[casi] News, 07-14/05/03 (4)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 07-14/05/03 (4)

NERVOUS NEIGHBOURS

*  From Baghdad to Tehran?
*  Iran Group Negotiating Surrender in Iraq
*  Qatar says Iraq will be democracy test case
*  Soldiers repatriated to Iraq recall torture in Iran camps
*  Report: Iraq Infiltrated Al-Jazeera TV
*  Kurds ask Turks to leave Iraq

PROGRESS OF THE PRETEXT

*  Pentagon to Increase Team on Weapons Hunt
*  U.S. weapons team to leave Iraq
*  U.S. Weapons Hunters Hindered in Iraq
*  Suspected bioweapons labs found
*  U.S. Sending New Team to Iraq for Weapons Search
*  Second suspected bioweapons lab found


NERVOUS NEIGHBOURS

http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/2003/0305tehran.html

 *  FROM BAGHDAD TO TEHRAN?
by Jim Lobe
Foreign Policy in Focus, 7th May
(Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) Editor's
Note: This piece was commissioned under the auspices of the Project Against
the Present Danger.)

With Iraq under U.S. occupation and Syria's leaders shaken by a series of
high-level threats from top Bush administration officials, Iran has come
under increased U.S. pressure. As officials in Washington talk about
"Iranian agents" crossing the border into Iraq to foment trouble for the
U.S. occupation, a leading neoconservative strategist Monday said the United
States is already in a "death struggle" with Tehran, and he urged the
administration of President George W. Bush to "take the fight to Iran,"
through "covert operations," among other measures.

The appeal by the chief editor of The Weekly Standard, William Kristol,
followed last week's surprise announcement that U.S. military forces had
signed a surrender agreement with rebel Iranian forces based in Iraq that
permits them to retain their weapons and equipment, including tanks, despite
their formal designation by the State Department as a terrorist group. The
agreement between the military and the Mujahedeen Khalq sparked speculation
that Washington may deploy the group, which had been supported by Baghdad
for more than 20 years, against Tehran or its allies in Iraq, despite its
terrorist tactics.

"The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the
Middle East," wrote Kristol in the Standard's latest issue. "The next great
battle--not, we hope, a military battle- will be for Iran. We are already in
a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq," added the editor, who
is closely associated with Richard Perle and other neoconservatives in the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB).

Kristol's blast reflects the ongoing and increasingly intense policy debate
within the administration between hawks centered in the Defense Department
and Vice President Dick Cheney's office on the one hand and "realists" in
the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the other.

The Islamic government in Tehran, long accused by Washington of being the
word's most active supporter of international terrorism, primarily due to
its backing of Lebanon's Hezbollah, has been a particular target for
neoconservatives like Kristol, who see it as the greatest long-term threat
to Israel, especially now that Baghdad is in U.S. hands.

In an open letter to Bush sent on Sep. 20, 2001--just nine days after the
September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the influential
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), chaired by Kristol, called for
Washington to deliver an ultimatum to both Syria and Iran demanding a halt
to their support for Hezbollah. "Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the
administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against
these known state sponsors of terrorism," urged the letter, whose agenda for
the anti-terrorist campaign so far has been followed in virtually each
detail, from the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq, to
the cutting off of U.S. support for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In
fact, intelligence reports claim that supplies to Hezbollah have fallen off
fairly sharply in the past year, but the neoconservatives and other hawks
are now claiming that Tehran is determined to make Washington's stay in Iraq
difficult.

Despite informal but relatively high-level diplomatic contacts between the
two countries- which broke off formal ties after the U.S. embassy seizure in
Tehran in late 1979--in the run up to the war, the hawks are claiming that
Iran failed to cooperate during the actual hostilities and is now actively
undermining U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. In an article appearing in last
week's The New Republic, Eli Lake, a reporter with close ties to
administration hardliners, claimed that Iran has not only provided safe
haven to a number of Iraqi and Islamist fugitives wanted by Washington, but
has also planned to infiltrate its own paramilitary units to create
confusion on the ground.

In addition, U.S. media reports for the past two weeks have been filled with
assertions about "Iranian agents" in the Shiite community in Iraq whose goal
is to back local clerics in a bid to create an "Iranian-style Islamic
Republic." Shiites constitute about 60% of Iraq's population. Their main
instrument for this effort, according to the accounts, is the Tehran based
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI) headed by
Abdulaziz Hakim and his brother Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim. They have
been coy about their participation in U.S. efforts to establish an Iraqi
governing council over the next month. Kristol's article reflects the
thinking of a number of neoconservative strategists who have been arguing
virtually since September 11 that the Iranian people, especially the youth,
are ready to rise up against the mullahs, including the reformists led by
President Mohammed Khatami, the minute Washington installs a secular,
democratic government next door in Iraq. "The theocrats ruling Iran
understand that the stakes are now double or nothing," according to Kristol.
"They can stay in power by disrupting efforts to create a pluralist,
non-theocratic, Shia-majority state next door--or they can fail, as success
in Iraq sounds the death knell for the Iranian revolution."

The hawks have been encouraged in that view by much of the Iranian exile
community, according to Gary Sick, a Columbia University expert who served
on the National Security Council under the Carter administration. "The
argument among the American ayatollahs (of conservatism) is that the only
solution for Iran is to get rid of the regime," says Sick. "They say that
the Iranian people are ready to rise up, the regime is about to collapse,
but people in Iran say this is just nonsense. The situation in Iran was far
more unsettled in 1999 than it is now," added Sick, who noted that
suspicions among Iranians that Washington is already trying to manipulate
the internal situation is "complicating the life of (Iran's) reformers."

