CNN.com - New Canberra probe into WMD intel

The Australian government has ordered an independent inquiry into the intelligence advice provided on the threat posed by Iraq to world security.

...Monday's report largely absolves the government from any blame in the situation saying there was "no evidence that political pressure was applied to the (intelligence) agencies" and that is presentation of evidence had been "consistent, moderate and measured".

The report's findings matched those of the Hutton inquiry in Britain, which cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair's government of "sexing up" intelligence to justify the war.

"The government stands by its presentation of the case for disarming Iraq of its WMD capabilities," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement Monday.

Evidence collected since the conflict began showed Saddam "was pursuing WMD programs and that his regime was concealing these activities from U.N. inspectors," Downer said.

Or, as Hans Blix once put it, "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance – not even today – of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace. As we know, the twin operation ‘declare and verify’, which was prescribed in resolution 687, too often turned into a game of ‘hide and seek’." - Jan 27, 2003.

FOXNews.com - Kay: Bush May Have Selected Iraq WMD Facts

Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said Wednesday that President Bush may have been selective about the facts he used to make the case for going to war with Iraq.

That's not necessarily to say, though, that intelligence about Iraqi weapons was misused by the Bush White House, Kay told an audience at Trinity University.

"Politicians don't go around picking their weakest arguments," Kay said. "The real charge that deserves careful scrutiny is not whether you picked the best argument out, but whether you actually manipulated and were dishonest about the data."

He added that he's seen no evidence that the Bush administration mischaracterized intelligence from Iraq, "but it is such a serious charge that it deserves investigation."

The Nation: The Propaganda of William Safire

Safire did not mention that when CIA chief George Tenet testified before the Senate intelligence committee in February 2003, Tenet said that while the CIA believed Ansar al-Islam had received funding from Al Qaeda, Zarqawi considered himself and his network "quite independent" of Al Qaeda. Receiving money from Al Qaeda might qualify Ansar al-Islam as an "affiliate," but according to Tenet's testimony Zarqawi was no "Al Qaeda leader."

...he pointed to a remark that Secretary of State Colin Powell made during his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N. Security Council: "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden." But Powell and the Bush administration has not been able to show that Hussein was firmly linked to Ansar al-Islam. After all, the group operated in the northern territory, where Baghdad had limited control. Moreover, in January, when Powell was asked whether there was evidence linking Hussein and Al Qaeda, he replied, "There is not--you know, I have not seen smoking-gun concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

AP - Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded

"The justification for the war - the existence of weapons of mass destruction - was without foundation," Blix said. "The military operation was successful, but the diagnosis was wrong.

Blix, whose teams did not make significant weapons finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, has repeatedly criticized U.S. and British handling of information before the war.

Again on Tuesday he criticized the United States and Britain for trusting their own intelligence more than that of the weapons inspectors, who had not found "a smoking gun."

Blix, 75, who headed the U.N. inspectors from 2000 to mid-2003 said in a speech Feb. 15 that no hidden weapons had been found in Iraq since 1991, but he did not rule out that a minor cache of weapons might be exposed.

Ok, but was Hussein in violation of the UN resolutions and the agreement that ended the war in 1991? Mr. Blix cannot deny his own testimony to that effect. There may be no large stockpiles in Iraq, but there certainly were ongoing weapons programs, in violoation of the war-ending resolutions. There were also ties to Al Qaida and international terrorism, also in violation of those resolutions. The security council may wish to remain toothless, but the US cannot afford to wait for the rest of the world to wake up.

Reuters - Democrat Says CIA Didn't Give UN All Iraq WMD Data, by Tabassum Zakaria

A Democratic senator accused CIA Director George Tenet on Monday of making false statements when he said during public hearings that his agency gave the United Nations information about all the top suspected weapons of mass destruction sites in Iraq before the war. "All such sites were not shared, and Mr. Tenet's repeated statements were false," Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Reuters - Rumsfeld says al-Qaeda 'clearly involved' in Iraq

"They clearly are involved and active," he responded when pressed on whether al-Qaeda were involved in Iraq. Pentagon officials said on Friday they had no proof any of the several hundred foreigners held in Iraq were al-Qaeda members.

FOXNews.com - Zarqawi Bomb-Maker Killed in Iraq

The bomb-making lieutenant, whose name wasn’t released, died in a gun battle at a terrorist safe house late last week, military sources told Fox. The military officer's death is significant because Al-Zarqawi is the man believed to have masterminded a number of recent attacks against the coalition in Iraq. Inside the terrorist safe house, sources said the military found a passport belonging to Zarqawi, fake identification and other information.

Meanwhile, defense officials say that a copy of a letter believed to have been penned by Zarqawi has turned up in Saudi Arabia. The copy was discovered with Saudi financiers whom Defense officials believe were being solicited to fund terrorist operations inside Iraq, sources told Fox. The U.S. military recently intercepted the original from Al Qaeda member Hassan Ghul. The letter is significant because of its message to the terrorist network's command structure in the mountains along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan calling for help in Iraq. Defense officials told Fox they are convinced that there is a communications link — a sharing of tactics — among Al Qaeda-tied groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In another find that could prove the Afghanistan-Iraq connection, three Afghans were arrested over the weekend as they entered Iraq from Turkey carrying tens of thousands in U.S. dollars and large quantities of Iranian currency, military sources told Fox. American soldiers have recovered millions of U.S. dollars in recent weeks inside Iraq — crisp, new bills that officials believe came directly from an unidentified bank.

