WMD In Iraq

I served 14 months in Iraq back when the Iraqis had visions of sugar-plumbs dancing in their heads, back then they were actually glad we were there. I never had anyone give me flowers but men would come up to me on the street and kiss me, kids followed us around wanting to take a picture with us or get a treat. The women would wave as we went by and we would wave back. Only twice in the hundred or so trips I made out into Baghdad do I remember someone actually doing or saying something disparaging toward us.

Upon my arrival in early 2003, I began work on a SST (Site Survey Team) working for the ISG (Iraq Survey Group) which was responsible for the search for WMD in Iraq and answered directly to Don Rumsfeld. Everyday we would visit two or three sites in Baghdad which had been previously designated by U.S. intelligence as possible WMD related facilities. We made a great many trips out into Baghdad with our convoy of 6-8 vehicles, toting all kinds of detection equipment, chemical detectors, geiger counters and radiation detectors, sniffers, all kinds of protective equipment, forced entry gear, EOD people, medics, intel, security, etc. Every day, for several months, we went out into the city to search for some remnant of Saddam’s notorious WMD program. We never found even a trace of this supposedly lethal and burgeoning WMD program. We were only one out of a dozen teams that were assigned specifically to Baghdad and there must have been a hundred or more other teams all over the country (although I don’t have specific knowledge of exactly what ISG had going on in other parts of Iraq).

We searched hundreds of facilities, office buildings, warehouses and factories. We dug up fields with backhoes following reports that barrels of caustic substances had been buried there, we broke down doors into secret facilities, rummaged through bunkers, dug into rooms 18 inches deep with the ash of burned documents. We never found even a trace of evidence. Neither did any of the other teams. One of the detection experts said once that in a warehouse the size of a football field (and we searched many of them), if we were at one end with our sniffers and there was a piece of paper at the other end with just a single drop of chemical agent, those sniffers would pick it up. Every night we talked about what we had seen, and we saw some pretty amazing things. But, we never found a shred of evidence that Saddam had WMD or production facilities for same.

Later in my deployment I had opportunity to do what I had actually trained most of my military career for, Intel. I was lucky enough to be assigned to the High Value Detainee facility where most of the top 300 or so personalities were being detained for questioning. I was the case handler (head interrogator) for a few of those and got to be in the interrogation booth with several others. Amazingly, their stories all corroborated the evidence I had seen on that SST. Of course we had to ask why Saddam would have kept telling the international community he had no WMD, then wink at the camera, like he was crossing his fingers behind his back. They largely reported that he was afraid of loosing his position as the regional hegemon. He had to keep his neighbors thinking he had WMD to retain his position of regional dominance. Their stories were all the same, “After 1998, we had no WMD or WMD programs. Saddam would have reconstituted them if given the chance but we had none after 1998, and he wasn’t going to try to develop them further until sanctions were lifted and the international community backed off.” Of all those 300 or more detainees who had intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's regime, there would have been at least one who saw it in his best interest to spill the beans. But there was none, only broad consensus. No WMD.

Our reports were going up and we would get memos in return from the office of the Secretary of Defense telling us what their assessment was, “now go out and find evidence to support it.” They should have taken the word of David Kay and figured something was up when he resigned. Instead they hired another goon to go in and do what Kay had failed to do. Of course, he failed too. It was about that time the media blitz started, “Oh, we didn’t go into Iraq for WMD, we went there for regime change. Iraq is a much better place now that Saddam is out of power, and Iraq will become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.” The Right swallowed that line hook and all. The Left rolled their eyes and gagged. About now, many Americans are waking up to the reality; 3,000+ American body bags and 60,000 (apx) Iraqis dead since the invasion. David Kay said in his testimony before congress that the intelligence failure leading up to the Iraq invasion was “most disturbing,” then he said “it’s important to acknowledge failure.”

Wow, Mr. Kay, you’ve really got something there.