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Disarmament DocumentationBack to Disarmament Documentation '[T]he open question is: how many stocks they had, if any?' US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Iraq and WMD, January 24'Powell Looks Forward to New Era in Georgia with President Saakashvili', Press Briefing Enroute to Tbilisi, January 24, 2004. Following is a transcript of the briefing as released by the State Department: Department of State QUESTION: David Kay, after his departure was announced,
said he told Reuters that he concluded that there were no Iraqi
stockpiles...told Reuters that there were no Iraqi weapons
stockpiles to be found. You said a year ago that you thought there
was between one hundred and five hundred tons of chemical weapons.
Who's right? SECRETARY POWELL: I think the answer to the question is I
don't know yet. Last year when I made my presentation, it was based
on the best intelligence that we had at the time. It reflected the
National Intelligence Estimate that the intelligence community had
presented to all Administration officials and had briefed to the
Congress. And it was consistent with the views of other
intelligence agencies of other governments and it was consistent
with the body of reporting over the years, to include reporting
that had come out of UNSCOM, that there were large unanswered
questions about what they had or did not have. I went into that briefing with a good solid comprehensive presentation on what our intelligence community believed was credible. In the presentation and all the other things they said about the Iraqi stockpiles, we were not only saying that we thought they had them, but we had questions that needed to be answered. What was it: one hundred tons, five hundred tons or zero tons? Was it: so many liters of anthrax, ten times that amount or nothing? And what we demanded of Iraq was that they account for all of this and they prove the negative of our hypothesis. And all they did was make statements without proving it, proving it to our satisfaction. And what unfolded, in our judgment, was that we found a regime,
that given the opportunity to present an honest fair comprehensive
declaration, not only given that opportunity but required to
provide...to take that opportunity to provide such a declaration,
did not. And this is a regime that had never lost its intention to
have such programs and such weapons. This is a regime that
previously was know to have and use such weapons against its on
people and against its neighbors, and had refused for twelve years
to answer these very direct questions from the United Nations, as
reflected in the many resolutions. And in 1998, when challenged
again by President Clinton and his team, refused once more.
President Clinton, acting on that same basis of intelligence,
undertook Operation Desert Fox and bombed for four days. Inspectors
left and we had a gap of five years. The intelligence community studied it very hard and when I made
the presentation on behalf of the United States it reflected their
best judgment. Now, I think their best judgment was correct with
respect to intention, with respect to capability to develop such
weapons, with respect to programs. I think where the question is
still open, and we'll just have to let ISG continue its work and
let Charlie Duelfer get out there -- He has also expressed opinions
similar to Mr. Kay. Let him get out there and see what he sees, go
through the documents, finish the interviews, look at any other
sites they have to. What is the open question is: how many stocks
they had, if any? And if they had any, where did they go? And if
they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand? But, I
think the intelligence community put all the effort they could into
it to try to find answers to those questions, and they were not
helped by the way the Iraqi's conducted themselves. The Iraqis were
hoping the international community would falter, that we would not
make them comply. And it was their great hope that they just
stretch it all out until one more year had passed and then another
UN meeting came along and nothing happened. And they ultimately got
out of the sanctions and could go do whatever they wished to do.
And that was a risk that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair
and Prime Minister Aznar and Prime Minister Howard and many other
leaders chose not to take. Source: US State Department, Washington File, http://usinfo.state.gov. © 2003 The Acronym Institute. |