What price the deception?

Former inspector: Israel knew Iraq had no WMDs

On Sunday, Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said that the Israeli intelligence community was well aware that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

“That’s the only conclusion you can reach,” Ritter said in an interview with Y-Net in Washington. “Israeli intelligence reached it years ago.”

Asked about reports that Iraq had developed pilotless planes, or drones, that could deliver chemical or biological weapons, Sharon said: “I think these things are very exaggerated. Israel is the most prepared country – for conventional, chemical or biological attacks.”

Last July, Ritter released a new book, accusing US President George W. Bush of illegally attacking Iraq and calling for “regime change” in the US in the next election. Ritter criticized key figures caught up in the US-led war, saying: Bush lied to the American people and Congress about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction; UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan lacks courage; and former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is “a moral and intellectual coward.”

One month earlier, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz (Likud) formed a subcommittee to investigate Israel’s readiness and the intelligence community’s activities in preparation for the Iraq war.

By December 2003, the subcommittee had not yet submitted a report, and committee member Yossi Sarid (Meretz) demanded a new, more independent subcommittee be formed.

By then, conflicting reports published by a respected Tel Aviv think tank in December indicated deep disagreement over the failure by Israeli intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein’s threat to strike the Jewish state.

One report, penned by veteran IDF intelligence officer Col. (res.) Ephraim Kam, the deputy head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, claimed Israeli intelligence was correct in assuming Iraq had the capability and intention of striking Israel during the recent US invasion, if only to play it safe following the previous conflict, in which Israel was hit by 39 Iraqi Scuds with conventional warheads.

The other report, by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Shlomo Brom, claimed Israeli intelligence not only was a “full partner” in the failure to correctly assess Saddam’s capabilities and intentions, but had participated in an “exaggerated assessment” with the Americans and British.

Israel has asked the U.S. administration to postpone publication of the State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world, fearing it will be used against Israel in the discussion on the separation fence at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.