But, notes Richard Augustus Norton, an expert on Shia Islam at Boston
University and a retired U.S. army colonel who served in UN operations in
Lebanon, the neoconservative approach "plays into the hands of the
hard-liners [in Iran]. The Bush people are certainly right that there is a
large constituency within Iran that favors better ties [with the U.S.]. But
most Iranians, including the reformers, regard the government as
legitimate." Norton continued, "It seems that Kristol and others are more
intent on creating chaos and instability than they are with changing things
for the better."

The fact that prominent neoconservatives closely tied to administration
hawks are now calling for covert action against Tehran, combined with the
surrender accord with the Mujahedeen, will, in any case, make it far more
difficult for forces with influence in Iran to press for cooperation with
Washington. Sick said he was "totally surprised" by the surrender accord,
whose details still have not been released. "The notion that we would join
forces with (the Mujahedeen) really undercuts the whole idea of our war on
terrorism," he noted, and will preclude "any kind of working arrangement
with Iran."

But Kristol and his comrades in and out of the administration insist that
there is no point in working with Tehran anyway and much to be gained by
helping oust the "theocrats." "Iran is the tipping point in the war on
proliferation, the war on terror, and the effort to reshape the Middle East.
If Iran goes pro-Western and anti-terror, positive changes in Syria and
Saudi Arabia will follow much more easily. And the chances for an
Israeli-Palestinian settlement will greatly improve," wrote Kristol.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030509/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ir
aq&cid=540&ncid=1478

*  IRAN GROUP NEGOTIATING SURRENDER IN IRAQ
by Louis Meixler
Yahoo, from Associated Press, 9th May

BAQUBAH, Iraq - An armed Iranian opposition group operating northeast of
Baghdad was negotiating its surrender Friday after the U.S. military ordered
it to lay down weapons or face destruction, American officials said.

The Mujahedeen Khalq, which operated for years from Saddam Hussein (news -
web sites)'s Iraq (news - web sites) in its efforts to undermine Iran's
religious regime, was surrounded by U.S. forces outside this town northeast
of Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Robert Daldivia of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry
Division.

"As far as I know, they are agreeing to capitulate at this time," said Capt.
Josh Felker, public affairs officer of the 4th Infantry's Warhorse Brigade.
He said Gen. Ray Odierno, the 4th Infantry's commander, was in the
Mujahedeen Khalq's main camp, Camp Ashraf, to negotiate the surrender.

U.S. military talking points about the negotiations, obtained by The
Associated Press, gave the following guidance: "MEK forces will be destroyed
or compelled to surrender, leading to disarmament and detention."

Under the U.S. orders, the Mujahedeen Khalq must disarm, though they can
keep their personal arms temporarily for self-defense. They will be barred
from manning checkpoints on the roads around Baqubah and must go to
containment areas, Felker said.

Thousands of Mujahedeen Khalq are believed to be in the area, although the
United States says it is unsure of the exact number.

The Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Warriors, operated in prewar Iraq with
Saddam Hussein's blessing. They have several camps near Baqubah, 45 miles
from Baghdad. U.S. troops said they had been prepared for full-scale combat
before the negotiations began.

The United States signed a truce on April 15 with the Mujahedeen Khalq,
allowing the group to keep its weapons to defend itself against
Iranian-backed attacks. At the time, the U.S. State Department called the
agreement "a prelude to the group's surrender."

"This has been in the works for a while. The cease-fire was a stepping stone
to the capitulation agreement," Felker said.

But reports of roadblock confrontations in recent days suggested the group
had continued playing an active, armed role in the region ‹ a challenge to
the United States' authority as Iraq's military occupier.

U.S. military commanders "don't want two armed forces in the area," Felker
said.

In the past, the United States called the Mujahedeen Khalq a terrorist
organization. During the 1970s, the group was accused in attacks that killed
several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in
Iran, although the group denies targeting Americans. It reportedly backed
the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 but later broke with
Iran's government.

Iran's clerical government has criticized U.S. policy toward the group,
saying it was hypocritical of the United States to describe it as terrorist
yet still sanction its existence.

[.....]


http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030510-36675241.htm

*  QATAR SAYS IRAQ WILL BE DEMOCRACY TEST CASE
by David R. Sands
The Washington Times, 10th May

The establishment of a successful democracy in postwar Iraq could transform
attitudes across the Arab world toward the United States, according to Sheik
Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, emir of the oil-rich state of Qatar and a key
U.S. ally in the recent war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Top Stories

"If the United States managed to help establish democracy in Iraq, as it
used to be in the 1920s, I think that would be the greatest step that could
be taken both for America and for the whole Middle East," the emir said
yesterday in an interview with editors and reporters at The Washington
Times.

"Arabs now consider the Americans as invaders," he said, "but they never
liked Saddam Hussein. The Iraqis themselves never liked Saddam. They have
hopes that the United States can build democracy in Iraq, but still they
also have their doubts."

The emir, who provided vital logistical and basing help to U.S. and
coalition forces in the recent war in Iraq, was capping off a Washington
visit, highlighted by a lengthy private meeting Wednesday with President
Bush at the White House and talks with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on
Middle East policy yesterday.

President Bush effusively praised the emir's support before their White
House meeting. Mr. Powell said yesterday that he hoped to visit Qatar before
the end of this year.

