<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>washingtonpost.com - WMD Editorials</title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><description>WMD Editorials</description><language>en-us</language><ttl>15</ttl><image><title>washingtonpost.com</title><width>140</width><height>20</height><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com</link><url>http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gif</url></image><item><title><![CDATA[Intelligence Gaps]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21970-2005Apr2.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21970-2005Apr2.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   APRESIDENTIAL commission appointed last year to study the failings of U.S. intelligence on Iraq has returned with many of the same conclusions  --  and similarly scathing rhetoric  --  as previous official investigations. Intelligence agencies, it said, collected precious little hard data about Iraq and failed to critically examine what they had; in the absence of fresh evidence, analysts stuck to long-standing assumptions that Saddam Hussein must be hiding weapons of mass destruction. The commission also agreed with much of the critique of the Sept. 11 commission: that the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies fail to adequately share information or collaborate, operate poorly on the ground in collecting "human intelligence" and are too resistant to innovation. What's new, and alarming, is the commission's blunt conclusion that the same failings now plague intelligence collection on critical current threats, ranging from the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea to the proliferation of biological weapons. That finding ought to provide an urgent mandate for President Bush and his incoming director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Weapons That Weren't There]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13433-2004Oct6.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13433-2004Oct6.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   THE NEW REPORT from the Iraq Survey Group has confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt what most people have assumed for the past year: At the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, and most of its programs to produce them were dormant. In more than a year of investigation, the survey group found "no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart" the Iraqi nuclear weapons program that had been halted in 1991; there were "no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions" after 1991; and there was "no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW [biological weapons] program." Iraq was secretly working on banned long-range missiles and hiding both those programs and clandestine laboratories from U.N. inspectors. But the estimates by the CIA and most other Western intelligence agencies that Iraq held large stockpiles of dangerous weapons were wrong, as was much of what President Bush said about the threat.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Responsible Questions About a Questionable War]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6938-2004Jun25.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6938-2004Jun25.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Your paper's June 17 editorial regarding the  Sept. 11  commission report that found no evidence of  a  "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda criticized those who said the report shows that the Bush administration misled the public. "Administration foes," the editorial noted, "seized on this sentence to claim that Vice President Cheney has been lying, as recently as this week, about a purported relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been." Not so.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pakistan's Nuclear Crimes]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14272-2004Feb4.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14272-2004Feb4.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[WHILE WASHINGTON has been debating the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, an extraordinary series of revelations has confirmed that Pakistan has been guilty of some of the worst crimes of nuclear weapons proliferation ever committed. For some 15 years it has been supplying atomic bomb technology to rogue states and sponsors of terrorism -- and it did so even after President Bush declared that governments that conducted such transfers could be subject to preemptive attack by the United States. Under pressure from the United Nations, Pakistani officials have acknowledged that nuclear designs and materials were given to Iran, Libya and North Korea, either directly or through an underground network involving middlemen in Germany and a secret factory in Malaysia. Officials claim the traffic was conducted solely by the country's chief weapons scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and several associates. Hoping to avoid prosecution, Mr. Khan duly confessed on Pakistani television yesterday and absolved his government. But the scientist previously gave investigators a more plausible account: that President Pervez Musharraf and other senior military leaders approved the deals.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Weapons of Mass Delusion]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64850-2004Jan30.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64850-2004Jan30.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[If one carries Peter D. Feaver's assessment [op-ed, Jan. 28] of intelligence overestimates to its logical conclusion, U.S. officials should be reprimanded for not attacking the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Iran.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mr. Kay's Truth-Telling]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58491-2004Jan28.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58491-2004Jan28.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[GIVE DAVID KAY credit for courage. The recently departed chief of the Iraq Survey Group was one of those who confidently predicted that stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons would be found in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. Yesterday he straightforwardly told a Senate committee hearing that "we were almost all wrong." There were, he said, almost certainly no large stocks of illegal weapons in Iraq and no evidence that any had been produced in recent years. Mr. Kay has chosen to go public with this disturbing news not because he wishes to embarrass the Bush administration or cast doubt on the mission in Iraq but because he believes it vital that the faults in intelligence gathering that led to the mistaken weapons estimates be identified and corrected. There is indeed a critical need for such a review: U.S. security in an age of proliferation and terrorism depends on it. What a shame that, rather than accept Mr. Kay's conclusions, both the president and his Democratic opponents prefer to play them for political advantage.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Wrong Lesson]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14529-2004Jan13.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14529-2004Jan13.