No, not Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or Bremer. But, hey, it’s a start.
In keeping with the Bush administration policy of never admitting they are ever wrong about anything, they haven’t actually announced the fall from grace of one Khidir Hamza, the Iraqi who so obligingly spun lies for the New York Times’ Judith Miller.
The invasion of Iraq was premised on the existence of weapons of mass destruction. None has yet been found and most of the US detective teams are now wanly returning home. Did the NewYorkTimes assist in this process of deception? Very much so. Just look through the clips file of one of its better known reporters, Judith Miller.
It was Miller who first launched the supposedly knowledgeable Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidir Hamza on the world, crucial to the US government’s effort to portray a nuclear-capable Saddam.
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Thus far there’s been no agonized reprise from the Times on its faulty estimate of the credibility of Hamza.
Here’s Miller in the NY Times, September 19, 2002, beating the drums for war:
But Khidir Hamza, who led part of Iraq’s nuclear bomb program until he defected in 1994, disagreed. Estimating that Iraq was now close to what he called a “pilot plant” stage of nuclear production, Hamza said that centrifuges were “small, easily hidden, and emit very little radiation that can be detected.” Also, he said, such centrifuges do not require much power to operate, compounding the difficulty of finding them.
Now, the CPA is quietly letting Hamza’s contract expire and trying to expel him from his house in the “Green Zone.” Undoubtedly, he’ll get a warm welcome from the real Iraqis.
After the war, Dr Hamza was rewarded, to the distress of many Iraqi scientists, with a well-paid job as the senior advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority, he had partial control of Iraq’s nuclear and military industries.
It was not a successful appointment, according to sources within the ministry. Dr Hamza seldom turned up for work. He obstructed others from doing their jobs. On 4 March, his contract was not renewed by the CPA. It is now trying to evict him from his house in the heavily guarded “Green Zone” where the CPA has its headquarters. He could not be contacted by The Independent but is believed to have taken up a job with a US company.
Dr Hamza’s fall from grace with the US administration is in sharp contrast with the seriousness with which it took his views on WMD before the war. Speaking excellent English, he was also regularly interviewed by US television and quoted by the press.
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It was as if Dr Hamza had studied the agenda of the hawks in the US, who wanted to invade Iraq, and was willing to supply evidence supporting their arguments. Several other Iraqi defectors during the 1990s also produced information which they said proved Saddam was secretly producing WMD, but Dr Hamza was the most convincing because he was able to clothe his evidence in appropriate scientific jargon. He wrote a book, Saddam’s Bomb Maker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda.One employer in the US decided that his account of his past simply did not stand up to examination but the US government stuck by him and made him a consultant to the US Department of Energy. Dr Hamza also hinted that Saddam had secret links to al-Qa’ida and might give them anthrax.
Back in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Dr Hamza’s position as a senior advisor was very influential. The US-appointed advisors share control over ministries with Iraqi ministers. The ministry was, among other things, in charge of monitoring and securing the remains of Iraq’s nuclear industry.
Dr Hamza’s life in Baghdad was not entirely happy. At first he lived outside the Green Zone with his family until a remotely detonated bomb exploded near his car on the morning of Christmas Eve, buckling the doors and blowing out the windows.
He and his son were in the car at the time but were not injured. Dr Hamza asked for and was given a house in the Green Zone. It is this which the CPA is now trying to recover.
Of the Iraqi defectors after the Gulf War in 1991 who built a career in the US by providing evidence that Saddam Hussein was covertly building up an arsenal of WMD, Dr Hamza was the most successful. Once the war was over and no WMD had been found, he was something of an embarrassment, all the more so since he could not do his job.
It’s almost mind-boggling to imagine how bad a job someone would have to do to get fired by the CPA considering the apparently low standards they have. OK, next…Chalabi.