Australia's Daily Telegraph - Secure in conviction war's aims were true

Mr Varghese said if it turned out that there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, and in his view, that's still an "if", it's genuinely puzzling as to what happened.

A theory posited by former Clinton adviser and CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in The Atlantic Monthly magazine is that Saddam Hussein may have scaled back his program sometime after 1994-1995 when defectors and discoveries had revealed the extent of Iraq's continued efforts to obtain WMD.

At that point, Mr Pollack argued, Saddam may have cut back his programs and even destroyed some weapons, retaining only a very limited research and development capacity while ensuring scientists were ready to resume work if sanctions were ever lifted.

Asked why Saddam didn't claim credit for destroying the weapons, he said it may have suited Saddam's purposes for his internal opponents, the Kurds and the Shias, to think he still had them, and externally it supported his image among Arab nations to be seen to thumb his nose at the US.

...As to whether he had any evidence that analysts had been pressured to present findings on Iraq in keeping with Government expectations, he said he had raised the issue with staff and had not received any sense that they felt under pressure to provide a particular line.

MoveOn.org petitions senators to censure Bush for WMD claims - billingsgazette.com

'nuff said

Common Dreams - 'NY Times' Fails to Acknowledge Its Role in WMD Hype

The Paper of Record Blames Intelligence and Administration, but any Indictment of the National Press is Missing, by William E. Jackson Jr.

baltimoresun.com - The paper chase, by Seth Ackerman

Ackerman's article on Hussein Kamel (below) is reloaded, this time for the Baltimore Sun, in a slightly different format.

Seth Ackerman, a freelance journalist, has extensively researched the history of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He is a contributor to Harper's and was a staff member of FAIR, the media watchdog group.

MotherJones - A Legacy of Lies, by Seth Ackerman

there is compelling evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration's false alarms on Iraqi weapons, like Bush's, were much more than just honest mistakes. One astonishing series of events in particular illustrates the ways in which the Clinton White House cleared the path for Bush's war.

...In February 2003, as the worldwide debate over war was just reaching a crescendo, Newsweek reporter John Barry obtained a classified copy of the original U.N. transcript of Hussein Kamel's 1995 debriefing by Rolf Ekeus and his UNSCOM colleagues. Barry, a veteran of the Iraqi WMD beat, wrote up his scoop in a little item, a mere six paragraphs long, that appeared in the magazine's "Periscope" section. Although it received virtually no notice at the time, what Barry wrote seemed to turn the whole Iraq story on its head:

"Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that [in 1991] after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.

The stocks had been destroyed to hide the programs from the U.N. inspectors, but Iraq had retained the design and engineering details of these weapons. Kamel talked of hidden blueprints, computer disks, microfiches and even missile-warhead molds.

Still, the defector's tale raises questions about whether the WMD stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist."

...Iraq had eliminated all its weapons of mass destruction by the summer of 1991, and the U.S. had been told of it in 1995.

FOXNews.com - Rumsfeld: U.S. Won't Back Down in Iraq

Rumsfeld said he believes a recently intercepted letter, purportedly from a terrorist organizer connected to the Al Qaeda terror network, is authentic. The letter writer, believed to have been Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, wrote of efforts to cause a civil war between the two major Muslim sects, the long-dominant Sunnis and the majority Shiites.

NRO - Stalinist Mullahs, by Michael Ledeen

Oddly, just as the foreign minister was announcing Iran's intention to sell enriched uranium to interested parties — thereby spitting in the eye of the French, German, and English diplomats who sang love songs to themselves just a few short months ago, proclaiming they had negotiated an end to the Iranian nuclear program — two smugglers were arrested in Iraq, near Mosul, with what an Iraqi general described as a barrel of uranium. Here is what General Hikmat Mahmoud Mohammed had to say about the event: "This material is in the category of weapons of mass destruction, which is why the investigation is secret. The two suspects were transferred to American forces, who are in charge of the inquiry."

Compulsive readers of these little essays may remember that, late last summer, I told CIA that I had been informed of a supply of enriched uranium in Iraq, some of which had been carried to Iran a few years ago. I had offered to put CIA in touch with the original couriers, who said they would take American inspectors to the site, but CIA could not be bothered to go look.

I am told that the uranium in the barrel near Mosul came from the same secret laboratory. Perhaps now the CIA will think better of my sources, and work harder to find these materials.

Faster, please.

The American Conservative - No End to War, By Patrick J. Buchanan

The Frum-Perle prescription would ensnare America in endless conflict

Iraq had no hand in 9/11, no ties to al-Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear program, and no plans to attack us.

FOXNews.com - U.S. Troops Nab Al Qaeda Suspects in Iraq

The United States arrested seven guerrillas believed linked to Al Qaeda in an early morning raid to the north.