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION and its supporters have been celebrating the steps by Libya and Iran toward giving up the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction -- a shift probably brought about at least in part by the proven willingness of the United States to use force to stop such illegal programs. Less noticed are signs that North Korea, the most dangerous of the world's rogue states, may have taken a different lesson from the intervention in Iraq. Pyongyang has launched a propaganda campaign that amounts to loudly denying that the secret program of uranium enrichment it admitted to about 18 months ago in meetings with a U.S. delegation  really exists. Meanwhile, it is offering to renew the freeze on its well-documented stockpile of nuclear fuel rods and processed plutonium -- for a big price. In essence North Korea seeks a return to the status quo before U.S. intelligence discovered its uranium enrichment, on the pretense that U.S. allegations about a secret weapons program are once again wrong. This reckless gambit could undo the modest progress that has been made toward a settlement in recent months.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Lessons in Libya]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18019-2003Dec20.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18019-2003Dec20.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[LIBYAN LEADER Moammar Gaddafi, a model rogue dictator and sponsor of international terrorism in the 1980s, has been trying to rehabilitate himself for the better part of a decade. He dispatched two of his henchmen to be tried at The Hague for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner, agreed to pay reparations to families and renounced terrorism. Yet it was only last March that Mr. Gaddafi chose to approach Britain and the United States to discuss giving up his weapons of mass destruction. That he did so, and that nine months of secret negotiations with him yielded an agreement, marks a major success in the effort by the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and to make such containment a focus of international affairs. Mr. Gaddafi's timing, just as the invasion of Iraq was beginning, speaks for itself: The Libyan dictator chose to comply as it became clear that Saddam Hussein's pursuit of illegal weapons would no longer be tolerated.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mr. Gore's Blurred View]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39381-2003Aug9.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39381-2003Aug9.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[<em> "If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people."</em>]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Welcome Q&#38;A]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5705-2003Jul30.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5705-2003Jul30.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[PRESIDENT BUSH'S televised news conference yesterday morning, his first in more than four months, showed the usefulness of such forums. The president, in apparent good humor, had a chance to share his thinking on a range of issues, from the Mideast peace process to gay marriage. Reporters were able to ask more substantive questions than they can during the photo-op sessions to which their contact with Mr. Bush is often limited. The White House and the public both would benefit from more frequent and regular exchanges.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Destroy Russia's Weapons]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40907-2003Jul10.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40907-2003Jul10.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[PRESIDENT BUSH has made significant progress recently in convincing U.S. allies that the prospect of weapons of mass destruction falling into terrorist hands poses the most serious global security threat. Yet Mr. Bush still hasn't been able to get parts of his own bureaucracy, or some Republicans in Congress, to absorb the idea -- nor does he seem at times to be trying hard enough. Evidence of this comes in congressional consideration of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, created in 1992 by then-Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). For 11 years this initiative has focused on destroying the largest and least-protected stockpiles of WMD in the world, which lie not in Iraq or North Korea but in the former Soviet Union. By investing less in a decade than has been spent this year alone on missile defense, the United States has managed to eliminate more than 6,000 nuclear warheads. Huge quantities of warheads and bomb-grade nuclear material remain in Russia, along with tens of thousands of tons of chemical weapons. Yet while it has reversed its initial attempts to gut the program, the administration's support for it, particularly in the Pentagon, remains lukewarm. It has solicited funding from other rich nations but not stepped up the U.S. commitment to a level that adequately addresses the threat.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Keep Looking]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28843-2003Jun24.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28843-2003Jun24.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA["WE ARE DETERMINED to discover the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes," President Bush said Saturday. That switch from his previous attempts to dismiss the issue was important, and so is the administration's deployment of a 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group that will restart the search for banned chemical, biological and nuclear materials. The debate in Washington over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the administration's prewar intelligence about them is becoming more overheated and uninformed -- and the best way to bring it back to earth will be the collection of fresh evidence about what happened to the illegal arms that Iraq was known to possess in the 1990s. If they are found, then much of the public discussion of the past few weeks will be rendered irrelevant. If they are not, then both the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence agencies will suffer a serious loss of credibility -- one that could compromise efforts to disarm or contain the rogue states with WMD that continue to threaten the world.]]></description><author></author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hunting Iraq's Weapons]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10470-2003Jun3.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10470-2003Jun3.html?nav=rss_nation/nationalsecurity/wmd/editorials</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:35:16 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[PRESIDENT BUSH'S claim last week that U.S. forces in Iraq already "have found the weapons of mass destruction" has made a difficult problem for the administration worse. In fact, no Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been located, though a couple of mobile laboratories likely constructed for producing banned biological agents have been found. It still is possible -- we'd say probable -- that weapons will be found. After all, coalition forces haven't found Saddam Hussein or his sons, either, but they or their remains surely do exist; conditions in Iraq remain chaotic, and American control over large parts of the country is still tenuous. But Mr. Bush's attempt to dismiss the WMD issue, like his equally premature description of the Iraq war as a mission accomplished, has damaged U.S. credibility abroad and raised troubling questions about the administration's intentions.]]></description><author></author></item></channel></rss>