This blog:
It is hard to believe why anybody still believes one word that the US government says.
That is why I publish here the full text of Colin Powel in which he convinced 'The World' that Saddam was very dangerous, and that the free West , us good people, had to attack him before it was too late: if he starts using his weapons of Mass Destruction, we will be too late !
Here it is: 20 full pages, and ALL LIES! (
LIES. )
Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr President, Mr Secretary General,
distinguished colleagues, I would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the
special effort that each of you made to be here today.
This is important day for us all as we
review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations under
UN security council resolution 1441.
Last November 8, this council passed
resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to
disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found
guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous
resolutions and 12 years.
Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an
innocent party, but a regime this council has repeatedly convicted over the
years. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into
compliance or to face serious consequences. No council member present in voting
on that day had any illusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or
what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.
And to assist in its disarmament, we
called on Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors from Unmovic and IAEA.
We laid down tough standards for Iraq to
meet to allow the inspectors to do their job.
This council placed the burden on Iraq
to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find that which Iraq has gone
out of its way to conceal for so long. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not
detectives.
I asked for this session today for two
purposes: First, to support the core assessments made by Dr Blix and Dr
El-Baradei. As Dr Blix reported to this council on January 27: "Iraq
appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the
disarmament which was demanded of it."
And as Dr El-Baradei reported, Iraq's
declaration of December 7: "Did not provide any new information relevant
to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998."
My second purpose today is to provide
you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well as Iraq's involvement in
terrorism, which is also the subject of resolution 1441 and other earlier
resolutions.
I might add at this point that we are
providing all relevant information we can to the inspection teams for them to
do their work.
The material I will present to you comes
from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other
countries.
Some of the sources are technical, such
as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other
sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what
Saddam Hussein is really up to.
I cannot tell you everything that we
know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have
learned over the years, is deeply troubling.
What you will see is an accumulation of
facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraqis' behavior -
Iraq's behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no
effort - no effort - to disarm as required by the international community.
Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime
are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.
Let me begin by playing a tape for you.
What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It
takes place on November 26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams
resumed inspections in Iraq.
The conversation involves two senior
officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq's elite military unit,
the Republican Guard.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE) Speaking in Arabic.
(END AUDIO TAPE) POWELL: Let me pause
and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard
between these two officers.
First, they acknowledge that our
colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is coming, and they know what he's coming for,
and they know he's coming the next day. He's coming to look for things that are
prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide
things.
But they're worried. "We have this
modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?" What is their
concern? Their concern is that it's something they should not have, something
that should not be seen.
The general is incredulous: "You
didn't get a modified. You don't have one of those, do you?" "I have
one." "Which, from where?" "From the workshop, from the
al-Kindi company?" "What?" "From al-Kindi." "I'll
come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left."
"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left." Note what he
says: "We evacuated everything." We didn't destroy it. We didn't line
it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to
make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.
"I will come to you tomorrow."
The al-Kindi company: This is a company that is well known to have been
involved in prohibited weapons systems activity.
Let me play another tape for you. As you
will recall, the inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16. On
January 20, four days later, Iraq promised the inspectors it would search for
more. You will now hear an officer from Republican Guard headquarters issuing
an instruction to an officer in the field. Their conversation took place just
last week on January 30.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE) Speaking in Arabic.
(END AUDIO TAPE) POWELL: Let me pause
again and review the elements of this message.
"They're inspecting the ammunition
you have, yes." "Yes." "For the possibility there are
forbidden ammo." "For the possibility there is by chance forbidden
ammo?" "Yes." "And we sent you a message yesterday to clean
out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is
nothing there." Remember the first message, evacuated.
This is all part of a system of hiding
things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing
behind.
If you go a little further into this
message, and you see the specific instructions from headquarters: "After
you have carried out what is contained in this message, destroy the message because
I don't want anyone to see this message." "OK, OK." Why? Why?
This message would have verified to the
inspectors that they have been trying to turn over things. They were looking
for things. But they don't want that message seen, because they were trying to
clean up the area to leave no evidence behind of the presence of weapons of
mass destruction. And they can claim that nothing was there. And the inspectors
can look all they want, and they will find nothing.
This effort to hide things from the inspectors
is not one or two isolated events, quite the contrary. This is part and parcel
of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at
the highest levels of the Iraqi regime.
We know that Saddam Hussein has what is
called quote, "a higher committee for monitoring the inspections
teams," unquote. Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to
monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament.
Not to cooperate with them, not to
assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs.
The committee reports directly to Saddam
Hussein. It is headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Its
members include Saddam Hussein's son Qusay.