U.S. troops arrested seven militants believed linked to Al Qaeda in the turbulent city of Baqouba, north of the capital, the military said. It gave no details on the nationalities of the militants.

Troops from the 4th Infantry Division carried out the raid early Wednesday targeting an "anti-coalition cell" that may have ties to Usama bin Laden's terror group, a statement from the U.S. command said.

Homicide attacks have killed 300 people, mostly Iraqis, since the beginning of the year. They have fueled speculation that Islamic extremists, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, were playing a greater role in the anti-coalition insurgency. U.S. military officials had believed the attacks were spearheaded by Saddam Hussein loyalists.

VOANews.com - US Soldiers Capture Militants with Possible al-Qaeda Links North of Baghdad

The US military said Wednesday soldiers have arrested seven militants with suspected ties to al-Qaida.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the seven militants were captured in the town of Baquba, 60 kilometers north of the capital. They were arrested by the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division along with 15 others in a raid on what they describe as an anti-coalition cell.

Baquba is in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, where attacks against U.S. soldiers have become an almost daily occurrence. Iraqi police said the group was suspected of involvement in a number of recent attacks in the area. They did not say what the nationalities of the suspects were, but the coalition has repeatedly blamed attacks on foreign elements with links to terrorist groups.

TheStar.com - `Heads should roll' over Iraq

Adviser wants U.S. intelligence chiefs to quit
Cites faulty conclusions on Saddam's weapons

Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency to step down because of their faulty conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed mass-killing weapons.

Perle, a close adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said top officials made no attempt to skew the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he implied, top policymakers relied in good faith on the conclusions of the intelligence agencies.

"George Tenet has been at the CIA long enough to assume responsibility for its performance," Perle told reporters, referring to the director of the agency. "There's a record of failure and it should be addressed in some serious way."

While Kay dismissed the prospect that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction would ever be found in Iraq, Perle disputed him on two relatively minor claims: that Iraq wasn't seeking to enrich uranium or develop mobile weapons laboratories to manufacture chemical or biological weapons.

"The jury is still out" on those points, Perle said.

Paul Greenberg: An imminent threat - to his own credibility

The Big Lie in this rapidly over-heating presidential campaign is that George W. Bush claimed Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat.

Actually, what George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address last year was just the opposite - that this country dare not wait until a threat is imminent before responding to it, not after what happened September 11, 2001.

Or to put it another way: "Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try? According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons . . . ."

That was John F. Kerry on Oct. 9, 2002, speaking from his vantage point on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Is Senator Kerry now going to accuse himself of hyping the intelligence reports, misleading the American people and generally taking this country into war under false pretenses?

Pop quiz: Who said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."? Surprise, it was John F. Kerry.

CNN.com - Iraq report 'will clear Canberra'

If you actually saw this article, you're a gumshoe. CNN buried it.

An Australian parliamentary inquiry has concluded the government did not doctor intelligence on Iraqi weapons in the run-up to the war, a newspaper report says.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday there was "no evidence" Canberra had "sexed-up" the threat of Iraq's WMDs.

"I don't think any of these inquiries in America, Britain or here are going to reveal anything terribly exciting or surprising. There's been no evidence to suggest that the British, the American and the Australian governments were lying," Reuters reports him as saying.

Downer on Monday evening defended the Australian government's decision to join the war saying there was "no doubt" that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had WMD programs.

"What we clearly weren't wrong about was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction programs and that's been reinforced by what [chief U.S. weapons inspector] David Kay has said and what the Iraq Survey Group has shown," Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program.

CNN.com - No. 41 on 'most wanted' list captured in Iraq

Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razzaq al Sadun, No. 41 on the U.S.-led coalition's list of most wanted Iraqis, was being held Sunday after being captured in a Baghdad suburb, Iraq's deputy interior minister said.

And as for the missing WMD, Bremer said that the ISG's work is not done.
"The search will go on, and we'll see what they will find," he said.

AP - Kay: Bush Should Admit Error on Iraq WMD, by Barry Schweid

Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay is advising President Bush to acknowledge he was wrong about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq and move ahead with overhauling the intelligence process. In an Associated Press interview, Kay said the "serious burden of evidence" suggests Saddam Hussein did not have caches of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Iraqi war, but was seriously engaged in developing missiles.

Kay said satellites have shown a lot of traffic going from Iraq to Syria, but that U.S. investigators could not figure out what was being transported and "Syria wouldn't help."

Without flatly ruling out the weapons might turn up, Kay said his search was complicated by the fact that Iraqis quizzed about Saddam's weapons programs "will lie to you without embarrassment."

USATODAY.com - Iraq arms hunt in doubt in '02

A classified U.S. intelligence study done three months before the war in Iraq predicted a problem now confronting the Bush administration: the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might never be found.

The study by a team of U.S. intelligence analysts, military officers and civilian Pentagon officials warned that U.S. military tactics, guerrilla warfare, looting and lying by Iraqi officials would undermine the search for banned Iraqi weapons. Portions of the study were made available to USA TODAY. Three high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials described its purpose and conclusions.

