SENATOR: WHITE HOUSE WARNED OF IRAQ UAV ATTACK

A Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial told sen­a­tors last year that “Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruc­tion, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities,” Florida Today reports.
According to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-​​FL), “about 75 sen­a­tors got that news dur­ing a clas­si­fied brief­ing before last October’s con­gres­sional vote autho­riz­ing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power.…
“Nelson said the sen­a­tors were told Iraq had both bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles, com­monly known as drones.“
That echoes pub­lic state­ments from the President, who said at the time, “We’re con­cerned that Iraq is explor­ing ways of using these UAVs for mis­sions tar­get­ing the United States.“
But this tale of drone attack was beyond unlikely last year — and looks even more absurd now.
According to every pub­lic report about Iraq’s “unmanned air force,” Saddam’s UAV fleet con­sisted of, at best, a cou­ple of ancient Czech train­ing drones. These planes have a max­i­mum range of 800 miles or so — not nearly enough to reach any­where close to American shores. In fact, only the world’s most-​​advanced UAVs, like the American Global Hawk, could make such a trip.
The only real­is­tic way such drones could hit the U.S. and this isnt ter­ri­bly real­is­tic — is if Saddam packed them onto boats, which would then have to sneak past the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, slip through the Suez Canal, tip­toe through the Mediterranean, and make their way to the mid­dle of the Atlantic. Only then could this unmanned cargo — packed with the chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal arms that have so far proved so elu­sive be launched from these ultra-​​stealthy ships.
Pretty unlikely stuff.
So here’s my ques­tion: did this “admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial” actu­ally believe the credulity-​​stretching story he spun for the Senate? Did the President believe it when he warned of UAV attacks?
Or did they just flat-​​out lie?

December 16th, 2003 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.