This committee also includes Lieutenant
General Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam. In case that name isn't
immediately familiar to you, General Saadi has been the Iraqi regime's primary
point of contact for Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. It was General Saadi who last
fall publicly pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with
inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi's job is not to cooperate, it is to
deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them,
but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing.
We have learned a lot about the work of
this special committee. We learned that just prior to the return of inspectors
last November the regime had decided to resume what we heard called, quote,
"the old game of cat and mouse," unquote.
For example, let me focus on the now
famous declaration that Iraq submitted to this council on December 7. Iraq
never had any intention of complying with this council's mandate.
Instead, Iraq planned to use the
declaration, overwhelm us and to overwhelm the inspectors with useless information
about Iraq's permitted weapons so that we would not have time to pursue Iraq's
prohibited weapons. Iraq's goal was to give us, in this room, to give those us
on this council the false impression that the inspection process was working.
You saw the result. Dr. Blix pronounced
the 12,200-page declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and
practically devoid of new evidence.
Could any member of this council
honestly rise in defense of this false declaration? Everything we have seen and
heard indicates that, instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to
ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy
doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding
absolutely nothing.
My
colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid
sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and
conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these
are from human sources.
Orders were issued to Iraq's security
organizations, as well as to Saddam Hussein's own office, to hide all
correspondence with the Organization of Military Industrialization.
This is the organization that oversees
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Make sure there are no documents
left which could connect you to the OMI.
We know that Saddam's son, Qusay,
ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam's numerous palace
complexes. We know that Iraqi government officials, members of the ruling Baath
Party and scientists have hidden prohibited items in their homes. Other key files from military and scientific
establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the
countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.
Thanks to intelligence they were
provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports.
When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered
roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the
home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related
to Iraq's nuclear program.
Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors
to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and
every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they
need, to satisfy the demands of our council? Our sources tell us that, in some
cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced.
Who took the hard drives? Where did they go? What's being hidden? Why? There's
only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors.
Numerous human sources tell us that the
Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass
destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors.
While we were here in this council
chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that
a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads
containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to
various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been
hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four
weeks to escape detection.
We also have satellite photos that
indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction facilities.
Let me say a word about satellite images
before I show a couple. The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes
hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of
photo analysis takes experts with years and years of experience, poring for
hours and hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try
to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery
specialists.
Let's look at one. This one is about a
weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called
Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this
one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently
came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells.
Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in
yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active
chemical munitions bunkers.
How do I know that? How can I say that?
Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a
close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the
presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The
arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature
item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and
special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker.
The truck you also see is a signature
item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.
This is characteristic of those four
bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be
in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around
those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the
different bunkers.
Now look at the picture on the right.
You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles
are gone, the tents are gone, it's been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd
of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the
inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right.
The bunkers are clean when the
inspectors get there. They found nothing.
This sequence of events raises the
worrisome suspicion that Iraq had been tipped off to the forthcoming
inspections at Taji (ph). As it did throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq
today is actively using its considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its
illicit activities. From our sources, we know that inspectors are under
constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is
relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics.
I would call my colleagues' attention to
the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in
exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.
In this next example, you will see the
type of concealment activity Iraq has undertaken in response to the resumption
of inspections. Indeed, in November 2002, just when the inspections were about
to resume this type of activity spiked. Here are three examples.
At this ballistic missile site, on
November 10, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile
components. At this biological weapons related facility, on November 25, just
two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we
almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly.
At this ballistic missile facility,
again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared
along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house
cleaning at close to 30 sites.
Days after this activity, the vehicles
and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to
patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the
inspectors already knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be
coming.
We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq
suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious
to demonstrate what they had or did not have? Remember the first intercept in
which two Iraqis talked about the need to hide a modified vehicle from the
inspectors. Where did Iraq take all of this equipment? Why wasn't it presented
to the inspectors? Iraq also has refused to permit any U-2 reconnaissance
flights that would give the inspectors a better sense of what's being moved
before, during and after inspectors.
This refusal to allow this kind of
reconnaissance is in direct, specific violation of operative paragraph seven of
our Resolution 1441.
Saddam Hussein and his regime are not
just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people. You know
the basic facts. Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate,
unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons
as required by Resolution 1441.
The regime only allows interviews with
inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi
organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced
publicly and announced ominously that, quote, "Nobody is ready to leave
Iraq to be interviewed." Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the
inspectors of conducting espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating
with U.N. inspectors was committing treason.
Iraq did not meet its obligations under
1441 to provide a comprehensive list of scientists associated with its weapons
of mass destruction programs. Iraq's list was out of date and contained only
about 500 names, despite the fact that UNSCOM had earlier put together a list
of about 3,500 names.