"Locating a program that ... has been driven by denial and deception imperatives is no small task," the December 2002 report said. "Prolonged insecurity with factional violence and guerrilla forces still at large would be the worst outcome for finding Saddam's WMD arsenal."

Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority: Text of Zarqawi Letter

Thanks to Instapundit for the tipoff.

CNN.com - CIA Web site seeks Iraq WMD information

The CIA, under fire over its intelligence about Iraq's arms programs, has posted a notice on its Web site offering rewards for information on the elusive weapons.

The "Iraqi Rewards Program" notice dated Tuesday seeks "specific and verifiable information" on the location of stocks of "recently made" chemical or biological weapons, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles or their components.

The unspecified rewards were also offered for locating chemical or biological laboratories and factories, development, production and test sites and places where such materials were "secretly disposed."

AP - Powell Defends War, Says He Expected WMD

Powell testified that President Saddam Hussein's apparent intent to develop and use weapons, his record of gassing his own people and his defiance of the United Nations all were — and remain — valid reasons for going to war to overthrow him.

Safire - Found: A Smoking Gun

Of the liberation's three casus belli, one was to stop mass murder, bloodier than in Kosovo; we are finding horrific mass graves in Iraq. Another was informed suspicion that a clear link existed between world terror and Saddam; this terrorist plea for Qaeda reinforcements to kill Iraqi democracy is the smoking gun proving that.

The third was a reasoned judgment that Saddam had a bioweapon that could wipe out a city; in time, we are likely to find a buried suitcase containing that, too.

BBC - US reveals 'al-Qaeda Iraq plot'

US officials in Iraq say they have uncovered what they believe is a plot by a militant linked to al-Qaeda to foment sectarian violence there. The Americans seized a memo thought to be from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected Jordanian militant. The message laments the failure to expel US troops from Iraq - but suggests igniting the Shia-Sunni conflict could rescue the resistance. Iraq's majority Shias were persecuted under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

NY Times - U.S. Says Files Seek Qaeda Aid in Iraq Conflict, by Dexter Filkins and Douglas Jehl

American officials here have obtained a detailed proposal that they conclude was written by an operative in Iraq to senior leaders of Al Qaeda, asking for help to wage a "sectarian war" in Iraq in the next months.

The Americans say they believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has long been under scrutiny by the United States for suspected ties to Al Qaeda, wrote the undated 17-page document. Mr. Zarqawi is believed to be operating here in Iraq.

The memo says extremists are failing to enlist support inside the country, and have been unable to scare the Americans into leaving. It even laments Iraq's lack of mountains in which to take refuge."

The aim, the document contends, is to prompt a counterattack against the Arab Sunni minority. Such a "sectarian war" will rally the Sunni Arabs to the religious extremists, the document argues. It says a war against the Shiites must start soon — at "zero hour" — before the Americans hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis. That is scheduled for the end of June.

The document would also constitute the strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and Al Qaeda. But it does not speak to the debate about whether there was a Qaeda presence in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era, nor is there any mention of a collaboration with Hussein loyalists.

According to the American officials here, the Arabic-language document was discovered in mid-January when a Qaeda suspect was arrested in Iraq. Under interrogation, the Americans said, the suspect identified Mr. Zarqawi as the author of the document. The man arrested was carrying it on a CD to Afghanistan, the Americans said, and intended to deliver it to people they described as the "inner circle" of Al Qaeda's leadership. That presumably refers to Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Americans declined to identify the suspect. But the discovery of the disc coincides with the arrest of Hassan Ghul, a Pakistani described by American officials at the time as a courier for the Qaeda network. Mr. Ghul is believed to be the first significant member of that network to have been captured inside Iraq.

"So the solution, and only God knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle," the writer of the document said. "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands" of Shiites.

In the period before the war, Bush administration officials argued that Mr. Zarqawi constituted the main link between Al Qaeda and Mr. Hussein's government. Last February at the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants." Around that time, the Americans believed that Mr. Zarqawi was holed up in the mountains at the Iranian border with Ansar al Islam, a group linked to Al Qaeda that is suspected of mounting attacks against American forces in Iraq.

In the document, the writer indicated that he had directed about 25 suicide bombings inside Iraq. That conforms with an American view that suicide bombings were more likely to be carried out by Iraqi religious extremists and foreigners than by Hussein allies.

With some exasperation, the author writes: "We can pack up and leave and look for another land, just like what has happened in so many lands of jihad. Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. "By God, this is suffocation!" the writer says.

"We have to get to the zero hour in order to openly begin controlling the land by night, and after that by day, God willing," the writer says. "The zero hour needs to be at least four months before the new government gets in place." That is the timetable, the author concludes, because, after that, "How can we kill their cousins and sons?" "The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority," the letter states. "This is the democracy. We will have no pretexts."

Wow... The New York Times reports that Al Qaida is our primary foe in Iraq, and that the leader of the opposition has been living there since before the war. Props to the Bush administration for pushing the terrorists out of two "lands of jihad." Let's roll!

Transcript - NBC's Meet the Press Interview with President Bush

If the link above becomes broken, click here for a PDF version of the full transcript.
Relevant quotes:

Russert: The night you took the country to war, March 17th, you said this: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
President Bush: Right.
Russert: That apparently is not the case.
President Bush: Correct.

