Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

Iran-Iraq War

Both sides used chemical weapons in the [{Iran-Iraq War]].

Osirak

In May 1977 Israeli intelligence determined that the nuclear complex at al-Tuwaitha was growing rapidly and that the reactor facility might soon be ready. The government debated a preemptive military attack. "In the meantime, the Mossad would take steps to buy additional time. These steps included allegedly sabotaging the reactor cores for Osirak before the French could deliver them, as well as assassinating Iraqi nuclear officials. At the same time, the IAF began contingency planning for a strike on Osirak." "In October 1980, the Mossad reported to Begin that the Osirak reactor would be fueled and operational by June 1981

Gulf War

In my time at CENTCOM, I watched the intelligence, and never - not once - did it say, “He has WMD.”...Now, I’d be the first to say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn’t accounted for: artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or strategic level threats at best. Plus, we were watching Saddam with an army that had caved in. It was nothing like the Gulf War army. It was a shell of its former self. We knew we could go through it quickly. We’d stripped away his air defenses. He was at our mercy. We had air superiority before we even—or actually air supremacy before we would even start an operation. So to say that this threat was imminent or grave and gathering, seemed like a great exaggeration to me.

UN compliance

Nuclear weapons

The Niger Uranium Forgeries

In February 2002, as a result of the discovery of classified documents initially revealed by Italian intelligence in October 2001, the Pentagon sent Marine General Carlton W. Fulford, Jr. to Niger to investigate the claim that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium to revamp its nuclear WMD program. That same month, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV to Niger in February 2002. General Fulford and Ambassador Wilson interviewed several high-ranking Niger government officials. Neither found any evidence for the sale; Mr. Wilson concluded that the claim was “unequivocally wrong.”

There was disagreement about the findings of Mr. Wilson’s report within the intelligence community. CIA analysts believed the report confirmed reports about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal, partly because Mr. Wilson’s report included a comment that an Iraqi envoy had visited the African country in 1999. However, State Department analysts decided that Niger would be unwilling or incapable of supplying Iraq with any uranium. As a result of these conflicting intelligence analyses, the Bush administration remained suspicious and continued to work from the assumption that Saddam Hussein was actively trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. Because of internal disorganization, the CIA failed to obtain copies of the original classified documents, after they were finally made available to American intelligence in October 2002, and ignored warnings from State Department analysts about problems with the documents. The CIA also failed to check the the president’s 2003 State of the Union for factual errors. Consequently, the address included the infamous “sixteen words” that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” It was not until March 2003 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed with conclusive proof that the documents at the basis of the allegations were forgeries. However, the British government claimed it had evidence to the same effect independent of these documents, but had promised the source not to reveal its identity.