Official: Iraq may still seek WMDs
BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS
WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEFMarch 10, 2006
WASHINGTON — A former top CIA official said Thursday that despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is likely to be looking for weapons of mass destruction within the next five to 10 years.
Paul Pillar, who until last year was in charge of intelligence assessments for the Middle East, said the CIA warned the Bush administration before the Iraq invasion in 2003 that a change of regimes would not necessarily solve any WMD problem.
In a speech at the Middle East Institute here, Pillar said Iraqis live in “a dangerous neighborhood,” with rival countries pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So the CIA had warned that a future Iraqi government would likely want the very weapons Hussein was (wrongly) suspected of hiding, including nuclear weapons, he said.
“Iraq may turn once again to … a WMD program,” Pillar, who is retired from the CIA, said Thursday. “And wouldn’t that be ironic?”
Pillar recently published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that for the first time fully laid out the CIA’s side of the battle with the Bush administration over Iraq intelligence.
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Perpetual War is Perpetual Liberation -
Hell’s bells, Michelle, even I knew that!