Charles Duelfer Reports... What Exactly?

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as the Democrats begin the wailing and the gnashing of teeth over Chief Weapons Inspector Charles A. Duelfer's latest report.

Here's your typical MSM approach:

USA Today
The finding by chief weapons searcher Charles Duelfer that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction posed an immediate political challenge Wednesday for President Bush amid a tide of news raising questions about the case he made for war and the way he has waged it.

Here are a couple of things you might want to keep in mind. For some reason the MSM reports don't mention them (though to be entirely fair, the USA Today piece mentions in the last sentence, "Duelfer concluded, based on interviews with Saddam and other top officials of his regime, that he intended to revive his nuclear weapons in the future").

The Washington Times reports Duelfer's findings a bit differently:

Saddam Hussein's goal through the 1990s and until the 2003 U.S. invasion was to end U.N. sanctions on Iraq, while working covertly to restore the country's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector says.

[...]

Starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001, he developed a giant smuggling operation that hinged on the establishment of "a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign-government officials," the report says.

Those officials, it says, "worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies to procure illicit goods, services and technologies for Iraq's WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs."

[...]

Regarding nuclear weapons, Mr. Duelfer said that during the 12 years after the Persian Gulf war "Iraq's ability to produce a weapon decayed" and that "the time for Iraq to build a nuclear weapon tended to increase for the duration of the sanctions."

"Despite this decay," he said. "Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions."

[...]

"With the infusion of funding and resources following acceptance of the oil-for-food program, Iraq effectively shortened the time that would be required to re-establish [chemical weapon] production capacity," Mr. Duelfer said. "By 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two."

It's hard to imagine that USA Today and The Washington Times are talking about the same report isn't it?

Here's what the scientist who was the creator of Iraq’s centrifuge for Saddam's Nuclear programs says:

The Scotsman
AN IRAQI scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country’s dormant nuclear programme were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.

But their existence, Dr Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq’s successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon.

In The Bomb in my Garden, Dr Obeidi details Saddam’s quest for a nuclear bomb: "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the story of how close Iraq came to developing them should serve as a red flag to the international community."

As a possible reason that the WMD programs were not persued with the same vigor as before the first Gulf War the Scottsman article points out that "Saddam was doing well from the UN’s oil-for-food programme, while increasing his control over a population reliant on him for basics."

In response to the reports indictment of the United Nations' incredibly corrupt Oil for Food program, U.S. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-IL), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, had this response.

US Newswire
"Mr. Duelfer's conclusions show the full breadth of Saddam Hussein's corruption and manipulation of the U.N. Oil for Food program.

"Billions of dollars were siphoned from the Iraqi people with the complicity of many of our allies who helped finance and arm the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

"The world cannot wait years for answers to the growing body of evidence implicating senior U.N. officials in outright corruption.

"Immediate public access to U.N. internal audit and other documents - thus far denied to members of the Security Council - is imperative if the world body is to escape further damage to its credibility as a result of this grossly mismanaged program."

Here's are some possibilities I see:

1. The UN Oil for Food program was so lucrative that the governments involved in the corruption (which includes the UN at the highest levels, France, Germany, and Russia as the primary beneficiaries) couldn't afford to let the sanctions be lifted. Lifting the sanctions would mean an end to the Oil for Food program which was their Golden Goose. That is why Saddam destroyed his weapons "without telling the UN." No weapons - no sanctions. No sanctions - no Oil for Food money.

2. I think the UN may have been involved in covering up the fact that Saddam had no WMD so they could keep Oil for Food going.

3. Saddam was hedging his bets against the future by securing the ability to restart his WMD programs, after all you can't trust a corrupt partner.

4. France, Germany, and Russia stymied our pre-war efforts in the UN because they wanted to keep profiting from the Oil for Food money. If we attacked Iraq we would find out that there really were no weapons and the sanctions would be lifted.

Update: Here's video of Duelfer in front of the Senate (.rm thanks to C-SPAN2)