Sheik al-Thani said U.S.-Qatari relations are based on complete
"transparency" and on a willingness of the emirate to voice its support for
Washington in a region where many countries have kept their distance from
the United States.

"When the United States was in need of [support] in its campaign against
Iraq, we were the only country that would declare its position clearly
regarding that subject," the emir said.

He declined to say whether Qatar would offer similar support if military
action is undertaken against other regional states, including Syria and
Iran, saying only that he was determined to preserve his country's
"distinguished relationship" with the United States.

[.....]


http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/131/nation/Soldiers_repatriated_to_Iraq_re
call_torture_in_Iran_camps+.shtml

*  SOLDIERS REPATRIATED TO IRAQ RECALL TORTURE IN IRAN CAMPS
by William Booth
Boston Globe, from Washington Post,11th May

BAGHDAD - They are as thin as scarecrows, men shrunk by beatings, the last
of the last Iraqi prisoners from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. On their arrival
in Baghdad for a repatriation without fanfare, they said they could not
believe their eyes. American tanks on the streets? Saddam Hussein toppled
from power?

Some of the last 59 Iraqi soldiers to be held in Iran, out of 60,000
captured, had been imprisoned for more than two decades without
communication with the outside world. ''Saddam gone?'' one former prisoner
asked last week.

He was dressed in a lime green sports jacket that hung from his thin
shoulders, the new clothes a parting gift from his Iranian captors. As he
stood, he swayed, and then said, ''I'm sorry. I have psychological damage in
my brain.''

Nema Kareem Hassan was a police officer who was drafted to fight. He said he
was captured near a town he called Muhamara in Iran on May 24, 1982. In the
years since, Hassan said, he was moved through seven POW camps.

On his return, his thin jaws were flecked with gray stubble. He shuffled
with a limp at 39 years old. He said in an interview that he could not hold
down food.

Hassan's hands trembled so severely that he could not light a cigarette
without help from a comrade. He said he was tortured routinely - forced to
squat for hours, beaten with lengths of cable and rope, shocked by car
batteries, and had what he thinks was dirty water injected with a syringe
into his penis.

Another former prisoner said, ''We have come back from the grave.'' This
one, an infantry rifleman, sat slack-jawed and blank-eyed, in the worn lobby
of the Um al-Aura Hotel in central Baghdad, where the men had spent their
first night of freedom.

Asked to give his name, the rifleman said, ''It is not safe,'' and he looked
around the room. ''I am a loyal Iraqi.'' Told that Saddam Hussein was no
longer in charge, he whispered, ''I cannot believe.''

There is no accurate accounting of casualties from the Iran-Iraq war. Human
rights monitors and the US government estimated that 1 million people were
killed, including 300,000 Iranian soldiers and 375,000 Iraqi combatants.

Hassan, who was sent to the front for what his superiors in the police
department promised would be a three-month tour of duty, described his daily
rations: ''Four spoons of rice. A half-cup of water. A piece of bread.''

He said he saw hundreds of prisoners die, most from diseases like dysentery
and tuberculosis, others from heart attacks. One of the camps had previously
been a stable for animals, he said.

''What I have seen I cannot describe,'' said another former Iraqi soldier
who would give only his first name, Hadi. He said he was a prisoner for 15
years. ''I am ashamed,'' he said, ''to speak of these things.''

The released prisoners wanted to know how they would be paid their military
wages for their years in jail. One man asked whether the government was
still giving land and cash and cars to released prisoners, as had been
Hussein's practice in the early years of the Iran-Iraq war.

''We have lost our lives,'' one of his fellow prisoners said. They grabbed
their plastic bags of belongings and made their way to a Red Cross van to go
wherever home used to be.

Years ago, the former prisoners said, they assumed their wives and families
had given them up for dead. None of the men said they had spoken or
corresponded with their loved ones during their captivity. ''They think we
are gone from the earth,'' said one released prisoner.

The former POWs were given clean underwear, a box of food and toiletries,
and $200 in cash by the International Committee of the Red Cross, under
whose auspices they were flown from Tehran to Baghdad.

One former prisoner sat on a couch in the hotel lobby, hugging a grandson he
had never seen.

During their captivity, the men had heard rumors and listened to dispatches
from their guards' radios. They heard news of the invasion of Kuwait and the
Gulf War in 1991, and then reports of another battle this year by the
Americans against Iraq. They were not sure who had won, but they remembered
that the Americans had supported their war against Iran.


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2YEL1YRZBYKACCRBAEZSFFA?
type=topNews&storyID=2718296

*  REPORT: IRAQ INFILTRATED AL-JAZEERA TV
Reuters, 11th May
[according to 'documents uncovered by opponents of Saddam Hussein'.]

LONDON: Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said Iraqi intelligence agents
infiltrated al Jazeera, the Arab world's most widely watched television
station, in an attempt to win favorable coverage. Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad
Ballout told Reuters the network was unaware of "any member of al-Jazeera
who is working for any foreign intelligence" organization.

The Sunday Times said documents uncovered by opponents of Saddam Hussein
after he was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion force last month showed Iraq's
intelligence service had three agents working inside Qatar's al-Jazeera
television network.

