U.S. intelligence professionals, under pressure from the Bush administration to provide proof needed to justify war with Iraq, say they have been forced to fabricate evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction as well as the location of non-existent hidden chemical weapon warheads.
The fabricated documentation, shared for the first time with the White House on Thursday, provides the basis for material the administration requires to justify an attack on Iraq.
U.S. intelligence professionals are also still working to provide a documented link between Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda terrorist who masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC, but that is proving to be as elusive as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
“We can’t have pieces of the puzzle in place because there might not be pieces,” an FBI source confirmed to Capitol Hill Blue late Thursday.
UN Inspectors at work in Iraq say documents obtained at the homes of two nuclear physicists in Iraq show no ongoing program to develop nuclear weapons violation of the cease fire agreement that ended the Gulf War.
Although Bush has claimed publicly he does not need proof of either the existence of such weapons or a link between Hussein and bin Laden to invade Iraq, leaders in his own party have urged him privately to slow down until the proof was in hand.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, while publicly supporting the administration’s march toward war is privately urging caution with Iraq.
Senior Pentagon military planners are also said to have reservations about the war, reservations based on their belief the U.S. had not yet documented its case against Iraq.
Says retired intelligence analyst Ronald Blackstone: “There are still too many loose ends. The intelligence community is under pressure because the administration moved before everything was in place.”
France has threatened a UN Security Council veto is the U.S. asks for resolution specifically authorizing an attack. China and Russia have also said they have reservations about an invasion.
