Posted on 09/22/2003 6:24:49 AM PDT by areafiftyone
The Bush administration got a boost from an unexpected quarter yesterday when President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said she was “surprised” that weapons of mass destruction had not been discovered in Iraq.
Mrs. Albright, who would have been privy to intelligence similar to that which President Bush used in making the decision to invade Iraq, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program yesterday. She was asked whether she was surprised American troops had not found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“I am surprised,” she said. “I think part of the problem here is that, as I understand it, the kinds of things that are missing are not necessarily the kind where some brave American soldier goes and kicks in a door to find a canister of something.”
Mrs. Albright’s comments indicate that she, too, believes that Iraq had a WMD program — a contention the Bush administration has had to tamp down of late because no weapons have been found.
Mrs. Albright is advocating a return to a United Nations inspection regime, saying that people with scientific backgrounds now have to lead the search for WMD.
What worries her, she said, is where those weapons are now.
“If one assumes that everything was not destroyed, where is it, and could it be in the hands of terrorists?” she said. “And that I think is of great concern.”
Mrs. Albright’s comments come at a difficult time for the Bush administration in Iraq. Over the weekend,a prominent woman member of the Americanled Iraqi Governing Council in Iraq was shot by would-be assassins and is in critical condition in an Iraqi hospital. Then yesterday, three more American soldiers died in a mortar attack and a roadside bombing west of Baghdad.
Aquila Al Hashimi was one of three women on the 25-member Governing Council and strong candidate to become Iraq’s representative at the United Nations. Mrs. Al Hashimi, a Shiite Muslim and career diplomat, was seriously wounded when six gunmen opened fire on her car near her house on Saturday. The assailants are still at large.
Mrs. Al Hashimi underwent a second operation yesterday and was reported in critical but stable condition at a military hospital on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, where the Coalition Provisional Authority has its headquarters, an official with the American-led civilian administration said yesterday.
A British adviser to the Iraqi police, Douglas Brand, said coalition officials were helping Iraqi police with the investigation and appealed to the public to come forward with any information.
“This was a cowardly attack. She has undergone two operations. She remains in critical but stable condition at the hospital,” Mr. Brand said.
The attempt against Mrs.Al Hashimi marks the first time terrorists have targeted a member of the Governing Council since it was appointed in July.
Meanwhile, American military officials denied a British newspaper report yesterday that said Saddam Hussein had offered money and information on his weapons of mass destruction program in return for safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
A London tabloid,the Sunday Mirror, reported that an aid to Saddam had approached American forces in Tikrit and led them to a house in the suburbs that contained a letter purportedly handwritten by the former Iraqi leader.
The newspaper said negotiations between Saddam and outside parties had been going on for nine days.
A spokesman for the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division, which controls Tikrit, Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald, told Reuters the story wasn’t true. “The 4th Infantry Division has not had any contact with any former regime members regarding Saddam Hussein’s disposition,” he told Reuters.
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