According to the documents, one alleged agent passed on two letters written
by Osama bin Laden, blamed for the 2001 attacks on the United States, to his
Iraqi handlers. Two cameramen were also said to be Iraqi agents.


http://www.dawn.com/2003/05/14/int7.htm

*  KURDS ASK TURKS TO LEAVE IRAQ
Dawn, 14th May

ARBIL, May 13: The Iraqi Kurdish parliament has passed a resolution asking
Turkish peacekeepers to leave northern Iraq where they have been deployed
since 1996 to curb internecine fighting, a Kurdish official said on Tuesday.

Turkish peacekeepers entered the enclave under the supervision of Britain
and the United States, which brokered a 1996 ceasefire between the Kurdistan
Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Kurdish sources have said the United States fears Turkey's military presence
in the north could spark tension with Kurds after the war. A KDP spokesman
who asked that his name not be used said the regional Kurdish parliament on
Monday voted unanimously to ask the 800-man Turkish peace force to
withdraw.-Reuters


PROGRESS OF THE PRETEXT

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030508_98.html

*  PENTAGON TO INCREASE TEAM ON WEAPONS HUNT
ABC News, 8th May

WASHINGTON May 8 (AP): About 2,000 more experts are being sent to Iraq to
help look for banned weapons as well as regime leaders, terrorists and more.

The team is more than triple the size of the force now searching for weapons
and larger than was previously described. It will be headed by a two-star
general in defense intelligence, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The Defense Department also confirmed it is investigating what officials
said may be the most promising discovery so far a trailer truck they say
could turn out to be the first mobile biological lab recovered since the
start of the war to disarm the government of Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration alleged that Iraq had chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons programs and said the main reason for the war was to destroy
them. Despite weeks of searches at more than 100 sites, officials have
reported finding nothing conclusive so far.

Although Pentagon officials suggested some Iraqi units were armed with
chemical weapons just days before the war, none were found when those units
were overrun. Officials said again Wednesday at a Pentagon news conference
that finding the "smoking gun" will take time.

Asked if prewar intelligence was flawed, Defense Intelligence Agency
Director Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby said it was far too soon to tell.

"This is piecing together a major jigsaw puzzle, and we are only just
beginning ... to work the puzzle," Lowell said.

Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of DIA will head the new group being sent to Iraq,
called the Iraq Survey Group.

Consisting of some 1,300 military and civilian experts in computers,
intelligence, weapons, demolition and other matters, the group also will
have former U.N. weapons inspectors and 800 support personnel. They are
joining 600 military and civilian experts from the armed forces, FBI, CIA,
Defense Threat Reduction Agency and elsewhere who are already hunting for
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Only half of the new group will devote itself to weapons. The others will be
looking for and analyzing information on regime leaders, terrorists, war
crimes, the former Iraqi intelligence service, atrocities and prisoners of
war, Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone said.

Officials had previously said about 1,000 more were going to search for
weapons, but never talked about the extra people for the other searches.

The Pentagon has said the United States may prosecute some figures for war
crimes, and that soldiers are gathering information that can be used for the
Iraqis to prosecute people who committed atrocities over the decades of
Saddam's rule.

Cambone said the prewar lists of important sites to visit was about 1,000,
including some 600 that related to weapons.

An additional 400 sites have been identified through Iraqi tips, documents
and other leads since the war started.

Still, the searchers in Iraq have only explored 110 sites so far, Cambone
said, 70 from the prewar list and 40 that emerged with new intelligence
since the major fighting ended.

Officials said the suspected biological lab was being tested by American
forces in Iraq. The trailer matches the description of such laboratories
given by various sources, including a defector who says he helped operate
one.

Cambone said initial tests have been done on the trailer, which was taken
into custody April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint in northern Iraq. No
biological agents have been found so far, but officials believe the trailer
was washed with a caustic chemical to wipe away evidence. They said they may
need to dismantle it to get to hard-to-reach surfaces.

The trailer, painted in a military color scheme, was found on a transporter
normally used for tanks. It contains a fermenter and a system to capture
exhaust gases, which an Iraqi defector said were parts of Iraq's mobile
labs, Cambone said.

"While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been used for
purposes other than biological weapons agent production, U.S. and U.K.
technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform
any function beyond what the defector said it was for, which is the
production of biological agents," Cambone said.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/912045.asp?0cv=NB10

*  U.S. WEAPONS TEAM TO LEAVE IRAQ
by Barton Gellman
MSNBC from The Washington Post, 11th May

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 10 ‹  The group directing all known U.S. search efforts
for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without
finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of
outlawed arms, according to participants.

THE 75TH Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been
described from the start as the principal arm of the U.S. plan to discover
and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next
month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of
the war.

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff ‹ biologists, chemists, arms treaty
enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special
forces troops ‹ arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they
expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the
U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 ‹ hundreds of tons of biological and
chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of
an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members
said in interviews.

Army Col. Richard McPhee, who will close down the task force next month,
said he took seriously U.S. intelligence warnings on the eve of war that
Hussein had given "release authority" to subordinates in command of chemical
weapons.

"We didn't have all these people in [protective] suits" for nothing, he
said. But if Iraq thought of using such weapons, "there had to have been
something to use. And we haven't found it. ... Books will be written on that
in the intelligence community for a long time."

Army Col. Robert Smith, who leads the site assessment teams from the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, said task force leaders no longer "think we're
going to find chemical rounds sitting next to a gun." He added, "That's what
we came here for, but we're past that."

