No weapons found, no 'smoking gun'

News analysis

By Richard Evans, The Inquisitor's Editor

A month after the US and Britain invaded Iraq, no evidence has been found to support claims that Saddam Hussein owned any weapons of mass destruction.

With roughly 20 of Iraq's 40 alleged major weapons facilities now thoroughly searched by American and British troops, no proof of illegal biological, chemical or nuclear weapons programs has been unearthed. A number of former UN weapons inspectors and other experts now allege that the Iraqis never had them in the first place.

A supposed weapons factory near Najaf turned out to be an industrial facility. Mobile chemical weapons labs have turned out to be delivery trucks. Rumors of a cache of Sarin nerve gas proved to be false. Boxes of white powder discovered in the Baghdad suburb of Latifiyah were actually conventional explosives. Papers documenting the sale of uranium by Niger to Iraq have been identified as forgeries. Old Russian BM-21 rockets found on an Iraqi military base have been grudgingly deemed legal by US authorities.

Locating and publicizing weapons of mass destruction has become a key concern for officials in both Washington and London as the Bush and Blair administrations justified the invasion of Iraq as a necessary disarmament mission. But four weeks after the fighting started, doubts are growing as to how real their evidence was.

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, has accused the US of "fabricating" evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify their invasion. All the while, he claims, the Bush administration decided to go to war regardless as to what the inspectors found or didn't find in Iraq.

"There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance," Blix said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the (weapons) inspectors."

Blix also stated that the Iraqi people were forced to pay "a very high price…in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when continued UN inspections could have eliminated the need for war.

Meanwhile, Britain's Guardian newspaper has discovered that the US and British governments have set up a secret inspection team to replace Unmovic, the UN's Iraqi inspection authority. The evidence comes from David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998. US officials have reportedly tried, and failed, to hire former UN inspectors for their new secret team.

The appointment of a clandestine weapons inspection authority headed by the US government and military has aroused suspicion among Iraq watchers as to how accurate and unbiased their findings will be. "If this team finds a smoking gun, people will not believe it," said Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at the UK's Bradford University, in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, UK defense minister Geoff Hoon continues to maintain that illegal weapons will be found in the coming weeks. Hoon came under criticism in the run-up to the war by publicly maintaining that Saddam Hussein's regime was able to create a nuclear bomb within three years. This was flatly contradicted by both Hans Blix and by Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Some military officials began to openly doubt whether Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons within a week of the outbreak of war. Hussein, in their eyes, would likely have used them, at least in small measure, to slow the advance of Anglo-American forces and buy time in order to prepare the defense of Baghdad.

"It seems unlikely that these weapons are available," said Garth Whitty, a former British army officer and UN weapons inspector, in an interview with The Financial Times.

United Nations' Secretary General Kofi Annan has reminded both the US and Britain that the UN still has a duty to finish its round of inspections in Iraq. As yet, there appear to be no direct talks between UN officials and the US and British governments regarding any resumption of Unmovic inspections.