Colbert Uses Declassified Doc to Grill Rumsfeld: “It Is Big”
That’s how Donald Rumsfeld described the percentage of “unknowns” about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program to Air Force General Richard Myers in a Secret September 9, 2002, memo.
The declassified memo – and accompanying eight-page Joint Chiefs of Staff report – makes clear that the Intelligence Community’s (IC) “knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program is based largely – perhaps 90% – on analysis of imprecise intelligence.” The report further spells out that the IC didn’t know the status of Iraq’s enrichment capabilities for its nuclear weapons program, that the knowledge of how and where Iraq was producing its biological weapons was “probably up to 90% incomplete”, and that the JCS seriously doubted that Iraq had the processes in place to build long range ballistic missiles – a clear refutation of arguments made by advocates for invading Iraq that Hussein was building long range missiles capable of hitting Israel.