Hussein Kamel Al-Majid - After Effects

After Effects

In a January 25, 1999 report to the U.N. Security Council, UNSCOM declared that the history of the Iraqi weapons inspections "must be divided into two parts, separated by the events following the departure from Iraq, in August 1995, of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel."

Kamel maintained that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and related programs after the end of the first Gulf War.

I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed.

A March 3, 2003 Newsweek report said that Kamel's revelations were "hushed up" because inspectors "hoped to bluff Saddam into revealing still more." Kamel's version of events appear to have been borne out in the wake of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

In February 1996, after intermediaries for Saddam Hussein had assured them that all would be forgiven, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel were convinced to return to Iraq with their wives. Reportedly, immediately upon their return, they were ordered to divorce their wives and were denounced as traitors. Three days after their arrival, on February 23, they refused to surrender to Saddam's security forces and were killed in a 13-hour firefight at a safe house.

In the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush administration figures—including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell—repeatedly cited Kamel's testimony as evidence that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, even though Kamel had openly stated that he had overseen the destruction of all such weapons.