The Bush administration knew as early as mid-2001 that a central plank of its argument about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was regarded by its own nuclear experts as probably untrue, it was reported on Sunday.
The energy department experts said thousands of aluminium tubes purchased by Iraq, and cited by the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, as ”irrefutable evidence” of Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, were more likely destined for small-arms manufacture, according to the New York Times.
The experts conveyed their doubts to the administration in an intelligence memo dated August 17 2001, but were disregarded in favour of a junior CIA analyst who championed the idea that the tubes were to be used in uranium enrichment, the report said.
The tubes, some of which were intercepted, became the basis for the claim by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, that pre-emptive action was justified because ”we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”.
Unnamed administration officials said Rice and Bush did not know of the doubts until after Rice had made that statement in September 2002.
In Iraq, US troops seized control of large parts of Samarra. They said 125 militants had been killed and 88 arrested, although there were also civilian casualties. The US launched another strike in Falluja on Sunday, and claimed it had hit a house containing between 10 and 15 ”anti-Iraqi forces”.
The radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is planning to disband his militia, the Mehdi Army and endorse elections scheduled for January, it was reported on Sunday. According to the New York Times, al-Sadr has sent emissaries to some of Iraq’s main political and religious groups to discuss fielding candidates. – Guardian Unlimited Â