Let me just tell you what a number of
human sources have told us.
Saddam Hussein has directly participated
in the effort to prevent interviews. In early December, Saddam Hussein had all
Iraqi scientists warned of the serious consequences that they and their
families would face if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors.
They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is
punishable by death.
Saddam Hussein also said that scientists
should be told not to agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed
outside Iraq would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.
In mid-November, just before the
inspectors returned, Iraqi experts were ordered to report to the headquarters
of the special security organization to receive counterintelligence training.
The training focused on evasion methods, interrogation resistance techniques,
and how to mislead inspectors.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are not
assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources
of the intelligence services of other countries.
For example, in mid-December weapons
experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to
deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.
On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi
officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent
into hiding.
In the middle of January, experts at one
facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had
been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other
Iraqi military facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to
replace the workers who'd been sent home. A dozen experts have been placed
under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam
Hussein's guest houses. It goes on and on and on.
As the examples I have just presented
show, the information and intelligence we have gathered point to an active and
systematic effort on the part of the Iraqi regime to keep key materials and
people from the inspectors in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The pattern
is not just one of reluctant cooperation, nor is it merely a lack of
cooperation. What we see is a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful
inspection work.
My colleagues, operative paragraph four
of U.N. Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly
states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by
Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of
this resolution shall constitute - the facts speak for themselves - shall constitute
a further material breach of its obligation.
We wrote it this way to give Iraq an
early test - to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration
and would they early on indicate a willingness to cooperate with the
inspectors? It was designed to be an early test.
They failed that test. By this standard,
the standard of this operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further
material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable
and undeniable.
Iraq has now placed itself in danger of
the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body
places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy
its will without responding effectively and immediately.
The issue before us is not how much time
we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction.
But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before
we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: "Enough. Enough."
The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction pose to the world. Let me now turn to those deadly
weapons programs and describe why they are real and present dangers to the
region and to the world.
First, biological weapons. We have
talked frequently here about biological weapons. By way of introduction and
history, I think there are just three quick points I need to make.
First, you will recall that it took
UNSCOM four long and frustrating years to pry - to pry - an admission out of
Iraq that it had biological weapons.
Second, when Iraq finally admitted
having these weapons in 1995, the quantities were vast. Less than a teaspoon of
dry anthrax, a little bit about this amount - this is just about the amount of
a teaspoon - less than a teaspoon full of dry anthrax in an envelope shut down
the United States Senate in the fall of 2001. This forced several hundred
people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers
just from an amount just about this quantity that was inside of an envelope.
Iraq declared 8,500 liters of anthrax,
but UNSCOM estimates that Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters. If
concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon
tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons. And Saddam Hussein has not verifiably
accounted for even one teaspoon-full of this deadly material.
And that is my third point. And it is
key. The Iraqis have never accounted for all of the biological weapons they
admitted they had and we know they had. They have never accounted for all the
organic material used to make them. And they have not accounted for many of the
weapons filled with these agents such as there are 400 bombs. This is evidence,
not conjecture. This is true. This is all well-documented.
Dr. Blix told this council that Iraq has
provided little evidence to verify anthrax production and no convincing
evidence of its destruction. It should come as no shock then, that since Saddam
Hussein forced out the last inspectors in 1998, we have amassed much
intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons.
One of the most worrisome things that
emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons
is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological
agents.
Let me take you inside that intelligence
file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts. We have
firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.
The trucks and train cars are easily
moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months,
they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount
that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.
Although Iraq's mobile production
program began in the mid-1990s, U.N. inspectors at the time only had vague
hints of such programs. Confirmation came later, in the year 2000.
The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi
chemical engineer who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was
present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when
an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to
biological agents.
He reported that when UNSCOM was in
country and inspecting, the biological weapons agent production always began on
Thursdays at midnight because Iraq thought UNSCOM would not inspect on the
Muslim Holy Day, Thursday night through Friday. He added that this was
important because the units could not be broken down in the middle of a
production run, which had to be completed by Friday evening before the
inspectors might arrive again.
This defector is currently hiding in
another country with the certain knowledge that Saddam Hussein will kill him if
he finds him. His eyewitness account of these mobile production facilities has
been corroborated by other sources.
A second source, an Iraqi civil engineer
in a position to know the details of the program, confirmed the existence of
transportable facilities moving on trailers.
A third source, also in a position to
know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq had manufactured mobile production
systems mounted on road trailer units and on rail cars.
Finally, a fourth source, an Iraqi
major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has mobile biological research
laboratories, in addition to the production facilities I mentioned earlier.
