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20 April 2003: "The Can of Worms, or more likely not, IV"

An article appeared in the Telegraph website, claiming "German spies offered help to Saddam in run-up to war"; various bloggers—ignorant American* ones in particular—have already taken it as gospel.

I'm not certain what to make of this, but it sounds hard to believe. Why? Well, in February 2001, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) issued a statement warning about Iraq's continued development of NBC weapons and delivery systems (see "Germany warns of Iraq nuclear threat" CNN, 24-Feb-2001). The BND warned it had reason to believe Iraq was three years away from developing a nuclear weapon, five years away from developing a missile that could hit Europe, and that Iraq was "stepping up efforts to produce chemical weapons and increase its ability to produce biological weapons."
It might be noted that the CNN article mentions the development of the al-Samoud and Ababil 100/al-Fatah missiles, subsequently found by UNMOVIC this year to be in violation of Iraq's obligations UNSC resolution 687.

The BND's statement occurred during the previous term of Germany's SPD/Grüne coalition, so for the Telegraph piece to be true, there would have had to have been a fundamental shift in policy on the part of the German government and the BND between February 2001 and January 2002, and for no readily discernible reason, since the purported meeting would have taken place even before the Bush administration really started pushing régime change.

I've known the Telegraph to get things dramatically wrong before; that makes them no different from every other British newpaper (British journalists give each other a great number of awards; I suspect that's because no-one else will). The fact that the writer of this article, David Harrison, was the Telegraph's environmental correspondent just over a year ago and the transport correspondent fifteen months before that. That seems to indicate he's an all-rounder, and presumably doesn't speak Arabic (not that the British are especially noted for their linguistic talents as it is), which would mean that he probably didn't read those "documents from the bombed Iraqi intelligence HQ in Baghdad obtained by The Telegraph" himself, or didn't understand what they said if he did.

So assuming my little surmise is correct, we're being told by a journalist—who is not an expert on intelligence or Middle Eastern matters—that a bunch of docs which he can't actually read contain proof of some malfeasance on the part of the BND which would make no sense given its behaviour a year earlier. Sorry, I can understand the desire on certain bloggers' parts to want this to be true, but I'm not buying it, not on the basis of anything this thin.

* - the two words are not synonymous

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