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A Daily Chronicle of Bush Administration Distortion September 25, 2003

     

President Bush's Inspectors Find No Weapons to Support his Claims about Imminent Threat



See also: Special Report on the David Kay WMD Report (pdf)

A desperate five-month search by a team of 1,400 U. S. investigators reportedly has failed to find any new physical evidence of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, despite President Bush's continuing insistence the weapons not only existed but posed an imminent threat to the United States.1

The failure of the U. S. team, led by Bush appointee David Kay, seriously undermines the integrity of the President's assertion two days prior to the war: "Intelligence gathered...leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."2

Bush's bold declaration, according to a subsequent review, was based on old and faulty intelligence data. Former CIA official Richard Kerr, who helped with the review, said Bush's assessment ignored "caveats and disagreements" in the data3 and relied "heavily on evidence that was at least five years old."4 Even the Pentagon's intelligence agency had warned in a classified September 2002 report that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."5

Bush continued to claim otherwise, saying inaccurately in May, "We found the weapons of mass destruction" and predicting "we'll find more weapons as time goes on."6 The widespread search he initiated, however, now has turned up not a single weapon of mass destruction.

Sources:
1. Inquiry Unlikely to Report Finding Iraq Arms, Reuters, 9/24/03, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=SWEI0LEDF3UJ0CRBAEZSFEY? type=topNews&storyID;=3502138
2. Presidential Speech, 3/17/03, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html
3. "U.S. Used 'Old' Data",
4. "Gauging a threat with little data ; Withdrawal of UN inspectors created intelligence vacuum", New York Times, 7/22/03.
5. Defense Agency Issues Excerpt on Iraqi Chemical Warfare Program, State Department, 6/7/03, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/03060720.htm.
6. Interview of the President by TVP, Poland, 5/29/03, http://www.whitehouse.gov/g8/interview5.html


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