We have diagrammed what our sources
reported about these mobile facilities. Here you see both truck and rail
car-mounted mobile factories. The description our sources gave us of the
technical features required by such facilities are highly detailed and
extremely accurate. As these drawings based on their description show, we know
what the fermenters look like, we know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other
parts look like. We know how they fit together. We know how they work. And we
know a great deal about the platforms on which they are mounted.
As shown in this diagram, these
factories can be concealed easily, either by moving ordinary-looking trucks and
rail cars along Iraq's thousands of miles of highway or track, or by parking
them in a garage or warehouse or somewhere in Iraq's extensive system of
underground tunnels and bunkers.
We know that Iraq has at lest seven of
these mobile biological agent factories. The truck-mounted ones have at least
two or three trucks each. That means that the mobile production facilities are
very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of-there may be more-but perhaps 18
that we know of. Just imagine trying to find 18 trucks among the thousands and
thousands of trucks that travel the roads of Iraq every single day.
It took the inspectors four years to
find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will
take the inspectors to find even one of these 18 trucks without Iraq coming
forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of
capabilities? Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For
example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce
enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands
of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.
By 1998, UN
experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their
biological weapons programmes. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise
into these mobile production facilities.
We know from Iraq's past
admissions that it has successfully weaponised not only anthrax, but also other
biological agents, including botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin.
But Iraq's research efforts did
not stop there. Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents
causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera,
camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop
smallpox.
The Iraqi regime has also
developed ways to disburse lethal biological agents, widely and discriminately
into the water supply, into the air. For example, Iraq had a programme to
modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets. This video of an Iraqi test flight
obtained by Unscom some years ago shows an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft. Note
the spray coming from beneath the Mirage; that is 2,000 litres of simulated
anthrax that a jet is spraying.
In 1995, an Iraqi military
officer, Mujahid Sali Abdul Latif (ph), told inspectors that Iraq intended the
spray tanks to be mounted onto a MiG-21 that had been converted into an
unmanned aerial vehicle, or a UAV. UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute
an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons.
Iraq admitted to producing four
spray tanks. But to this day, it has provided no credible evidence that they
were destroyed, evidence that was required by the international community.
There can be no doubt that Saddam
Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many
more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in
ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too
terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.
Unmovic already laid out much of
this, and it is documented for all of us to read in Unscom's 1999 report on the
subject.
Let me set the stage with three
key points that all of us need to keep in mind: First, Saddam Hussein has used
these horrific weapons on another country and on his own people. In fact, in
the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience
with chemical weapons since World War I than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Second, as with biological
weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical
weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough
precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents.
If we consider just one category of missing weaponry - 6,500 bombs from the
Iran-Iraq war - Unmovic says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in
the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now
unaccounted for.
Dr. Blix has quipped that, quote,
"Mustard gas is not (inaudible). You are supposed to know what you did
with it."
We believe Saddam Hussein knows
what he did with it, and he has not come clean with the international
community. We have evidence these weapons existed. What we don't have is
evidence from Iraq that they have been destroyed or where they are. That is
what we are still waiting for.
Third point, Iraq's record on
chemical weapons is replete with lies. It took years for Iraq to finally admit
that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX. A single drop of
VX on the skin will kill in minutes. Four tons.
The admission only came out after
inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein
Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law. Unscom also gained forensic evidence
that Iraq had produced VX and put it into weapons for delivery.
Yet, to this day, Iraq denies it
had ever weaponised VX. And on January 27, Unmovic told this council that it
has information that conflicts with the Iraqi account of its VX programme.
We know that Iraq has embedded key
portions of its illicit chemical weapons infrastructure within its legitimate
civilian industry. To all outward appearances, even to experts, the
infrastructure looks like an ordinary civilian operation. Illicit and
legitimate production can go on simultaneously; or, on a dime, this dual-use
infrastructure can turn from clandestine to commercial and then back again.
These inspections would be
unlikely, any inspections of such facilities would be unlikely to turn up
anything prohibited, especially if there is any warning that the inspections
are coming. Call it ingenuous or evil genius, but the Iraqis deliberately
designed their chemical weapons programmes to be inspected. It is
infrastructure with a built-in ally.
Under the guise of dual-use
infrastructure, Iraq has undertaken an effort to reconstitute facilities that
were closely associated with its past programme to develop and produce chemical
weapons.
For example, Iraq has rebuilt key
portions of the Tariq (ph) state establishment. Tariq includes facilities
designed specifically for Iraq's chemical weapons programme and employs key
figures from past programmes.
