According to a newly-declassified NIE report, he just might be: Go to Original Article Oct. Report Said Defeated Hussein Would Be Threat By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, July 21, 2003; Page A01 Last fall, the administration repeatedly warned in public of the danger that an unprovoked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists. "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE, which began circulating Oct. 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States. "Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al Qaeda, . . . already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct," one key judgment of the estimate said. It went on to say that Hussein might decide to take the "extreme step" of assisting al Qaeda in a terrorist attack against the United States if it "would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." The declassified sections of the NIE were offered by the White House to rebut allegations that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The result, however, could be to raise more questions about whether the administration misrepresented the judgments of the intelligence services on another basis for going to war: the threat posed by Hussein as a source of weapons for terrorists. The NIE's findings also raise concerns about the dangers posed by Hussein, who is believed to be in hiding, and the failure to find any of his alleged stocks of chemical and biological weapons. If such stocks exist, a hotly debated proposition, this is precisely the kind of dangerous situation the CIA and other intelligence services warned about last fall, administration officials said. A senior administration official said yesterday that the U.S. intelligence community does not know either "the extent to which Saddam Hussein has access or control" over the groups that are attacking U.S. forces, or the location of any possible hidden chemical or biological agents or weapons. Asked whether the former Iraqi leader would today use any chemical or biological weapons if he controlled them, the senior official said, "We would not put that past him to do whatever makes our lives miserable." The official said the judgment of last fall's intelligence estimate -- that a desperate Hussein, in hiding and with U.S. troops searching for him in Iraq, could turn to al Qaeda -- "had not been supplanted." L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" he believes Hussein is alive. " I think he is in Iraq, and the sooner we can either kill him or capture him, the better." On "Fox News Sunday," Bremer also said Hussein appeared to have pre-positioned weapons and made plans to carry out an insurgency should his forces, as expected, lose a war with the United States. "There has been some evidence of planning for the possibility of losing the war militarily and going into some kind of insurgency or organized resistance," Bremer said, without explaining what the evidence is. Bremer said he does not believe Hussein could make a comeback: "Dead or alive, this guy is finished in Iraq. There is no public support for him." Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in an interview that despite what Bush has said, the war is not over until Hussein is captured or killed. "He could come back like Napoleon if we don't watch out," said Markey, who added that the former Iraqi leader remains a threat because he, if anybody, knows where any chemical or biological weapons might be. Last fall, as Congress began debating a resolution giving Bush authority to go to war against Iraq, CIA Director George J. Tenet ordered six intelligence services to develop over a 10-day period a common assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the threat they posed. A few days after the NIE began circulating, at the request of members of Congress who wanted material they could use in public debate, the administration released a 25-page unclassified summary of the 90-page classified report. Two days later, in response to pressure from Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Tenet released three pages of additional information from the NIE and a classified hearing that for the first time suggested that Hussein might only use chemical or biological weapons when under threat of attack. Friday's declassified material from the NIE gave a much more complete picture of the intelligence in the form of all the key judgments of the intelligence community. One of the judgments was that Hussein "appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or [chemical or biological weapons] against the United States fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war." Another judgment was that Iraq would "probably" attempt a clandestine attack against the United States, as mentioned by Bush -- not on "any given day" as the president said Oct. 7, but only "if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable." Today the situation is changed. Hussein is alive but in hiding, and his alleged stocks of chemical or biological weapons or agents have not been found. Meanwhile, the president and other leaders have yet to mention publicly the intelligence assessment that Hussein may be a potentially bigger threat now than before the United States attacked. In fact, Bush, in his May 1 speech from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, appeared to take just the opposite position. "We have removed an ally of al Qaeda," Bush said. "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime." © 2003 The Washington Post Company
Let's face it as the various intelligence services, the CIA, The British and French services, etc. said Sadam wasn't much of a threat to the US. If the CIA and the various theories raised in the article are correct, then I guess you could say that he is more of a threat now. One of the principle reasons the war promoters claimed he hated Americans and wanted to kill us was that he was mad about the first Gulf War. I suppose Gulf War II wouldn't help relations any Oh what a surprise that Sadam would make some plans if he was militarily defeated by the US! It is very rational that he would do this. I know, buying another aspect of the war sales pitch, that he is an insane madman who isn't supposed to be able to make rational plans. Shouldn't we have been warned a little more about various scenarios including ones that weren't so easy and cost free?
Sort of similar, but Chalie Reese tries to answer whether we are better off now that Sadam has been removed. His answer, not really as Sadam wasn't really that big of an actor on the world stage and now we are seen as a rogue nation, by everyone. ************* President George W. President George W. Bush is more and more resembling Bill Clinton. He's just as eager as Clinton was to avoid responsibility and accountability, and he's just as fond of parsing the English language to confuse the issues. Please note, for example, that the Bush administration now talks about weapons "programs." Well, of course, 15 years ago Iraq had programs to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The United States even assisted in some degree. But we didn't go to war because Iraq had programs 15 years ago, we went to war because Iraq allegedly had "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons ready to deploy and use and was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. It's becoming increasingly clear that it was all bull. There are no stockpiles, unless Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak covers them. There is no nuclear-weapons program. There are no hidden long-range missiles. There never was any connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. Iraq was not an "imminent threat" to Kuwait, much less to the United States and the rest of the world. Gulf War I, arms inspections, 13 years of cruel economic sanctions and periodic bombings had reduced Iraq to a shell of its former strength. Bottom line: The Bush administration, on false pretenses, took Americans to war. I don't mean by that that the president was lying. I think he chose to believe what he wanted to be true and disregarded all the evidence to the contrary. He wanted to get Saddam. To do that, Saddam had to have weapons of mass destruction. Bush was apparently unwilling and still is unwilling to believe that they simply didn't exist. And the world is not better off without Saddam in power, because whether Saddam was in power or not had no effect on the world one way or another. Iraq is not and never was a major player in the world. It has far too few people and too few resources, despite its oil. But the United States is much worse off. After Sept. 11, 2001, most of the world was united in support of the United States. Today most of the world regards the United States as a rogue nation and a danger to peace. Today, thanks to U.S. policy, a new arms race is under way, the United States is projected to have an all-time record deficit of $455 billion, unemployment is at a nine-year high, and American troops are bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Middle East and apparently will soon be in Africa. More importantly, the credibility of the United States is nose-diving. Instead of seriously reassessing the administration's policies, the Bush people have circled the wagons. Instead of answering legitimate questions, they call them partisan politics. Instead of accepting responsibility, they blame the CIA or the media. Instead of conducting an honest investigation into the intelligence agencies, they are concerned that some CIA people are leaking things to the press to discredit the president. These leaks are attempts to set the record straight. If the truth discredits the president, it's because he bent it out of shape. But it is not a partisan issue. It is of the utmost importance that when the president speaks to the American people on matters of war and peace, they be able to trust him to be truthful and factual. Given the president's new policy of pre-emptive wars, it is of the utmost importance that the intelligence on which such wars will be based be dead-on accurate. Those two statements are true regardless of who is in the White House. The fact is, the president and his staff blundered, and they don't want to admit it. They took the country to war on false pretenses; they had no sound plan for postwar Iraq and are now stuck for an indefinite period of time. The occupation is costing American lives and $4 billion a month. They don't know what to do about North Korea or Iran or the Middle East. It looks like the president is going to learn the hard way that a snappy comeback to a reporter's question is no substitute for a sound, well-reasoned policy. Unfortunately, the country will have to pay for his education. Let's pray it's not too high a price in blood and treasure.
