Posted on 03/14/2004 3:50:14 PM PST by pttttt
Yahoo! News Sun, Mar 14, 2004
Rumsfeld: Iraq Weapons May Still Be Found
1 hour, 20 minutes ago
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials said Sunday they do not regret that America went to war against Iraq (news - web sites) even though banned weapons have not been found one year after the U.S.-led invasion.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he believes weapons of mass destruction could still turn up. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said even if they don't, that doesn't mean prewar intelligence was distorted to make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), as some Democrats charge.
"We may not find the stockpiles. They may not exist any longer. But let's not suggest that somehow we knew this" before the war, Powell said on ABC's "This Week." "We went to the United Nations (news - web sites), we went to the world with the best information we had. Nothing that was cooked."
Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the start of the war.
Powell, Rumsfeld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows to defend the decision to topple Saddam and to highlight progress in rebuilding Iraq.
They cited work on schools and hospitals, the improving economy, and creation and development of Iraqi security forces. They said that after decades of Saddam's rule, Iraq now has an interim constitution that protects human rights and is building a democracy.
Asked on CNN's "Late Edition" if the war was worth the lives of the 564 U.S. soldiers killed, Rumsfeld said, "Oh, my goodness, yes. There's just no question ... 25 million people in Iraq are free."
President Bush (news - web sites)'s handling of Iraq has become a leading issue in the presidential campaign. Democrats say Bush's rush to war, poor planning and failure to build a broader international coalition have left the United States mired in a conflict with an extraordinary cost in lives and tax dollars.
Bush built the case for war around intelligence that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and an advanced nuclear weapons program. But the former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, has said that intelligence was wrong. He has urged Bush to acknowledged the error.
Rumsfeld said 1,200 inspectors are continuing to look for weapons that could be well-concealed in a country the size of California.
"I think it's perfectly proper to reserve final judgment until we've been able to go through that process, run down those leads and see what actually took place," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Powell laid out the administration's case against Saddam in a speech before the United Nations one month before the war. Asked on "Fox News Sunday" if he felt responsible for giving bad information, Powell said, "I wasn't giving the world bad information. I was giving the world the information that we had at the time we had it."
Powell said the failure to find weapons doesn't take "away from the merit of the case" for war.
"I don't think this takes away from the rightness of this, to remove this dictator, make sure that there would be no weapons of mass destruction in the future," he said.
Powell said Saddam never lost his intention to have weapons of mass destruction and he had the capability and infrastructure to build them.
Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Saddam represented "the most dangerous regime in the world's most dangerous region."
Both Powell and Rumsfeld expressed confidence that Iraqis will set up an interim government in time to take control of the country when the U.S.-led occupation ends July 1. But they did not say what form that government was likely to take.
Powell said he hoped Iraqi leaders will ask the United Nations to help form the interim government, though he noted it has not been asked to do so yet.
He said several options are being considered, such as expanding the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council or holding a national conference to designate a government. He said the current 25-member council is not representative enough of the entire nation.
Powell said the United States will still have 100,000 troops in Iraq even after Iraqis regain sovereignty. "We're not walking out on Iraq on the first of July," he said.
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Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Heck, the UN, since its inception has been a weapon of Mass Destruction. A million in Rawanda, 3 million in Cambodia, Millions in the Gulag! Human instrumentation is less of an evil then human involvment!
Bush is going to LOSE because of this issue, and for these people to be this stupid not to know exactly, not only where, but how much WMD there was before we went to war is so inept there are no words...
I can not believe the idiocy of Bush and his administration on this issue.
Futhermore, I can at least understand Bush's bumbling, but POWELL just takes the cake.
That's not the point! Bush declared WMD and we have yet to find anything substantial on what was being report by this adm. Bush acted stupidly in pushing this idiotic argument when he could have used just about any other reason to justify regime change.
Don't start blaming Dems for Bush's irresponsible moves. Believe me there is enough blame to go around for there irresponsibility too.
So that the war heads can contain confetti?
Hey, I know that! The problem is Bush presented the problem like these WMD were just sitting on the front lawn of Iraq like items at a yard sale...Did you not sees Powell's presentation at the UN? It sure looked to me like the US knew exactly what was going on as well as where the WMD were.
Why hasn't anybody's head rolled for this obvious lack of, and bogus intellegence?
I either read or saw something where Powell spent THREE DAYS in the CIA going over this and saw what everyone else did and was convienced Iraq still had WMD.
Now someone wasn't watching close enough for there not to be anything there to speak of!
That's not a valid point, here's why: The intellegence agencies were supposed to know WHERE this stuff was already...so if Iraq hid ALL OF IT then why wasn't someone watching? And if someone who was supposed to be watching wasn't then why has nobody been called to the carpet on it?
Face it, Bush screwed himself!!
That's what it appears to look like regardless of what may really be going on.
This is my point. Why wasn't anyone watching him move the stuff? Did everybody just suddenly get up and walk away from their post when Powell made his presentation?
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