Motivated and accomplished in their fields, task force members found
themselves missing vital tools. They consistently found targets identified
in Washington to be inaccurate, looted and burned, or both. Leaders and
members of five of the task force's eight teams, and some senior officers
guiding them, said the weapons hunters were going through the motions now to
"check the blocks" on a prewar list.

U.S. Central Command began the war with a list of 19 top weapons sites. Only
two remain to be searched. Another list enumerated 68 top "non-WMD sites,"
without known links to special weapons but judged to have the potential to
offer clues. Of those, the tally at midweek showed 45 surveyed without
success.

Task Force 75's experience, and its impending dissolution after seven weeks
in action, square poorly with assertions in Washington that the search has
barely begun.

In his declaration of victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1,
President Bush said, "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and
biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be
investigated." Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for
intelligence, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that U.S. forces
had surveyed only 70 of the roughly 600 potential weapons facilities on the
"integrated master site list" prepared by U.S. intelligence agencies before
the war.

But here on the front lines of the search, the focus is on a smaller number
of high-priority sites, and the results are uniformly disappointing,
participants said.

"Why are we doing any planned targets?" Army Chief Warrant Officer Richard
L. Gonzales, leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, said in disgust to a
colleague during last Sunday's nightly report of weapons sites and survey
results. "Answer me that. We know they're empty."

Survey teams have combed laboratories and munitions plants, bunkers and
distilleries, bakeries and vaccine factories, file cabinets and holes in the
ground where tipsters advised them to dig. Most of the assignments came with
classified "target folders" describing U.S. intelligence leads. Others,
known as the "ad hocs," came to the task force's attention by way of
plausible human sources on the ground.

The hunt will continue under a new Iraq Survey Group, which the Bush
administration has said is a larger team. But the organizers are drawing
down their weapons staffs for lack of work, and adding expertise for other
missions.

Interviews and documents describing the transition from Task Force 75 to the
new group show that site survey teams, the advance scouts of the arms
search, will reduce from six to two their complement of experts in missile
technology and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. A little-known
nuclear special operations group from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
called the Direct Support Team, has already sent home a third of its
original complement, and plans to cut the remaining team by half.

"We thought we would be much more gainfully employed, or intensively
employed, than we were," said Navy Cmdr. David Beckett, who directs special
nuclear programs for the team.

State-of-the-art biological and chemical labs, shrunk to fit standard cargo
containers, came equipped with enough supplies to run thousands of tests
using DNA fingerprinting and mass spectrometry. They have been called upon
no more than a few dozen times, none with a confirmed hit. The labs'
director, who asked not to be identified, said some of his scientists were
also going home.

Even the sharpest skeptics do not rule out that the hunt may eventually find
evidence of banned weapons. The most significant unknown is what U.S.
interrogators are learning from senior Iraqi scientists, military industrial
managers and Iraqi government leaders now in custody. If the nonconventional
arms exist, some of them ought to know. Publicly, the Bush administration
has declined to discuss what the captured Iraqis are saying. In private,
U.S. officials provide conflicting reports, with some hinting at important
disclosures. Cambone also said U.S. forces have seized "troves of documents"
and are "surveying them, triaging them" for clues.

At former presidential palaces in the Baghdad area , where Task Force 75
will soon hand control to the Iraq Study Group, leaders and team members
refer to the covert operators as "secret squirrels." If they are making
important progress, it has not led to "actionable" targets, according to
McPhee and other task force members.

McPhee, an artillery brigade commander from Oklahoma who was assigned to the
task force five months ago, reflected on the weapons hunt as the sun set
outside his improvised sleeping quarters, a cot and mosquito net set down in
the wreckage of a marble palace annex. He smoked a cigar, but without the
peace of mind he said the evening ritual usually brings.

"My unit has not found chemical weapons," he said. "That's a fact. And I'm
47 years old, having a birthday in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces on a lake
in the middle of Baghdad. It's surreal. The whole thing is surreal.

"Am I convinced that what we did in this fight was viable? I tell you from
the bottom of my heart: We stopped Saddam Hussein in his WMD programs," he
said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "Do I know
where they are? I wish I did ... but we will find them. Or not. I don't
know. I'm being honest here."

Later in the conversation, he flung the unfinished cigar into the lake with
somewhat more force than required.

Team members explain their disappointing results, in part, as a consequence
of a slow advance. Cautious ground commanders sometimes held weapons hunters
away from the front, they said, and the task force had no helicopters of its
own.

"My personal feeling is we waited too long and stayed too far back," said
Christopher Kowal, an expert in computer forensics who worked for Mobile
Exploitation Team Charlie until last week.

But two other factors ‹ erroneous intelligence and poor site security ‹
dealt the severest blows to the hunt, according to leaders and team members
at every level.

Some information known in Washington, such as inventories of nuclear sites
under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not reach
the teams assigned to visit them. But what the U.S. government did not know
mattered more than what it did know. Intelligence agencies had a far less
accurate picture of Iraq's weapons program than participants believed at the
outset of their search, they recalled.

"We came to bear country, we came loaded for bear and we found out the bear
wasn't here," said a Defense Intelligence Agency officer here who asked not
to be identified by name. "The indications and warnings were there. The
assessments were solid."

"Okay, that paradigm didn't exist," he added. "The question before was,
where are Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons? What is the
question now? That is what we are trying to sort out."

One thing analysts must reconsider, he said, is: "What was the nature of the
threat?"

