SF Bay Guardian Life During Wartime

June 10, 2003

Troops run out of sites for WMD after 230 checks
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

AFTER VISITING 230 sites, American troops have run out of new places to check for Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons, despite new assertions by President Bush and his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday that the weapons exist.

This latest dead-end will only increase pressure in America for a full Congressional investigation into what critics say is a massive US intelligence failure. Yesterday John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona - a strong supporter of the war - added his voice to the chorus of demands.

"It doesn't appear there are any more targets at this time," a US military commander in Baghdad said, expressing the frustration at a hunt that has been under way since American and British forces entered Iraq on 20 March, but which has yielded only the capture of two possible mobile biological weapons laboratories. No traces of any germ agents have been found, and some experts are questioning whether indeed the trailers were part of Saddam's suspected WMD programme at all.

Some officials are hoping that the capture of two more figures on the the Pentagon's famous "deck of cards" of wanted senior officials of the former regime - both of them involved with military programmes - may produce a breakthrough.

Latif Nusayyif al-Jasim al-Dulaymi, number 18 on the list, was the most senior to be taken in. He is a former member of Saddam's Revolutionary Command Council, the small committee of the former dictator's top advisers, and a former top official of the Baath party's military bureau.

The second man captured, Brigadier General Husain al-Awadi is ranked 53rd on the list. He was a senior commander in the chemical weapons corps of the Iraqi military, as well as a Baath party leader in the Ninawa region of northern Iraq.

But with over half of the individuals on the list in US custody, no valid new leads have emerged, and it is increasingly unlikely that these new detainees will alter the picture.

A new 1,300-man team, called the Iraq survey group, is to take up the hunt later this month. led by General Keith Dayton of the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), it will be assisted by several former inspectors of the United Nations - the body that the US adamantly refuses to allow to resume the weapons hunt brought to a halt by the invasion of Iraq.

But the new mission will be a far cry from what was envisaged when British and US forces swept into Iraq, expecting instantly to find biological and chemical weapons ready for use against theme. w Officers at Guantanamo Bay, where many alleged terrorist members are being held, are ready to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try any alleged terrorist suspects at the base in Cuba.

Although no new directive has been given and no plans have been approved, a team of experts are looking at what resources it will take to try, imprison and, if need be, execute detainees who are accused of links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or to the al-Qa'ida terror network.

"We have a number of plans that we work for short-term and long-term strategies but that's all they are - plans," said Army Major-General Geoffrey Miller.