Dissimulation reigns.(Comprehensive Report of the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction)

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8

ATTENTION focuses on what exactly went through the minds of the major players on the scene. When John Kerry voted to authorize military action by the president, did he expect such action to be taken? If he expected something else, what was it? Asupererogatory resolution by the Security Council? If so, why did he not stress the need for it at the time?

As for Mr. Bush, when he declaimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, did he really believe this? If not, he went to extraordinary pains to behave as though he did, which included going to war. And before that, supporting detachments of U.N. inspectors who prodded about that huge country looking for WMDs until they were kicked out by Saddam. These inspectors were succeeded, at war's end, by U.S. military investigators who reported every day on what they found, which was mostly nothing.

What is most interesting is the question: What on earth was going on in the mind of Saddam? A man who builds himself one hundred palaces has a high investment in longevity. But here was this autocrat in Baghdad teasing into combat the United States. He had had a keen experience of U.S. military power only twelve years before. What was the Republican Guard supposed to come up with that would repel the invader? Weapons of mass destruction?

That is what was feared by the United States. Perhaps not nuclear weapons--these were thought to be inoperative, ever since Israel struck Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981. The talk was of chemical weapons and biological weapons. But not only were such weapons not deployed, the inspection team headed by Mr. Duelfer reports that they were not extant. So what, one repeats, was Saddam counting on that would permit him an uninterrupted lifetime in his palaces?

We have learned through Duelfer that Saddam was a super-confident scofflaw, perhaps the richest in history. Iraq's oil production had been between 3 and 3.5 million barrels per day. When the trading ban was activated, in 1990, oil sales were cut off. But quickly there was a hue and cry that the primary victims of the embargo were Iraqi civilians. Along came the Oil for Food program, which allowed the sale of 2.1 million barrels ...