The UN search for a role in Post-Saddam Iraq

WASHINGTON, April 18 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As the United States is sending a 1,000-strong force to Iraq to “hunt” for alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), retired intelligence officials said Thursday, April 17, that the US government should be embarrassed over the apparent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"It's going to be very embarrassing when it turns out they have nothing to declare," said Eugene Betit, a former defense intelligence analyst who belongs to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), formed in January to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

"I'm hoping they will be embarrassed into acknowledging a role for some independent body. And who could it be but the UN," said another former CIA station chief Ray Close.

As the "smoking gun" continued to elude US sleuths in Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix called for experts to return to the country to determine whether the weapons allegations -- the main justification for going to war -- had any foundation.

The United States, which used allegations of weapons of mass destruction as justification for its March 20 invasion, has yet to turn up chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or hard evidence it was developing the banned weapons.

“Reasonably Sure”

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday he was "reasonably sure" that proof will be found.

"We are quite confident of our intelligence," he told Jim Lehrer of PBS public television.

"There was a huge intelligence collection effort with all of our agencies working together to come up with the body of knowledge that we took to the UN, and that we had been presenting before the world for a long period of time," he said.

Adding to the pressure, Russia, a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, said it would not support the lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq unless UN inspectors confirmed the absence of weapons of mass destruction.

But Washington has so far rejected such calls, and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday sought to “deflect concerns” that evidence could be planted.

"The (U.S. search) teams have been trained in chain of control, really like a crime scene," Rumsfeld told Pentagon staff.

"They will have people with them who will validate things, they will have the ability to take pictures, and to make sure that the control over any piece of evidence is as clear as it possibly can be," he said.

‘Planted’

Rumsfeld warned however: "That will not stop certain countries, and certain types of people from claiming, inaccurately, that it was planted."

Retired CIA intelligence analyst and VIPS member Ray McGovern told AFP: "Some of my colleagues are virtually certain that there will be some weapons of mass destruction found, even though they might have to be planted.

"I'm just as sure that some few will be found, but not in an amount that by any stretch would justify the charge of a threat against the U.S. or anyone else."

He added: "Even if the planting were discovered by and by, they'll say, 'ok, the weapons were planted -- fine.'"

McGovern said he was alluding to a remark by Powell after it emerged that a letter purporting to show that Iraq had sought to procure uranium from Niger -- a key argument in the case for war and cited in President George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union address -- was a forgery.

Powell told NBC: "It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine."

VIPS, made up of 25 former intelligence officials in the CIA, State and Defense Departments, Army Intelligence and FBI, made their first public statement on February 5, critiquing Powell's presentation before the UN Security Council seeking an international mandate for the war.

"Never before has a group of veteran CIA graduates -- all cum laude -- gotten together to critique the government," McGovern said.

CIA spokesman Tom Crispell, asked for comment on the former officials' remarks Thursday, said: "They're criticizing policy, not intelligence."

US Send Its Team To “Hunt” For WMDs

"That will not stop certain countries, and certain types of people from claiming, inaccurately, that it was planted," Rumsfeld

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials said Thursday the United States is sending a 1,000-strong force to Iraq to hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The CNN television network quoted U.S. defense officials as saying the "Iraq Survey Group" would probably be led by a general and would consist of military personnel, government intelligence analysts, civilian scientists and private contractors.

Initial elements of the WMD team are already on the ground in Iraq and the full contingent should be operational within two weeks, CNN quoted a Pentagon official as saying.

The survey team will focus on putting a larger number of personnel into Iraq to conduct a more organized search for WMDs based on intelligence leads, the network said.

This latest effort to locate the elusive WMDs, said CNN, underscores the growing Pentagon view that the United States no longer expects to find them on its own, but will have to offer rewards to Iraqis to draw out information on where to look.

Also on Thursday, US forces in Baghdad captured Saddam Hussein's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan al-Tikriti, seen as a major coup in US attepmts to round up members of the Iraqi leader's toppled regime.

UN Inspectors Could Give Credibility To US findings: Blix

Blix said Thursday that the United Nations arms inspectors could give credibility to any discovery of banned weapons made by US or British troops in Iraq.

"I think the world would like to have a credible report on the absence or the eradication of the program of weapons of mass destruction," he told the BBC in an interview at UN headquarters.

The White House said Thursday that it was not yet time to discuss the possible return of UN weapons inspectors, who were withdrawn from Iraq one month ago on the eve of the US-led invasion.

"At some point, UN inspections will be an issue that needs to be addressed, but at this point, the US and coalition forces are still engaged in actions," spokeswoman Claire Buchan told reporters at Crawford, Texas.

Blix is to brief the Security Council on Tuesday. He said "it would take about two weeks before we could get the inspectors back to Baghdad."

So far, the western allies have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq, although they control the entire country.

Blix said it was "too early to draw conclusions," but added that he was a little more inclined than before to believe the claim of the now defunct Iraqi government that it no longer had any such weapons.

He said he was particularly impressed by the fact that Amer El-Saadi, a senior aide to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, continued to insist that Iraq was free of banned weapons after he surrendered to US troops this week.

Blix described El-Saadi as "my opposite number" and said he was "a very high-caliber intellectual and very straightforward in our discussions."

He added: "I don't quite see that he would have any reasons to lie" now that he had given himself up and was no longer at risk from Saddam's brutality.

The regime was one of the most brutal in the world and, since it had used chemical weapons in the past, "it was not far-fetched" that it still had some, Blix said.

"The UK and the US and those countries with intelligence agencies were convinced that they had weapons of mass destruction, and they said so," he noted.

But he added: "I think that at some stage they would like to have some credible international verification of what they find" in Iraq.

The UN inspectors "had the credibility of the whole world," Blix went on.