Russert: How do you respond to critics who say that you brought the nation to war under false pretenses?

President Bush: First of all, I expected to find the weapons... I based my decision on the best intelligence possible, intelligence that had been gathered over the years, intelligence that not only our analysts thought was valid but analysts from other countries thought were valid. And I made a decision based upon that intelligence in the context of the war against terror. In other words, we were attacked, and therefore every threat had to be reanalyzed. Every threat had to be looked at. Every potential harm to America had to be judged in the context of this war on terror... And we remembered the fact that he had used weapons, which meant he had weapons. We knew the fact that he was paying for suicide bombers. We knew the fact he was funding terrorist groups. In other words, he was a dangerous man. And that was the intelligence I was using prior to the run up to this war.

And so we – I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons. But David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out.

I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent. It's too late in this new kind of war, and so that's why I made the decision I made.

Russert: But can you launch a preemptive war without iron clad, absolute intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush: Let me take a step back for a second and there is no such thing necessarily in a dictatorial regime of iron clad absolutely solid evidence. The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon.

President Bush: I went to Congress with the same intelligence Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had. The same information, by the way, that my predecessor had. And all of us, you know, made this judgment that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed. You mentioned "preemption." If I might, I went to the United Nations and said, Here is what we know, you know, at this moment, and you need to act. After all, you are the body that issued resolution after resolution after resolution, and he ignored those resolutions. So, in other words, when you say "preemption," it almost sounds like, Well, Mr. President, you decided to move. What I decided to do was to go to the international community and see if we could not disarm Saddam Hussein peacefully through international pressure. You remember U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them. And we said, there are serious consequences if you don't. That was a unanimous verdict. In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger. So, it wasn't just me and the United States. The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed.

And by the way, by clearly stating policy, whether it be in Afghanistan or stating the policy that we expect you, Mr. Saddam Hussein, to disarm, your choice to disarm, but if you don't, there will be serious consequences in following through, it has had positive effects in the world. Libya, for example, there was an positive effect in Libya where Moammar Khaddafy voluntarily disclosed his weapons programs and agreed to dismantle dismantle them, and the world is a better place as a result of that. And the world is a safer and better place as a result of Saddam Hussein not being in power.

He had used weapons. He had manufactured weapons. He had funded suicide bombers into Israel. He had terrorist connections. In other words, all of those ingredients said to me: Threat.

The fundamental question is: Do you deal with the threat once you see it? What in the war on terror, how do you deal with threats? I dealt with the threat by taking the case to the world and said, Let's deal with this. We must deal with it now. I repeat to you what I strongly believe that inaction in Iraq would have emboldened Saddam Hussein. He could have developed a nuclear weapon over time I'm not saying immediately, but over time which would then have put us in what position? We would have been in a position of blackmail.

Russert: But there are lots of madmen in the world, Fidel Castro …
President Bush: True.
MR. Russert: … in Iran, in North Korea, in Burma, and yet we don't go in and take down those governments.
President Bush: Correct, and I could that's a legitimate question as to why we like felt we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea. And the reason why I felt like we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea, because we had run the diplomatic string in Iraq. As a matter of fact, failed diplomacy could embolden Saddam Hussein in the face of this war we were in. In Iraq I mean, in North Korea, excuse me, the diplomacy is just beginning. We are making good progress in North Korea. As I've said in my speeches, every situation requires a different response and a different analysis, and so in Iran there is no question they're in danger, but the international community is now trying to convince Iran to get rid of its nuclear weapons program. And on the Korean peninsula, now the United States and China, along with South Korea and Japan and Russia, are sending a clear message to Kim Jung Il, if you are interested in a different relationship, disclose and destroy your program in a transparent way. In other words, the policy of this administration is to be is to be clear and straightforward and to be realistic about the different threats that we face.

Russert: Before we take a break, now that we have determined there are probably not these stockpiles of weapons that we had thought, and the primary rationale for the war had been to disarm Saddam Hussein, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary, said that you had settled on weapons of mass destruction as an issue we could agree on, but there were three. “One was the weapons of mass destruction, the second is the support for terrorism, and third is Saddam's criminal treatment of his Iraqi people.” He said the “third one by itself is a reason to help Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did.” Now looking back, in your mind, is it worth the loss of 530 American lives and 3,000 injuries and woundings simply to remove Saddam Hussein, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction?
President Bush: Every life is precious. Every person that is willing to sacrifice for this country deserves our praise, and yes. Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I’m not gonna leave him in power and trust a madman. He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum. For the parents of the soldiers who have fallen who are listening, David Kay, the weapons inspector, came back and said, “In many ways Iraq was more dangerous than we thought.” It's we are in a war against these terrorists who will bring great harm to America, and I've asked these young ones to sacrifice for that. A free Iraq will change the world. It's historic times. A free Iraq will make it easier for other children in our own country to grow up in a safer world because in the Middle East is where you find the hatred and violence that enables the enemy to recruit its killers. And, Tim, as you can tell, I've got a foreign policy that is one that believes America has a responsibility in this world to lead, a responsibility to lead in the war against terror, a responsibility to speak clearly about the threats that we all face, a responsibility to promote freedom, to free people from the clutches of barbaric people such as Saddam Hussein who tortured, mutilated there were mass graves that we have found.

