Cheney backs away from Iraq WMD claim

Dick Cheney, US vice-president, on Tuesday defended the US decision to invade Iraq but, in a notable shift of emphasis, he left open the question of whether Saddam Hussein had possessed weapons of mass destruction - a claim he made repeatedly before the war.

In his first public response to David Kay, who resigned last Friday as the chief US arms inspector saying pre-war intelligence was wrong, Mr Cheney said: "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there, and I am not prepared to make a final judgment until they have completed their work."

The vice-president had been one of the administration's most vocal champions of the view that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. Shortly before the war he also claimed it had "reconstituted" nuclear arms.

As voting began in the New Hampshire primary to choose the Democratic candidate for November's presidential election, Mr Cheney also rejected an assertion by John Kerry, front-runner in the polls, that the administration had broken promises over the war. "We used force only because all other options had failed," he said in an interview in Rome with European newspapers, including the Financial Times.

During the interview, Mr Cheney highlighted comments by Mr Kay which supported the case that the former Iraqi leader had sought to develop prohibited weapons long after big stockpiles were destroyed in the early 1990s.

He quoted Mr Kay as saying Iraq had continued "until the end" to develop biological weapons, such as ricin, had maintained a missile programme and had restarted its nuclear programme in 2000-1.

Meanwhile, in Washington President George W. Bush repeated his assertion that Mr Hussein had been "a grave and gathering threat to America and the world". Speaking to reporters during a meeting with Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish president, Mr Bush complimented Mr Kay but implicitly went against his findings by defending the US intelligence services.

"Well, first of all, I have got great confidence in our intelligence community," Mr Bush said while not directly addressing the question of whether Iraq actually had prohibited weapons.

On Tuesday, Mr Kay went further in seeking to justify the US case for war despite his belief that Mr Hussein's programmes had failed, in part because his scientists had cheated him. "I think, at the end of the inspection process, we'll paint a picture of Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war," he told NBC.

Mr Cheney repeated the conciliatory message he has delivered during his trip to Europe, seeking international co-operation in Iraqi reconstruction and war on terror. But he never wavered from his insistence that the US had been right to fight the war.

What Is The Truth?

I hear political pundits on the television talk shows asking where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are. They say that the President lied, that Saddam Hussein was no threat to us, there are no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear development program and no chemical weapons. And that we should have approached the Iraqi problem through the United Nations.

I’ll ask a favor of you. Let’s put aside our political differences for just a minute.

Do you really believe that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction?

Do you believe that he would not have used them?

Do you really believe that he was not trying to develop nuclear weapons?

Do you really believe that the United Nations would have ever done anything about Saddam except have endless debates ?

You can’t talk a problem like this to death. Saddam defied resolution after resolution from the United Nations and would still be in power if we had waited on the United Nations to act.

Shortly after the capture of Hussein, Howard Dean made the statement that that America was not a safer place without him. Do you believe Dean?

Do you believe that Saddam was sponsoring terrorism? Do you believe that he harbored Al Qaida members?

If you don’t believe that Saddam was sponsoring terrorism, how about Muammar Khadaffi? Remember what happened over Lockerby, Scotland a few years ago?

As a result of the war on Iraq, Khaddafi is giving up his nuclear
weapons program. Do you believe that he would have done this
without America destroying Saddam’s military capabilities?

Do you think the world is a safer place without Khadaffi’s ongoing nuclear program?

Do you believe that the people of Iraq are not much better off
without Saddam? Did they deserve to be tortured, raped, murdered and deprived of the most fundamental human rights?

Do you believe that America and all the other freedom loving western countries are not in imminent danger from terrorists?

Do you doubt that the entire Middle East, including our so called friend Saudi Arabia, is not a breeding ground for suicide bombers and fanatical zealots who are willing to give their lives to strike a blow against America?

Do you not believe that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was one of these breeding grounds? Or do you agree with Howard Dean that America is not a safer place without Saddam?

We sat back and let Osama bin Ladin grow in strength until the Trade Towers came crashing down, another one of the Clinton Administration's failings. They had a chance to take him into custody on three different occasions.

And save your keyboard if you’re going to inform me that the U.S.A. helped to arm bin Ladin. I know that’s true but he was using those weapons fighting the Russians, an even bigger threat to America
at the time.

Have you never heard the old saying that, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Russia was very bold about arming others to fight against America, one such incident just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Where are the WMD? I personally believe that some of them were moved to Syria in the days before the Iraqi war and that others are still well hidden in Iraq.

Soon time will tell whether the American public believes that the war in Iraq was a good thing or a bad thing when we go to the polls in November.

However you feel about it, that’s the best place to express your feelings.

I’ll be voting, how about you?

Pray for our troops.

God Bless America

What do you think?

Charlie Daniels

I agree!!!!! Cheney was needed for "gravitas" and experience this term, but GW needs to get VP who will be attractive to become Pres. next!!

That's a good theory unless Jeb wants to run in '08.

I do not know if GW has the gonads to make a change! He is much, much, much too loyal to people that bring him down, i.e. Tenet!

Disagree STRONGLY. Tenet is one of the best directors the CIA has ever had, and far and away the best in the last two or three decades. He has made tremendous strides in turning the agency around after a long string of failed and inept directors, and is highly regarded within the agency (throughout the agency, that is, not just within certain departments of cliches). Firing Tenet would be extremely foolish. It would not only lose us a fine leader and administrator at a crucial time, and gravely effect morale within the intelligence community, it would also send the message that we are back to the (all too recent) bad old days of political scapegoating.

One of the most important things Tenet has done (in addition to beefing up HUMINT and introducing innovative use of computers and creation of new software -- he was also the one who speeded up intro of the Predator I believe) is to turn around the "cover your ass at all cost" mentality that's crippled the agency for decades. Tenet has encouraged operatives and analysts to take risks and push the envelope, and repeatedly proven that he'll stand behind them when they've acted responsibly and in good faith. Now many are asking Bush to repudiate that message by sacking Tenet.

Dumb, dumb and dangerous (IMHO).

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