncover the hidden weapons of mass destruction.

One such idiotic attempt was the intrusion of American soldiers in the often-bombed Nuclear Research Centre. The soldiers broke the protective seals originally placed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and opened Tuwaitha's radioactive burial mound; instead, they could have easily contacted the IAEA for an inventory of the tonnes of natural "yellow cake" and radioactive liquid and solid waste found.

The US Central Command finally allowed the Pentagon's Direct Support Team to survey the nuclear sites a week after the capture of Baghdad. When they finally reached the sites, the Pentagon's team unfortunately found them looted, raising the spectre that materials for a nuclear "dirty bomb" could now fall into the hands of terrorists. The IAEA has been desperate to visit the sites and has warned the US since 11 April 2003 of the possibility of radioactive contamination, but Washington has consistently refused to allow the IAEA inspectors in. Even recently, Rumsfeld had the criminal gall to suggest that the IAEA may return only if the UN agrees to the American conditions of carrying out its occupation of Iraq. This while tens of women and children are already exhibiting cases of radiation sickness.

In addition to the non-existent nuclear weapons programme, the 1995 interview with Hussein Kamel, which was suppressed for eight years, and the final declarations of Amer al-Saadi, the senior Iraqi scientific advisor, before surrendering to the American forces in mid-April 2003, have both alleged the destruction of all chemical and biological weapons and their warheads soon after the end of the 1991 war. These claims are holding true due to recent non-findings.

America's threadbare credibility on Iraq's WMD is stretched to the limit. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared on 10 April 10, in the heat of the invasion: "That is what this war was about." Now Donald Rumsfeld is saying something to the effect that they are invading another country to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, but he doubts whether they will find them unless people there tell the invaders where they are. Whatever happened to America's "intelligence" that was constantly touted as justification to attack Iraq?

To further underline their utter intelligence failure, the Americans are now offering a reward of 200,000 US dollars to any "noble Iraqi", as broadcasted on the radio, for providing information that may lead to the discovery of Iraqi WMDs, their locations and even the Iraqi scientists who participated in WMD programmes. Were not these the same Iraqi scientists who were being chastised by the Americans, for cowering in fear from their government, for not coming forth when UNMOVIC and the IAEA inspectors were on the ground in Iraq last winter? What is stopping these scientists now from coming out to collect this reward, perhaps to be hand-delivered by the same Iraqi defectors who were already paid similar amounts for spreading these lies during the past few years and who marched behind the American tanks during the invasion of Iraq?

What other reasons may there be but the simple stark fact that no scientists had worked on such programmes for the past 12 years, after all material evidence had been destroyed either during the 1991 war or a few months afterwards? What prevents these lying defectors, some of whom are now in Iraq to take up their new "posts", from pointing out where these weapons are? Did not Khidhir Hamza claim, throughout the late 1990s and up to March 2003, that Iraq was within a few years of producing several nuclear weapons? His silence should speak volumes, especially to CNN, FOX and the Congressional committees in Washington who trumpeted or were swayed by his deceit.

A most damning report by James Risen in the New York Times on 22 May 2003, entitled "Pre-war views of Iraq threat are under review by CIA", blithely reported that "Rumsfeld and Tenet regularly have lunch," one senior administration official said. "And last fall, they were having a conversation, and Rumsfeld said: 'If we go to war with Iraq, what are the things we should look at?' They agreed that we would have an opportunity to learn a lot about our intelligence, and how it stacks up against reality,' he continued."

A more daunting, callous explanation was offered in the same article by "A senior intelligence official [who] cautioned that the review was not designed as a formal investigation or a 'witch hunt', but rather as an intellectual exercise to find ways to improve the way the intelligence community works." This was, indeed, a criminal exercise.

Bush, Blair and their senior officials have, in essence, lied to their people and waged a criminal invasion in lieu of this unintelligent "intelligence". Is this the democracy model for a "liberated" Iraq?

Tragically, the invasion of Iraq has thrust the Iraqi people into a state of free fall. The despotic lid of Saddam was uncovered but the hole is deep and unpredictable.