CNN.com - Kerry: Bush told 'stories' about Iraqi prewar threat

"The problem is not just that [Bush] is changing his story now -- it is that it appears he was telling the American people stories in 2002," [John F.] Kerry said. "He told America that Iraq had chemical weapons two months after his own Defense Intelligence Agency told him that there was, quote, 'no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."

Asked about his support for a Senate resolution making war an option, Kerry responded, "We voted for a process" with assurance from the Bush administration that weapons of mass destruction were "the only rationale for going to war."

Bush, however, said in his "Meet the Press" interview that "Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had."

Click here for four other justifications for Kerry's vote on the war resolution.

Instapundit.com - Daschle and Gephardt defend non-imminent war

Daschle: Iraq's WMD program "may not be imminent, but it is real."
Gephardt: "We have an obligation to protect the United States by preventing [Saddam] from getting these weapons and either using them himself or passing them or their components on to terrorists who share his destructive intent."
Bush: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent... If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

AP - Bush Says CIA Director's Job Is Secure

Bush pledged to cooperate with the commission he set up last week to examine intelligence on Iraq and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. "I will be glad to visit with them," the president said. "I will be glad to share with them knowledge. I will be glad to make recommendations, if they ask for some."

Bush also responded to concerns the commission was not required to complete its review until after the presidential election in November. He said the panel needs time to do its work.

"There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made ... good calls - whether I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power," Bush said. "I look forward to that debate."

FOXNews.com - Cheney Defends Iraq War, Touts Patriot Act

"We know that Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein had something else — he had a record of using weapons of mass destruction against his enemies and against his own people," Vice President Dick Cheney said.

Kristof: Secret Obsessions at the Top

Lt. Col. Dale Davis, a former Marine counterintelligence officer now at the Virginia Military Institute, says he hears from his former intelligence colleagues that top officials "cherry-picked the intel for the most damning, and often least reliable, tidbits and produced alarming conclusions — the 45-minute chemical attack scenario, the African uranium and the Al Qaeda connection. The C.I.A. never supported these assertions."

Another person with long experience in military intelligence put it this way: "Everyone knew from the start that there was no smoking gun and the assessment was based on speculation, anecdote and outdated information, not current evidence. We didn't have the `humint' [human intelligence] capability to confirm anything one way or the other."

The administration could have been truthful, saying that the intelligence about W.M.D. was incomplete but alarming — and that in any case Saddam was a monster. Instead, officials from the president down warned us that unless we went to war, we risked a mushroom cloud at home.

Paper: Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror

A paper documenting the regime's ties to terrorism and Al Qaida.

Man Without Qualities Blog - the AP's "Imminent threat" quote

A new Associated Press article by the same AP reporter now backtracks considerably from the reporter's prior assertion that the President's "main argument" in invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein's rule posed an "imminent threat." The new article fails to correct the former article's mistake expressly, but now reports:

Intelligence analysts never told President Bush before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's rule posed an imminent threat, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday in a heated defense of agency findings central to the decision to go to war. The urgency of the Iraqi threat was Bush's main argument for the war.

Missed Signals On WMD? (washingtonpost.com)

Jafar Dhia Jafar, who ran Iraq's nuclear program from 1982 on, revealed new details of his country's dealings with U.N. inspectors in a telephone interview yesterday from the United Arab Emirates, where he now lives. His interview was the first broad, on-the-record discussion of WMD issues by a top Iraqi scientist since the end of the war.

Jafar said Iraqis destroyed all stockpiles of chemical weapons -- including mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX -- and biological weapons, including botulinum toxin, anthrax and aflatoxin. Some of the biological toxins had been weaponized in 1990, but never used, so the regime decided to conceal that program from U.N. inspectors, Jafar said. They also withheld some details of their nuclear program.

First hints of the Iraqi bioweapons program were made to U.N. chief inspector Rolf Ekeus in 1995, because the Iraqis knew that defectors had spoken of the program, Jafar said. A full accounting of the bioweapons that had been destroyed four years before came later in 1995, after the defection to Jordan of Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel. Remaining aspects of the nuclear program were also disclosed to U.N. inspectors after Kamel defected, Jafar said.

As an example of the detailed information given to U.N. inspectors, Jafar cited 26 letters he provided between January and March 2003 to rebut allegations that Iraqis were continuing their nuclear weapons program. The letters, totaling 85 pages with 1,400 more as attachments, countered specific claims made in a Sept. 24, 2002, British intelligence dossier.

"The United Nations inspectors were on the ground. They were everywhere. They had access to all the documents," Jafar argued. "They knew the facts, and they should have said confidently that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction."

The intelligence failure in Iraq began with U.N. weapons inspectors, who gathered detailed evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction in 1991 but never presented those findings forcefully to the world.