By far the greatest impediment to the weapons hunt, participants said, was
widespread looting of Iraq's governmental and industrial facilities. At
nearly every top-tier "sensitive site" the searchers reached, intruders had
sacked and burned the evidence that weapons hunters had counted on sifting.
As recently as last Tuesday, nearly a month after Hussein's fall from power,
soldiers under the Army's V Corps command had secured only 44 of the 85 top
potential weapons sites in the Baghdad area and 153 of the 372 considered
most important to rebuilding Iraq's government and economy.

McPhee saw early in the war that the looters were stripping his targets
before he could check them. He cut the planning cycle for new missions ‹ the
time between first notice and launch ‹ from 96 to 24 hours. "What we found,"
he said, was that "as the maneuver units hit a target they had to move on,
even 24 hours was too slow. By the time we got there, a lot of things were
gone."

Short and powerfully built, McPhee has spent his adult life as a combat
officer. He calls his soldiers "bubbas" and worries about their mail. "It
ain't good" that suspect sites are unprotected, he said, but he refused to
criticize fighting units who left evidence unguarded.

"You've got two corps commanders being told, 'Get to Baghdad,' and, oh, by
the way, 'When you run across sensitive sites, you have to secure them,' "
he said. "Do you secure all those sites, or do you get to Baghdad? You've
got limited force structure and you've got 20 missions."

A low point came when looters destroyed what was meant to be McPhee's
headquarters in the Iraqi capital. The 101st Airborne Division had used the
complex, a munitions factory called the Al Qadisiyah State Establishment,
before rolling north to Mosul. When a reporter came calling, looking for
Task Force 75, looters were busily stripping it clean. They later set it
ablaze.

The search teams arrived in Iraq "looking for the smoking gun," Smith said,
and now the mission is more diffuse ‹ general intelligence-gathering on
subjects ranging from crimes against humanity and prisoners of war to
Hussein's links with terrorists.

At the peak of the effort, all four mobile exploitation teams devoted nearly
full time to weapons of mass destruction. By late last month, two of the
four had turned to other questions. This week, MET Alpha, Gonzales's team,
also left the hunt, at least temporarily. It parted with its chemical and
biological experts, added linguists and document exploiters and recast
itself as an intelligence team. It will search for weapons if leads turn up,
but lately it has focused on Iraqi covert operations abroad and the theft of
Jewish antiquities.

The stymied hunt baffles search team leaders. To a person, those interviewed
during a weeklong visit to the task force said they believed in the mission
and the Bush administration accusations that prompted it.

Yet "smoking gun" is now a term of dark irony here. Maj. Kenneth Deal,
executive officer of one site survey team, called out the words in mock
triumph when he found a page of Arabic text at a former Baath Party
recreation center last week. It was torn from a translated edition of A.J.P.
Taylor's history, "The Struggle for Mastery in Europe." At a "battle update
brief" last week, amid confusion over the whereabouts of a British
laboratory in transit from Talil Air Base, McPhee deadpanned to his staff:
"I haven't a clue where the WMD is, but we can find this lab."

Among the sites already visited from Central Command's top 19 are an
underground facility at North Tikrit Hospital, an unconventional training
camp at Salman Pak, Samarra East Airport, the headquarters of the Military
Industrialization Commission, the Baghdad Research Complex, a storage site
for surface-to-surface missiles in Taji, the Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine
Institute, a munitions assembly plant in Iskandariyah and an underground
bunker at the Abu Ghurayb Palace.

The bunker, toured several days later by a reporter, withstood the palace's
destruction by at least two satellite-guided bombs. The bombs left six-foot
holes in the reinforced concrete palace roof, driving the steel reinforcing
rods downward in a pattern that resembled tentacles. The subsequent
detonation turned great marble rooms into rubble.

But the bunker, tunneled deep below a ground-floor kitchen, remained
unscathed. The tunnel dropped straight down and then leveled to horizontal,
forming corridors that extend most of the breadth of the palace. Richly
decorated living quarters were arranged along a series of L-shaped bends,
each protected by three angled blast doors. The doors weighed perhaps a ton.

In a climate-control room, chemical weapons filters and carbon dioxide
scrubbers protected the air and an overpressure blast valve stood ready to
vent the lethal shock waves of an explosion. And a decontamination shower
stood under an alarm panel designed to flash the message "Gas-Gaz."


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/may/11/051101121.html

*  U.S. WEAPONS HUNTERS HINDERED IN IRAQ
by Dafna Linzer
Las Vegas Sun, 11th May

CAMP DOHA, Kuwait (AP): U.S. weapons hunters - empty-handed after seven
weeks of field work - are still operating without translators, have had
almost no contact with Iraqi scientists and can't tell what's missing from
looted sites where suspected weapons of mass destruction were thought to be
hidden.

Some of the problems are logistical. Others seem to be the result of limited
manpower and expertise. In interviews with The Associated Press, military
planners involved in the search said they were working to solve them.

While the basic work structure will continue, they said, several elements
are expected to improve now that former U.N. inspectors are joining the
operation and its command is switching to the Pentagon.

Experts say the changes are desperately needed if the Bush administration is
to prove Iraq had the chemical or biological weapons the White House said it
went to war to destroy.

"I can't imagine how they could get much accomplished without interpreters
and translators, this is basic stuff," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N.
inspector and a bioweapons expert with the U.S. Institute for Peace.

The current teams also haven't been tagging or cataloguing sites - nearly
all of which were looted by the time the teams arrived. In every case, they
have been unable to determine what, if anything, might have been taken at
any given time.