That's the production end of
Saddam's chemical weapons business. What about the delivery end? I'm going to
show you a small part of a chemical complex called al-Moussaid (ph), a site
that Iraq has used for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from
production facilities out to the field.
In May 2002, our satellites
photographed the unusual activity in this picture. Here we see cargo vehicles
are again at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied
by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons
activity.
What makes this picture
significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement
of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time. So it's not just the
photo, and it's not an individual seeing the photo. It's the photo and then the
knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case.
This photograph of the site taken
two months later in July shows not only the previous site, which is the figure
in the middle at the top with the bulldozer sign near it, it shows that this
previous site, as well as all of the other sites around the site, have been
fully bulldozed and graded. The topsoil has been removed. The Iraqis literally
removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to
conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical
weapons activity.
To support its deadly biological
and chemical weapons programmes, Iraq procures needed items from around the
world using an extensive clandestine network. What we know comes largely from
intercepted communications and human sources who are in a position to know the
facts.
Iraq's procurement efforts include
equipment that can filter and separate micro-organisms and toxins involved in
biological weapons, equipment that can be used to concentrate the agent, growth
media that can be used to continue producing anthrax and botulinum toxin,
sterilization equipment for laboratories, glass-lined reactors and specialty
pumps that can handle corrosive chemical weapons agents and precursors, large
amounts of vinyl chloride, a precursor for nerve and blister agents, and other
chemicals such as sodium sulfide, an important mustard agent precursor.
Now, of course, Iraq will argue
that these items can also be used for legitimate purposes. But if that is true,
why do we have to learn about them by intercepting communications and risking
the lives of human agents? With Iraq's well documented history on biological
and chemical weapons, why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt?
I don't, and I don't think you will either after you hear this next intercept.
Just a few weeks ago, we
intercepted communications between two commanders in Iraq's Second Republican
Guard Corps. One commander is going to be giving an instruction to the other.
You will hear as this unfolds that what he wants to communicate to the other
guy, he wants to make sure the other guy hears clearly, to the point of
repeating it so that it gets written down and completely understood. Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE) Speaking in
foreign language.
(END AUDIO TAPE) POWELL: Let's
review a few selected items of this conversation. Two officers talking to each
other on the radio want to make sure that nothing is misunderstood:
"Remove. Remove."
The expression, the expression,
"I got it."
"Nerve agents. Nerve agents.
Wherever it comes up."
"Got it."
"Wherever it comes up."
"In the wireless
instructions, in the instructions."
"Correction. No. In the
wireless instructions."
"Wireless. I got it."
Why does he repeat it that way?
Why is he so forceful in making sure this is understood? And why did he focus
on wireless instructions? Because the senior officer is concerned that somebody
might be listening.
Well, somebody was.
"Nerve agents. Stop talking
about it. They are listening to us. Don't give any evidence that we have these
horrible agents." Well, we know that they do. And this kind of
conversation confirms it.
Our conservative estimate is that
Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons
agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.
Even the low end of 100 tons of
agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100
square miles of territory, an area nearly five times the size of Manhattan.
Let me remind you that, of the 122
millimetre chemical warheads, that the UN inspectors found recently, this
discovery could very well be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged
iceberg. The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest
of the submerged iceberg?
Saddam Hussein has chemical
weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no
compunction about using them again, against his neighbours and against his own
people.
And we have sources who tell us
that he recently has authorised his field commanders to use them. He wouldn't
be passing out the orders if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use
them.
We also have sources who tell us
that, since the 1980s, Saddam's regime has been experimenting on human beings
to perfect its biological or chemical weapons.
A source said that 1,600 death row
prisoners were transferred in 1995 to a special unit for such experiments. An
eyewitness saw prisoners tied down to beds, experiments conducted on them,
blood oozing around the victim's mouths and autopsies performed to confirm the
effects on the prisoners. Saddam Hussein's humanity - inhumanity has no limits.
Let me turn now to nuclear
weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his
nuclear weapons programme.
On the contrary, we have more than
a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
To fully appreciate the challenge
that we face today, remember that, in 1991, the inspectors searched Iraq's
primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time. And they found nothing
to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weapons programme.
But based on defector information
in May of 1991, Saddam Hussein's lie was exposed. In truth, Saddam Hussein had
a massive clandestine nuclear weapons programme that covered several different
techniques to enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas
centrifuge, and gas diffusion. We estimate that this illicit programme cost the
Iraqis several billion dollars.
Nonetheless, Iraq continued to
tell the IAEA that it had no nuclear weapons programme. If Saddam had not been
stopped, Iraq could have produced a nuclear bomb by 1993, years earlier than
most worse-case assessments that had been made before the war.