CNN.com - Bush defends invasion of Iraq, despite WMD questions

"In Iraq, our survey group is on the ground looking for the truth,' Bush said. 'We will compare what the intelligence indicated before the war with what we have learned afterward. As the chief weapons inspector said, we have not yet found the stockpiles of weapons that we thought were there."

FOXNews.com - Dem Hopefuls Slam Bush After Tenet Comments

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the front-runner for his party's nomination, said Tenet's comments show President Bush misled when he said Saddam Hussein's regime posed a grave danger to the world.

Oh, and what about when you said, "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security"?

"Only our representatives in Congress had the power to stop this radical administration from its single-minded insistence on going to war," Dean said in a statement without naming Democratic rivals Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who voted for the resolution. "Instead, they gave the president a blank check."

FOXNews.com - Bush to Place McCain on Iraq Intel Probe

President Bush will name Sen. John McCain (search) to a commission that will investigate Iraq intelligence failures, an administration official said Thursday. Bush will formally create the nine-member panel on Friday with an executive order. The bipartisan commission will be directed to deliver its findings next year, which means they will come in after the November presidential elections.

AP - CIA Boss: Iraq Not Called Imminent Threat, by Katherine Pfleger

In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

As I've noted before, this is profoundly untrue. Here are the quotes Ms. Pfleger uses to support her case:

In the months before the war, Bush and his top aides repeatedly stressed the urgency of stopping Saddam Hussein. In a Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations, he called Saddam's regime "a grave and gathering danger." The next day, he told reporters that Saddam was "a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible."
In an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Ohio, Bush said "the danger is already significant and it only grows worse with time."

Apparently for the AP, a significant and grave threat that we must deal with before it turns into an imminent threat IS somehow "imminent" by definition. By that standard, Hussein was an imminent threat.

Text: Tenet Defends Assessments of Iraqi Weapons

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. But these times demand it because the alternative -- politicized, haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of time and facts -- may well result in an intelligence community that is damaged and a country that is more at risk.

Let's turn to Iraq. Much of the current controversy centers on our prewar intelligence, summarized in the national intelligence estimate of October of 2002. National estimates are publications where the intelligence community as a whole seeks to sum up what we know about a subject, what we don't know, what we suspect may be happening and where we differ on key issues. This estimate asked if Iraq had chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. We concluded that in some of these categories Iraq had weapons, and that in others where it did not have them, it was trying to develop them. Let me be clear: Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs and those debates were spelled out in the estimate.They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy-makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one told us what to say or how to say it.

As we meet here today, the Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important search for people and data. And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished. The men and women who work in that dangerous environment are adamant about that fact.

We made two judgments that get overlooked these days. We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009. Most agencies believed that Saddam had begun to reconstitute his nuclear program, but they disagreed on a number of issues, such as which procurement activities were designed to support his nuclear program. But let me be clear: Where there are differences, the estimate laid out the disputes clearly. So what do we know now? David Kay told us last fall that, quote, "The testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons," end of quote. Keep in mind that no intelligence agency thought that Iraq's efforts had progressed to the point of building an enrichment facility or making fissile material. We said that such activities were a few years away. Therefore it's not surprising that the Iraq Survey Group has not yet found evidence of uranium enrichment facilities. My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, he still wanted one, and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point.

We believe that Iraq had lethal biological weapons agents, including anthrax, which it could quickly produce and weaponize for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives. But we said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons, agent or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal. What do we know today? Last fall the Iraqi Survey Group uncovered, quote, "significant information, including research and development of biological weapons, applicable organisms, the involvement of the Iraqi intelligence service in possible biological weapons activities and deliberate concealment activities." The Iraq Survey Group found a network of laboratories and safe houses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and security services that contained equipment for chemical and biological research and a prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing for biological weapons agents that were not declared to the United Nations. It also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and the talent to resume production, but we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we found weapons.

Let me now turn to chemical weapons. We said in the estimate with high confidence that Iraq had them. We also believed, though with less certainty, that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric tons of agent. That may sound like a lot, but it would fit in a few dorm rooms on this campus. And the last time I remember, they're not very big rooms. What do we know today? The work done so far shows a story similar to that of his biological weapons program. Saddam had rebuilt a dual-use industry. David Kay reported that Saddam and his son Uday wanted to know how long it would take for Iraq to produce chemical weapons. However, while some sources indicate Iraq may have conducted some experiments related to developing chemical weapons, no physical evidence has yet been uncovered. We need more time. My provisional bottom line today: Saddam had the intent and capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.

Let me tell you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as established and reliable. The first from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle said Iraq was not in the possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam had recently called together his nuclear weapons committee, irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object and they possessed the scientific know-how. The committee members assured Saddam that once fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in 18 to 24 months. The return of U.N. inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception. The same source said that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides under the oil-for-food program had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production. The source said that Iraq's weapons of last resort were mobile launchers armed with chemical weapons which would be fired at enemy forces in Israel; that Iraqi scientists were dabbling with biological weapons with limited success, but the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real weapons program. A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access to senior Iraqi officials said he believed production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place, that biological agents were easy to produce and hide, and that prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use facilities. The source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner circle believed, as a result of the U.N. inspections, Iraq knew the inspectors' weak points and had to take advantage of them. The source said that there was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure prohibited items would never be found.

