February 7, 2003: Iraqi Officials Demonstrate Sites Cited by Powell Are Monitored

Iraqi officials escort foreign journalists to missile assembly and test sites at Al-Amiriyah and other locations to counter US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion before the UN that Iraq is concealing weapons of mass destruction at those sites (see February 5, 2003). The officials tell the journalists that the sites have been open to UN inspections. Iraq also challenges the authenticity of a dossier recently released by the British government that purports to document how Iraq is deceiving UN weapons inspectors (see February 3, 2003). The dossier originally claimed to have been based on high-level intelligence sources, but has now been shown to be almost wholly plagiarized from publicly available articles and reports, including one written by a graduate student. [Associated Press, 2/7/2003]