The centres of power in central and southern Iraq, the ministries, banks, courts, hospitals, schools, import/export structures, and decision centres are mostly demolished. Daily living conditions are unbrearable: on top of a very serious lack of law and order, there is the lack of electricity, water, medicine, petrol and salaries. Inflation is galloping at an exponential rate. With no salaries being paid to millions of civil servants for over a month now, thousands of families have been reduced to destitute levels in masse, fuelling further lawlessness.

The Americans have proved only that they excel in mobilizing armed forces and in dropping missiles and bombs, but not in preventing a society from disintegrating. American intelligence is so flawed that it is pathetic. In addition to their delusions about weapons of mass destruction, Bush and his neo-conservatives are nothing but war robots and see the world only through US goggles. Preventing a society from disintegrating is not in the agenda or the thinking of these neo-conservatives. The Americans and the British have, in a sense, raped Iraq and left it bleeding. There they stand, with their pants down, licking their lips, just waiting to manipulate the oil industry.

A month and a half after the end of hostilities, the invaders have finally submitted a UN resolution admitting that they are occupiers. They should only expect what occupiers deserve.

(8) This article was originally published by YellowTimes,org on 23 May 2003.

Mobile lies (9)

As the swelter of anger bubbles from the machination of misinformation that led to the faltering weapons of mass destruction (WMD) casus belli for invading Iraq, the retreat and half-baked excuses of Bush, Blair, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Powell further expose the sharp edge of their deceit. Whether it was "intelligence" failure or "flailing" the intelligence, time will soon tell. In the meantime, the fig leaves keep falling.

During CNN's Late Edition with Colin Powell, reported by the Toronto Star on 9 June 2003, Powell claimed that "the two alleged mobile biological weapons labs, which are being studied by allied inspectors now in Iraq, are the same ones he described to the world last Feb 5 at a UN presentation which was the result of four days and four nights of meetings with the CIA."

"I stand behind that presentation," he said.

He further asserted, "I'll give you the killer argument why these vans were exactly what I said they were. I can assure you that if those biological vans were not ... what I said they were on the 5th of February, on the 6th of February Iraq would have hauled those vans out, put them in front of a press conference, given them to UN inspectors to try to drive a stake through the heart of my presentation."

Only if the Iraqis knew which vans he was talking about.

In an article published on the same day as Powell's interview, Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett reported in the Observer that there is mounting indications that these vans were for "balloons, not germs".

The Iraqis concur.

According to the article, "Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. Artillery balloons are essentially balloons that are sent up into the atmosphere and relay information on wind direction and speed, allowing more accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile. The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In 1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological System or Amets for short."

Other experts who have examined the evidence agree and have cast doubt over the Bush administration's assertions. They argue that the lack of any trace of pathogens found in the fermentation tanks, the use of canvas sides on vehicles where technicians would be working with dangerous germ cultures, and the lack of an autoclave for steam sterilization all provide credence to the Iraqi argument that the labs were merely used for artillery balloons.

In fact, the American experts themselves concede that the van could, at best, serve only one stage of the process for biological weapons production. There would need to be three or four other stages in the process, or other complementary vans, to be able to produce Powell's less than heuristic claim.

Powell is not new to this misinformation game.

In my earlier article, "The demise of the nuclear bomb hoax", published on 16 February 2003, I referred to Geoff Simons's book, "The Scourging of Iraq" in which "Washington lied persistently and comprehensively to gain the required international support [for the Gulf war]. For example, the US claimed to have satellite pictures showing a massive Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi-Iraqi border. When sample photographs were later obtained from Soyuz Karta by an enterprising journalist, no such evidence was discernible."

Simons's references an article by Maggie O'Kane, published in The Guardian on 16 December 1995, which revealed that the enterprising journalist was Jean Heller of the St Petersburg Times in Florida.

Eventually, the US commander - none other than Colin Powell himself - admitted that there had been no massing of Iraqi troops. But by then the so-called evidence had served its purpose.

So, was Powell really worried that the Iraqis might "try to drive a stake through the heart of [his] presentation"?

Well, it's never too late.

(9) This article was originally published by YellowTimes,org on 10 June 2003.