In 1995, as a result of another
defector, we find out that, after his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had
initiated a crash programme to build a crude nuclear weapon in violation of
Iraq's UN obligations.
Saddam Hussein already possesses
two out of the three key components needed to build a nuclear bomb. He has a
cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design.
Since 1998, his efforts to
reconstitute his nuclear programme have been focused on acquiring the third and
last component, sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. To
make the fissile material, he needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium.
Saddam Hussein is determined to
get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated
covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different
countries, even after inspections resumed.
These tubes are controlled by the
Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely because they can be used as centrifuges for
enriching uranium. By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we
all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what
these tubes are for.
Most US experts think they are
intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other
experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the
rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.
Let me tell you what is not
controversial about these tubes. First, all the experts who have analyzed the
tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use.
Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for
Iraq.
I am no expert on centrifuge
tubes, but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things:
First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a
tolerance that far exceeds US requirements for comparable rockets.
Maybe Iraqis just manufacture
their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don't think
so.
Second, we actually have examined
tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they
reached Baghdad. What we notice in these different batches is a progression to
higher and higher levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an
anodised coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. Why would they
continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something
that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?
The high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We also have
intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets
and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used in a gas centrifuge
programme to enrich uranium.
In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials
negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase
of a magnet production plant. Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing
20 to 30 grams. That's the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq's gas
centrifuge programme before the Gulf War. This incident linked with the tubes
is another indicator of Iraq's attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons
programme.
Intercepted communications from
mid-2000 through last summer show that Iraq front companies sought to buy
machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these
companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum
tubes into Iraq.
People will continue to debate
this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts
show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key
missing piece from his nuclear weapons programme, the ability to produce
fissile material. He also has been busy trying to maintain the other key parts
of his nuclear programme, particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists.
It is noteworthy that, over the
last 18 months, Saddam Hussein has paid increasing personal attention to
Iraqi's top nuclear scientists, a group that the governmental-controlled press
calls openly, his nuclear mujahedeen. He regularly exhorts them and praises
their progress. Progress toward what end? Long ago, the Security Council, this
council, required Iraq to halt all nuclear activities of any kind.
Let me talk now about the systems
Iraq is developing to deliver weapons of mass destruction, in particular Iraq's
ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs.
First, missiles. We all remember
that before the Gulf War Saddam Hussein's goal was missiles that flew not just
hundreds, but thousands of kilometers. He wanted to strike not only his
neighbours, but also nations far beyond his borders.
While inspectors destroyed most of
the prohibited ballistic missiles, numerous intelligence reports over the past
decade, from sources inside Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert
force of up to a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles. These are missiles
with a range of 650 to 900 kilometres.
We know from intelligence and
Iraq's own admissions that Iraq's alleged permitted ballistic missiles, the
al-Samud II (ph) and the al-Fatah (ph), violate the 150-kilometer limit
established by this council in Resolution 687. These are prohibited systems.
Unmovic has also reported that
Iraq has illegally important 380 SA-2 (ph) rocket engines. These are likely for
use in the al-Samud II (ph). Their import was illegal on three counts.
Resolution 687 prohibited all military shipments into Iraq. Unscom specifically
prohibited use of these engines in surface-to-surface missiles. And finally, as
we have just noted, they are for a system that exceeds the 150-kilometer range
limit.
Worst of all, some of these
engines were acquired as late as December - after this council passed
Resolution 1441.
What I want you to know today is that
Iraq has programmes that are intended to produce ballistic missiles that fly
1,000 kilometers. One programme is pursuing a liquid fuel missile that would be
able to fly more than 1,200 kilometers. And you can see from this map, as well
as I can, who will be in danger of these missiles.
As part of this effort, another
little piece of evidence, Iraq has built an engine test stand that is larger
than anything it has ever had. Notice the dramatic difference in size between
the test stand on the left, the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the
large exhaust vent. This is where the flame from the engine comes out. The
exhaust on the right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left.
The one on the left was used for short-range missile. The one on the right is
clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers.
This photograph was taken in April
of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put
over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath
the test stand.
Saddam Hussein's intentions have
never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are
missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver
chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads.
Now, unmanned aerial vehicles,
UAVs.
Iraq has been working on a variety
of UAVs for more than a decade. This is just illustrative of what a UAV would
look like. This effort has included attempts to modify for unmanned flight the
MiG-21 and with greater success an aircraft called the L-29. However, Iraq is
now concentrating not on these airplanes, but on developing and testing smaller
UAVs, such as this.
UAVs are well suited for
dispensing chemical and biological weapons.
