Posted on 01/24/2004 1:34:46 PM PST by Bobby777
TBLISI, Georgia - Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) held out the possibility Saturday that prewar Iraq (news - web sites) may not have possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Powell was asked about comments last week by David Kay, the outgoing leader of a U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, that he did not believe Iraq had large quantities of chemical or biological weapons.
"The answer to that question is, we don't know yet," Powell told reporters as he traveled to this former Soviet republic to attend the inauguration Sunday of President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili.
Powell acknowledged that the United States thought deposed leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had banned weapons, but added, "We had questions that needed to be answered.
"What was it?" he asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?"
A senior Bush administration official said Saturday from Davos, Switzerland, where Vice President Cheney was addressing political and business leaders, that only time will tell about the accuracy of prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
"We won't know until we've gotten through the process of interviewing all the people who were involved in those programs and an opportunity to inspect all the sites — until we've completed the efforts that Kay started and that somebody else now will have to finish," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Almost a year has passed since Powell's speech before the U.N. Security Council in which he accused Iraq of violating a U.N. weapons ban imposed after Iraq invade Kuwait more than a decade ago.
Since then, the administration has been less categorical on the issue, contending that Saddam was actively pursuing banned weapons. The administration generally has avoided the issue of actual possession despite having spent at least $900 million in the weapons search.
President Bush (news - web sites), in his State of the Union address last week, cited an interim report by Kay in October in which the inspector claimed to have found dozens of weapons-related programs and equipment in Iraq.
"Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day," the president said.
On Friday, Bush's spokesman said the administration stood by its assertions that Iraq had banned weapons at the time of the U.S.-led war. Scott McClellan said it was only a matter of time before inspectors uncover their location.
"We believe the truth will come out," he said.
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean (news - web sites), whose signature campaign issue has been his opposition to the Iraq war, said that Kay's comments further undermine Bush's claims that Iraq under Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States.
Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) told National Public Radio that the administration had not given up on the search for weapons. The "jury is still out," he said.
In his speech Saturday, Cheney urged "civilized people" to do "everything in our power to defeat terrorism and to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction."
Taking over for Kay as head of the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group of roughly 1,400 scientists and other experts is Charles Duelfer, the No. 2 weapons inspector for the United Nations (news - web sites) in Iraq for much of the 1990s. The team is going through documents, searching facilities and interviewing Iraqis to determine the weapons capabilities of the fallen Iraqi government.
How true is that statement?
"We won't know until we've gotten through the process of interviewing all the people who were involved in those programs and an opportunity to inspect all the sites — until we've completed the efforts that Kay started and that somebody else now will have to finish," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
I'm tired of those who won't give their names. What was so secret about his statement that it was given "on condition of anonymity?"
Or could this be a new type of 'Novak and flamen Plume scandal' - you know, that FBI outing thing!
I've read that the totality of the weapons cited could be stored in an ordinary garage.
If you were going to try to hide them or move them without detection over the course of several months, all you would have to do would be to transport one small box at a time in the trunk of a car or several cars.
Poof.
I've read that the totality of the weapons cited could be stored in an ordinary garage.
If you were going to try to hide them or move them without detection over the course of several months, all you would have to do would be to transport one small box at a time in the trunk of a car or several cars.
Poof.
Lots of people now seem to claim that Cheney, or Bush, or someone said this "we know exactly where they are" thing.
Honestly, I never heard anyone say that. (That doesn't mean it didn't happen. But it does mean that they couldn't possibly have "tricked" me into supporting the war by saying it, since I never heard it being said.)
If we had known "exactly where they are", we could've just told Blix to go get 'em. Thus, it was apparent regardless of what Cheney or anyone else said that we didn't know "exactly where they are". To me at least.
I agree. They hate Israel too much to destroy anything that they could use for genocide against the Jews. I think that the WMDs are hidden/dispersed to Iraq/Syria/???.
Well, if Saddam didn't and he opted to play poker with a Texan, he lost. President Bush called his bluff, and Saddam didn't have the chips to stay in the game. Rake the pot.
Two, if we did know where something was it would not follow that we know where it is. Objects are not immobile, and the tense in the two statements is different.
Three, if they were just making it up beforehand because they were so willing to just lie about it, why aren't they just making it up now and saying they found XY and Z? Isn't their not finding anything evidence they aren't simply making things up? I mean, they might well have been wrong. But being wrong implies prior belief that something was so that wasn't, not lack thereof.
Four, suppose there were no WMD. How is the world a worse place for the removal of Saddam? I wrote before the whole affair, to doubters of the intel, that maybe they were right to doubt and there wasn't much or what there was wasn't a serious threat. What is the downside? We remove a murderous tyrant who deserves everything he could possible get and free 20 million people.
Five, before the war the opponents of it worried that the consequences would be catastrophic, that we'd lose, that the Arab world would explode, that governments would be toppled, that Israel would be attacked, that our troops would be gassed. None of it happened. If there was anything to set in the opposite side of the scales before the war, to weigh against the obvious upside of removing Saddam, what is there to complain about now?
So Saddam's removal wasn't "necessary" - it was just a great thing to do. So serious consequences "might" have resulted - they haven't resulted. What's the beef? Besides merely not liking the guys doing it - you know nine tenths of the opposition wouldn't care a lick if it had all happened on Clinton's watch. (See Kosovo if you doubt it).
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