4.4 | The
search for WMD
•
“The exact
quantities of agent and munitions available are
unknown.”
•
“We have no
intelligence that biological munitions have been
deployed.”
•
The
location of mobile production facilities was not known, but they
were “likely
to be
within areas tightly controlled by the regime”.
Missiles
•
The UK was
“still unclear” about the “state of readiness/assembly” of up
to
20 Al Hussein
missiles “or the numbers of launchers available. Some or
all
of these
missiles could have been dismantled to aid concealment. While
we
believe
Iraq retains the technical expertise to maintain and re-assemble …
the
speed with
which this can be achieved depends on the extent to which
they
have been
disassembled, and the degree to which they might need access
to
specialised
equipment.”
Sensitive
Site Exploitation
•
“The bulk
of the sites which might yield results are located in the
Baghdad
area. But …
most sites previously associated with WMD production have
been
cleansed
over the last six to nine months.”
•
The JIC
continued to judge that “key documents on Iraqi WMD
programmes”
had been
“dispersed”.
•
“Given the
recent Iraqi emphasis on clean-up, dispersal and concealment,
the
best
prospect of exposing the full extent of the WMD programmes rests in
free
contact
with scientists, and other individuals, involved in the WMD
programmes
and the
(extensive) concealment activity …”
41.
Sir David
Manning commented to Mr Blair and Mr Jonathan Powell,
Mr Blair’s
Chief of
Staff:
“Chances of
finding WMD evidence slim before Baghdad falls and/or
regime
42.
On
3 April, SIS reissued to Mr Scarlett and a wider
readership, two reports, from
11 and
23 September 2002, stating that Iraq had continued production
of chemical
weapons
(CW) after 1998.
43.
The content
and provenance of those reports, and their subsequent withdrawal,
is
addressed
in Section 4.3.
20
Manuscript
comment Manning on Minute Scarlett to Manning, 31 March 2003,
‘Iraq: Update on WMD’.
433