Lt. Col. Michael Slifka, an arms control expert who helped put together the
Site Survey Teams, said the teams were conceived to be rapidly sent to
suspicious sites. Securing those locations from theft wasn't considered in
advance, he said.

"I certainly didn't expect the Iraqi populace to go in to places like this
and loot things."

Several of the most sensitive sites are being guarded by U.S. troops, but
their presence is likely making the areas appear even more valuable. There
are reports of civilians finding back ways into the sites to remove more
items.

Some help is expected next month when the weapons teams, which have been
operating under the command of field artillery Col. Richard McPhee, are
folded into the Iraq Survey Group - a new, Pentagon-led team of some 2,000
people charged with investigating everything from potential war crimes
committed by Saddam Hussein's regime to alleged terrorist connections with
al-Qaida.

But the change in command will not mean beefing up the size of the search
teams. In fact, two officials said the field teams - under pressure from
Washington and overburdened by a mammoth list of suspected weapons sites -
could become smaller.

Currently there are five operational Site Survey Teams staffed by a small
number of weapons experts, soldiers and Special Forces who handle initial
assessment missions. Any potential finds are analyzed by one of two Mobile
Exploitation Teams.

None of the teams were assigned translators. Slifka said they were trying to
correct that but that expanding the overall staff size wouldn't be necessary
if Iraqis come forward with key information, as Washington hopes they will.

"If we get the cooperation of the Iraqis then we're probably going to be in
good shape," Slifka said at Camp Doha, Kuwait, a dusty desert base that was
command center for land forces during the Iraq war.

But that cooperation hasn't been forthcoming.

Few scientists have offered information, and U.S. officials have said even
senior Iraqis in custody are continuing to insist the country wasn't
secretly developing weapons of mass destruction in recent years.

Slifka could think of only one example in which an Iraqi scientist had led a
team to an area where materials for a weapons program were said to have been
buried or destroyed. But the site yielded no conclusive evidence and much of
the scientist's claims have not been verified.

Some team members and even officials back in Washington have begun to doubt
actual weapons will be found. Instead they now talk of finding evidence of
infrastructure that could have been used to quickly produce unconventional
weapons.

Still, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said Sunday that weapons of mass destruction may still be in the hands of
Iraqi special units and could be used against coalition forces.

"Were they full-deployed and could they have been brought to bear on us, or
are they still perhaps out there somewhere in some sort of bunker and could
have been used?" Myers said in Qatar during a tour of the Persian Gulf. "We
are trying to run that one to the ground."

McPhee's 75th Exploitation Task Force, which is headed home once the survey
group sets up, began with a list of 900 suspect sites, 90 of them deemed
high-priority. Of the top sites, 75 have been examined, McPhee said
Thursday.

Slifka said each team is currently visiting one site a day - far fewer on
average than U.N. teams conducted during their stint which began in late
November and ended shortly before the war began March 20.

Even as the United States was drafting the U.N. resolution last fall that
sent chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and his teams back to Iraq, it was
already planning for their failure, Slifka said.

"There was a concern that the Iraqis would be grudgingly compliant and that
as a result the U.N. would eventually pull out and report that the Iraqis
were not being completely compliant and forthcoming and that we would then
need a capability of our own to try and find the Iraqi WMD program."

Still, a number of American and British weapons experts who served on the
previous U.N. inspection regime - not led by Blix - are being included on
the U.S. teams. The former inspectors know many within Iraq's scientific and
military community and are familiar with years of evidence and intelligence
gathered during the 1990s.

The United States provided Blix with some intelligence which didn't yield
results. The best leads, however, were followed up unsuccessfully by the
75th XTF.

Even so, Slifka said he wouldn't be disappointed if the teams didn't find
anything. Just understanding the roots of Saddam's efforts - something never
fully achieved by the U.N. teams - would be an accomplishment in itself.

"Eventually we'll put some sort of arms control measures in place, set up
monitoring and teach a new Iraqi government how to do it themselves."


http://www.msnbc.com/news/897268.asp?0sl=-32

*  SUSPECTED BIOWEAPONS LABS FOUND
by Jim Avila
MSNBC, 11th May

Military teams searching for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq found
three trailers believed to be mobile biological weapons laboratories capable
of producing deadly germs for weapons, NBC News reported.

THE TEAMS found the trailers at a bombed-out rocket and missile factory near
Mosul in northern Iraq. One of the trailers was missing its canvas cover,
wheels and plumbing ‹ most likely taken by looters ‹ but the essential
parts, including a compressor and dryer needed to produce weapons grade
anthrax, were intact.

Military teams were conducting tests for traces of biological weapons,
according to NBC News.

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay told NBC there was no other possible
purpose for the lab. "This is it," he said.

The New York Times, meanwhile, reported on what appears to be the same lab
in its Sunday editions.

The newspaper quoted a leader of one of the teams of experts as saying the
laboratory could be used for medicinal and peaceful purposes, as well as for
making deadly germs for weapons. The paper quoted the unidentified special
forces officer as saying that Iraq's failure to disclose the site showed
that the ousted regime had violated U.N. disarmament demands.

"The failure to disclose such equipment is a clear violation of United
Nations sanctions and an indication of ill intent," the Times quoted the
team leader as saying.

Despite U.S. claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, none
have been found since American-led forces seized Baghdad and toppled the
regime a month ago. Many of Saddam's elite units failed to mount a credible
resistance, leading to suspicions that some of them may be trying to
reorganize.

