Fallout of America's vain hunt for WMD confined to embarrassment
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent
16 May 2003
The continuing failure to discover any evidence of Iraq's alleged chemical,
germ and nuclear weapons, more than a month after the fall of Baghdad, is
thus far a very minor embarrassment for the Bush administration - and
probably one which will grow only if order collapses completely and there is
an uprising against US military occupiers.
Unlike Britain, complaints here at the failure to find the illegal weapons -
whose existence was the main justification for war - has been mainly
confined to liberal columnists and editorials in liberal newspapers.
All but forgotten are the bloodcurdling pre-war assertions of top Bush
officials, among them Vice-President Dick Cheney's claim that Iraq had
"reconstituted" its nuclear programme, and the President's warning that
Iraqi drones, launched from ships in the Atlantic, could spray US cities
with biological agents.
Instead the justification has shifted from the weapons threat to the
humanitarian benefits of having removed a brutal regime. The worry in the US
is not about the absence of a smoking WMD gun - but that Iraq will descend
into anarchy. This week the US military command blamed escalating street
violence not on the inability of the occupiers to guarantee basic services,
but on "regime elements" made up of Baath party diehards who are sabotaging
US-led efforts to restore infrastructure.
The mood is plain in the polls. Yes, Mr Bush probably did overestimate the
quantities of non-conventional weapons held by Saddam Hussein's regime, 49
per cent of respondents in a New York Times/ CBS poll said, compared with 29
per cent who said they were about right and 12 per cent who continue to
insist - in the face of all the evidence - that they were too little.
Even so, more than half thought the war will have been worth it, even if no
germ, chemical and nuclear weapons are found, and Saddam himself is not
captured or killed. The harrowing discovery this week of mass graves near
Baghdad is unlikely to change these feelings.
In short, complaints here are unlikely to become as vocal as in Britain. The
difference in Britain reflects much greater support for the war in the US,
from the moment Congress gave Mr Bush carte blanche to use force last
November, even before United Nations weapons inspectors returned and turned
up nothing.
Inconveniences such as the forged documents purporting to show Iraq had
bought uranium ore from Niger, and claims that intelligence analysts were
forced to stretch facts to fit the theories of superiors at the White House,
Pentagon and Vice-President's office, are simply brushed aside.
None the less, doubts are surfacing. Officially, the Pentagon line is that
Iraq is a large country and that "we never expected to find weapons
quickly." But in the end they would be found.
That does not square with what US investigators are being told by Iraqi
scientists - who no longer have any reason to lie - that the weapons
programmes were shut down several years ago. Nor does it square with what US
commanders are learning for themselves.
"We came to bear country, we came loaded for bear and we found out the bear
wasn't here," said Colonel Richard McPhee, a member of Task Force 75, which
went in with US troops to find and display the hidden WMD. Force 75 will be
pulled out of Iraq next month.
Privately, US officials concede the best they may come up with is evidence
of a programme which once existed, such as the two facilities now being
examined by US technicians, alleged to have been mobile laboratories. And
unless chaos on the ground grows to the point of invalidating military
victory, that may be where the weapons mystery vanishes into the desert
sands.