There is ample evidence that Iraq
has dedicated much effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be
adapted for UAVs. And of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he
has not told the truth. One of these lies is graphically and indisputably
demonstrated by intelligence we collected on June 27, last year.
According to Iraq's December 7
declaration, its UAVs have a range of only 80 kilometers. But we detected one
of Iraq's newest UAVs in a test flight that went 500 kilometers nonstop on
autopilot in the race track pattern depicted here.
Not only is this test well in
excess of the 150 kilometers that the United Nations permits, the test was left
out of Iraq's December 7th declaration. The UAV was flown around and around and
around in a circle. And so, that its 80 kilometer limit really was 500
kilometers unrefueled and on autopilot, violative of all of its obligations
under 1441.
The linkages over the past 10
years between Iraq's UAV programme and biological and chemical warfare agents
are of deep concern to us. Iraq could use these small UAVs which have a
wingspan of only a few meters to deliver biological agents to its neighbours or
if transported, to other countries, including the United States.
My friends, the information I have
presented to you about these terrible weapons and about Iraq's continued
flaunting of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 1441 links to a
subject I now want to spend a little bit of time on. And that has to do with
terrorism.
Our concern is not just about
these elicit weapons. It's the way that these elicit weapons can be connected
to terrorists and terrorist organizations that have no compunction about using
such devices against innocent people around the world.
Iraq and terrorism go back decades.
Baghdad trains Palestine Liberation Front members in small arms and explosives.
Saddam uses the Arab Liberation Front to funnel money to the families of
Palestinian suicide bombers in order to prolong the intifada. And it's no
secret that Saddam's own intelligence service was involved in dozens of attacks
or attempted assassinations in the 1990s.
But what I want to bring to your
attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and
the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist
organisations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbours a deadly
terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated collaborator of
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan,
fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in
2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of
the specialities of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the
Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive
training centre camp. And this camp is located in north-eastern Iraq.
You see a picture of this camp.
The network is teaching its
operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons. Let me remind you how ricin
works. Less than a pinch - image a pinch of salt - less than a pinch of ricin,
eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory
failure. Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no
cure. It is fatal.
Those helping to run this camp are
Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam
Hussein's controlled Iraq. But Baghdad has an agent in the most senior levels
of the radical organisation, Ansar al-Islam, that controls this corner of Iraq.
In 2000 this agent offered al-Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept
al-Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They
remain there today.
Zarqawi's activities are not
confined to this small corner of north-east Iraq. He travelled to Baghdad in
May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months
while he recuperated to fight another day.
During this stay, nearly two dozen
extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there.
These al-Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of
people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and
they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.
Iraqi officials deny accusations
of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an
al-Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote,
"good," that Baghdad could be transited quickly.
We know these affiliates are
connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his
direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved
in moving more than money and material.
Last year, two suspected al-Qaida
operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia. They were linked
to associates of the Baghdad cell, and one of them received training in
Afghanistan on how to use cyanide. From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi
can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.
We, in the United States, all of
us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development - we
all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in
Amman, Jordan last October, a despicable act was committed that day. The
assassination of an individual whose sole mission was to assist the people of
Jordan. The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from
Zarqawi for that murder.
After the attack, an associate of
the assassin left Jordan to go to Iraq to obtain weapons and explosives for
further operations. Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the
whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are
not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them
earlier.
And now let me add one other fact.
We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing
Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This
service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have
made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still
remains at large to come and go.
As my colleagues around this table
and as the citizens they represent in Europe know, Zarqawi's terrorism is not
confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist
actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and
Russia.
According to detainee Abuwatia
(ph), who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, tasks at
least nine North African extremists from 2001 to travel to Europe to conduct
poison and explosive attacks.
Since last year, members of this
network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last
count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested.
The chart you are seeing shows the
network in Europe. We know about this European network, and we know about its
links to Zarqawi, because the detainee who provided the information about the
targets also provided the names of members of the network.
Three of those he identified by
name were arrested in France last December. In the apartments of the
terrorists, authorities found circuits for explosive devices and a list of
ingredients to make toxins.
The detainee who helped piece this
together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence, again, proved him
right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British
police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.
We also know that Zarqawi's
colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia and in Chechnya,
Russia. The plotting to which they are linked is not mere chatter. Members of
Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.
We are not surprised that Iraq is
harbouring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades
long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and al-Qaida.
Going back to the early and
mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan, an al-Qaida source tells us that
Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that al-Qaida would no longer
support activities against Baghdad. Early al-Qaida ties were forged by secret,
high-level intelligence service contacts with al-Qaida, secret Iraqi
intelligence high-level contacts with al-Qaida.
