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A Daily Chronicle of Bush Administration Distortion October 8, 2003
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One Year Later, the President's Evidence for Going to War remains Illusory



In the year since President Bush began his public campaign to justify attacking Saddam Hussein, launched in an Ohio speech on October 7th, 2002, he has been unable to corroborate the majority of his arguments for going to war.

On nearly every count, the President's claims about Iraq's weapons program have proven to be unfounded. A lengthy $300 million search by 1,200 U. S.-led inspectors, headed by David Kay, turned up no new evidence that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.1

Nuclear Weapons
President Bush: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The Kay report flatly disputes that Iraq was in the process of rebuilding its nuclear program: "We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material."

Chemical Weapons
President Bush: "We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

Although Iraq did have chemical weapons in the 1980's and early 1990's, "multiple sources" told the Kay team that "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991." The report states that "Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections."

Link to Terrorists
President Bush: Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events.

The Kay report makes it clear Iraq was not capable of supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists since there is no evidence these weapons exist. However, the U. S. invasion itself has caused a backlash of terrorism, and Iraq now has become a "central front"2 for terrorists, according to the President himself.


Sources:
President Bush Quotes: Presidential Speech, 10/7/02.
David Kay Quotes: Statement by David Kay on the Interim Progress Report on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Central Intelligence Agency, 10/2/03.

Other sources:
1. "Officials Say Bush Seeks $600 Million to Hunt Iraq Arms," New York Times, 10/2/03.
2. Presidential Speech, 9/7/03.


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