The possible find also comes as the 75th Exploitation Task Force directing
the search for weapons of mass destruction is making plans to head home in
June, The Washington Post reported.

Last week, the Pentagon reported the discovery of another suspected mobile
lab. That lab was scrubbed with a bleach-like substance to remove any
possible trace of biological weapons, officials said, but was capable of
producing them.

Meantime, American authorities have promised rewards to Iraqis for
information leading to discovery of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons
programs, the U.S.-run Information Radio said Saturday.

Besides the unspecified reward, potential informants were offered anonymity
and guarantees of safety in exchange for useful information "regarding any
site that manufactured or held weapons of mass destruction."

"The reward you may get can improve your living standard," it said.
The lengthy spot on the Arabic-language radio was part of a growing U.S.
government campaign to find Iraqi sources potentially knowledgeable about
prohibited arms programs. American officials have indicated they would
increasingly depend on hoped-for Iraqi informants to trace any
weapons-making programs.

Saturday's radio announcement said the U.S.-British coalition was interested
in "locations of components, materials and supplies that had been used in
developing, processing, manufacturing and maintaining weapons of mass
destruction."

[.....]


http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2I4BDDXU5WH22CRBAEKSFEY?type
=topNews&storyID=2725016

*  U.S. SENDING NEW TEAM TO IRAQ FOR WEAPONS SEARCH
by Steve Holland
Reuters, 12th May

WASHINGTON: With evidence of weapons of mass destruction elusive, the United
States and its war allies are replacing arms inspectors in Iraq with a new,
larger team that will try to piece together "a deception program" by Saddam
Hussein, a top White House official said on Monday.

The new team will be "more expert" at following the paper trail and other
intelligence left behind by the Saddam government, said President Bush's
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

The United States, against much international opposition, pushed for war
against Iraq to disarm Baghdad of its alleged programs to develop chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons. But so far none have been found to provide
conclusive proof of those programs.

The U.S. military unit directing the search for weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq is dismantling its operations and will likely leave Iraq in coming
weeks.

Rice, in a Reuters interview, said a "different kind of team" is now needed
to continue the search. She called the change a "long-planned rotation." The
new team will include Americans, Britons and Australians.

"The team that will be going in will be larger (and) will have people who
are more expert in document exploitation and intelligence and all of the
pieces that we need," she said.

Rice said Iraq appeared to have had a virtually "inspections proof" system
of concealing chemical and biological weapons by developing chemicals and
agents that could be used for more than one purpose, but that could be put
together as weapons at the last minute.

She said U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages
and find" weapons of mass destruction.

"It was a sophisticated deception program. and it will take some time to
untangle that, but we will," she said.

At the same time, the United States and Britain are pushing the U.N.
Security Council to lift U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

They are seeking a vote by June 3, when the oil-for-food program, which
gives the United Nations control over Iraqi oil revenues and allows them to
be used to buy food and medicine, needs to be renewed.

Their proposal is likely to face at least some resistance from France and
Russia, which would like verifiable proof of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction.

"It is time to lift sanctions. It is purely cynical to say that sanctions
ought to remain, particularly if you are a country that thought that
sanctions ought to be lifted on Saddam Hussein," Rice said, referring to
Russia and France, which had favored lifting U.N. sanctions in recent years
while Saddam was still in power.

With retired Gen. Jay Garner leaving as the head of the U.S.-led
reconstruction effort in Iraq, Rice said his replacement, L. Paul Bremer,
will have a broader role to get more international participation in helping
rebuild Iraq.

Bremer's appointment followed repeated Iraqi criticism of the slow pace of
work to restore basic services and form a transitional Iraqi government.

Rice praised Garner's role and said Bremer will continue trying to get the
electricity and water running for Iraqis as well as undertake a broader
political effort.

"I think you're going to see a more focused effort to get broader
participation of other countries," she said.


http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/iraq/bal
biolab0513,0,4291060.story?coll=bal%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines

*  SECOND SUSPECTED BIOWEAPONS LAB FOUND
Baltimore Sun, 13th May

WASHINGTON -- Soldiers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division found another
trailer in northern Iraq that experts believe was a mobile biological
weapons laboratory, the division's commander said today.

The troops found the trailer Friday at al-Kindi, the largest former missile
research facility in Iraq, said Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the
101st. The trailer is "close to identical" to another found last month in
the same area that U.S. officials believe was a mobile germ weapons
workshop, Petraeus told Pentagon reporters in a two-way video link from his
headquarters in Mosul.

Some equipment from the latest trailer had been taken by looters, and there
were indications -- such as unfinished welding -- that the apparatus was
incomplete, Petraeus said. He said a military weapons expert told him
"there's a reasonable degree of certainty this is a mobile biological agent
production trailer."

[.....]

Serial numbers on both trailers indicated they were made as a set, Petraeus
said. The first one found had a serial number of 1 and a construction date
of 2002, while the second had the serial number 2 and a construction date of
2003, he said.

The second trailer soon will be taken to Baghdad International Airport,
where military experts are examining the first trailer, Petraeus said.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne found several sites where officials thought
at first there were chemical or biological weapons, only to find through
further testing that there were no weapons of mass destruction there.
Petraeus said he did not know whether Iraq had destroyed all of its banned
weapons in the 1990s as it claimed, destroyed them just before the war or
had them very well hidden.

"I think the explanation's still out there to be found," he said.




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