We know members of both
organisations met repeatedly and have met at least eight times at very senior
levels since the early 1990s. In 1996, a foreign security service tells us,
that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and
later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service.
Saddam became more interested as
he saw al-Qaida's appalling attacks. A detained al-Qaida member tells us that
Saddam was more willing to assist al-Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Saddam was also impressed by al-Qaida's
attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Iraqis continued to visit bin
Laden in his new home in Afghanistan. A senior defector, one of Saddam's former
intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan
sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to al-Qaida members on document
forgery.
From the late 1990s until 2001,
the Iraqi Embassy in Pakistan played the role of liaison to the al-Qaida
organisation.
Some believe,
some claim these contacts do not amount to much. They say Saddam Hussein's
secular tyranny and al-Qaida's religious tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted
by this thought. Ambition and hatred are enough to bring Iraq and al-Qaida
together, enough so al-Qaida could learn how to build more sophisticated bombs
and learn how to forge documents, and enough so that al-Qaida could turn to
Iraq for help in acquiring expertise on weapons of mass destruction.
And the record of Saddam Hussein's
cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organisations is clear. Hamas, for
example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences
attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of
sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.
Al-Qaida continues to have a deep
interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi
and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling
how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaida.
Fortunately, this operative is now
detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he,
himself, described it.
This senior al-Qaida terrorist was
responsible for one of al-Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan.
His information comes first-hand
from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaida. He says bin Laden
and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaida leader Muhammad Atif (ph),
did not believe that al-Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to
manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere
else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go?
Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
The support that (inaudible)
describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for
two al-Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant
known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between
1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph)
characterised the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
As I said at the outset, none of
this should come as a surprise to any of us. Terrorism has been a tool used by
Saddam for decades. Saddam was a supporter of terrorism long before these
terrorist networks had a name. And this support continues. The nexus of poisons
and terror is new. The nexus of Iraq and terror is old. The combination is
lethal.
With this track record, Iraqi
denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other Iraqi
denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies.
When we confront a regime that
harbours ambitions for regional domination, hides weapons of mass destruction
and provides haven and active support for terrorists, we are not confronting
the past, we are confronting the present. And unless we act, we are confronting
an even more frightening future.
My friends, this has been a long
and a detailed presentation. And I thank you for your patience. But there is
one more subject that I would like to touch on briefly. And it should be a
subject of deep and continuing concern to this council, Saddam Hussein's
violations of human rights.
Underlying all that I have said,
underlying all the facts and the patterns of behaviour that I have identified
as Saddam Hussein's contempt for the will of this council, his contempt for the
truth and most damning of all, his utter contempt for human life. Saddam
Hussein's use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the
20th century's most horrible atrocities; 5,000 men, women and children died.
His campaign against the Kurds
from 1987 to '89 included mass summary executions, disappearances, arbitrary
jailing, ethnic cleansing and the destruction of some 2,000 villages. He has
also conducted ethnic cleansing against the shia Iraqis and the Marsh Arabs
whose culture has flourished for more than a millennium. Saddam Hussein's
police state ruthlessly eliminates anyone who dares to dissent. Iraq has more
forced disappearance cases than any other country, tens of thousands of people
reported missing in the past decade.
Nothing points more clearly to
Saddam Hussein's dangerous intentions and the threat he poses to all of us than
his calculated cruelty to his own citizens and to his neighbours. Clearly,
Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops him.
For more than 20 years, by word
and by deed Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the
broader Middle East using the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and
annihilation of all those who might stand in his way. For Saddam Hussein,
possession of the world's most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the
one he must hold to fulfil his ambition.
We know that Saddam Hussein is
determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make
more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his
grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his
determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk
that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the
manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to
respond?
The United States will not and
cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in
possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not
an option, not in a post-September 11th world.
My colleagues, over three months
ago this council recognised that Iraq continued to pose a threat to
international peace and security, and that Iraq had been and remained in
material breach of its disarmament obligations. Today Iraq still poses a threat
and Iraq still remains in material breach.
Indeed, by its failure to seize on
its one last opportunity to come clean and disarm, Iraq has put itself in
deeper material breach and closer to the day when it will face serious
consequences for its continued defiance of this council.
My colleagues, we have an
obligation to our citizens, we have an obligation to this body to see that our
resolutions are complied with. We wrote 1441 not in order to go to war, we
wrote 1441 to try to preserve the peace. We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last
chance. Iraq is not so far taking that one last chance.
We must not shrink from whatever
is ahead of us. We must not fail in our duty and our responsibility to the
citizens of the countries that are represented by this body.
Thank you, Mr President.