Now, I'm sure you're all asking, "Why haven't we found the weapons?" I've told you the search must continue and it will be difficult. As David Kay reminded us, the Iraqis systematically destroyed and looted forensic evidence before, during and after the war. We have been faced with organized destruction of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories and companies suspected of weapons of mass destruction work. The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate, rather than random, acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are still being intimidated and attacked. Remember, finding things in Iraq is always very tough. After the first Gulf War, the U.S. Army blew up chemical weapons without knowing it. They were mixed in with conventional weapons in Iraqi ammo dumps.

I will say that our judgments were not single-threaded. U.N. inspection served as a base line and we had multiple strands of reporting from signals, imagery and human intelligence.

I have argued for patience as we continue to learn the truth. We are nowhere near the end of our work. We need more time.

WorldNetDaily: Intel: Al-Qaida has 20 cells in Iraq

Western intelligence sources say al-Qaida has at least 20 insurgency cells in Iraq, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service.

Most of them are in the Sunni Triangle, but others are located in both Kurdistan to the north and in Shi'ite areas to the south.

The cells began as small units but have expanded over the past few months as volunteers have been recruited from the Arab world and Europe.

USATODAY.com - A desert mirage: How U.S. misjudged Iraq's arsenal

Telegraph - Blair admits ignorance on WMD

Tony Blair admitted yesterday that when he asked MPs to vote for war he had been unaware that the claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes referred only to battlefield weapons, not missiles.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, told the Hutton inquiry he knew that the 45 minute claim referred only to chemical shells, but did not think he had a duty to correct the public misconception.

John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told Lord Hutton the 45 minute claim referred not to warheads or missiles but to battlefield mortar shells or small calibre weapons.

CNN.com - Tenet defends CIA on Iraq intelligence

"Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs and those debates were spelled out in the estimate," Tenet said. "They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policy-makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one told us what to say or how to say it."

But did President Bush call Iraq an imminent threat? No, he said:

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."

Tenet's testimony continues:

"Since the war we have found an aggressive Iraqi missile program concealed from the international community.

"In fact, [former top U.S. weapons inspector] David Kay just last fall said that the Iraq Survey Group, quote, 'discovered sufficient evidence to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system improvements that would have, if Operation Iraqi Freedom had not occurred, dramatically breached U.N. restrictions placed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War,' " Tenet said.

"We have also found that Iraq had plans and advanced design work for a liquid-propellant missile with ranges of up to 1,000 kilometers; activity that Iraq did not report to the U.N. and which could have placed large portions of the Middle East in jeopardy.

"Significantly, the Iraq Survey Group has also confirmed prewar intelligence that Iraq was in secret negotiations with North Korea to obtain some of its most dangerous missile technology," Tenet said. "My provisional bottom line on missiles: We were generally on target.

Tenet said U.S. intelligence had evidence to suggest that Saddam planned to restart his efforts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, that U.N. inspectors were unable to fully account for Iraq's pre-1991 arsenal and had intelligence gathered after inspectors left in 1998 to suggest Iraq was trying to conceal prohibited weapons.

"Together, this information provided a solid basis on which to estimate whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them," Tenet said. "It is important to underline the word estimate, because not everything we analyze can be known to a standard of absolute proof."

CNN.com - Tenet to defend CIA on Iraq intelligence

"[Tenet] will convey the picture that those who say the work is 85 percent done are 100 percent wrong," the senior official said. Kay has said the Iraq Survey Group has completed about 85 percent of its mission.
CIA officials have said the group under its new director, Charles Duelfer, has millions of pages of documents to translate and thousands of Iraqi scientists, former officials and others to interview.
Tenet also will respond to Kay's statements that the CIA was apparently wrong about how advanced Libya and Iran's nuclear programs were, officials said.
They said the agency had detailed knowledge about those nations' programs.
The officials said Libya decided to give up its program, in part, after hearing what the CIA knew about it.

FOXNews.com - Administration Immersed in Questions on Iraq Intel

As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified Wednesday on the quality of intelligence before the war in Iraq, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet prepared to deliver a speech Thursday on the complexities inherent in the intelligence business.
An intelligence official said that in a speech at Georgetown University, Tenet will "correct the misperceptions and inaccuracies about what the intelligence community reported on Iraq."
At his speech on Thursday, Tenet will talk generally about the difficulties and complexities inherent in the intelligence business and about broader intelligence questions in addition to Iraq. Asked if the Tenet speech would be a "rebuttal" of Kay's comments, an official said no.

FOXNews.com - Cyanide Salt Block Found in Iraq

A 7-pound block of cyanide salt was discovered by U.S. troops in Baghdad at the end of January, officials confirmed to Fox News.
The potentially lethal compound was located in what was believed to be the safe house of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a poisons specialist described by some U.S. intelligence officials as having been a key link between deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terror network.
Cyanides salts are extremely toxic. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, exposure to even a small amount through contact or inhalation can cause immediate death.
Early last year, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell detailed Zarqawi's significance in an appearance before the U.N. Security Council.
"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants," Powell said.
Zarqawi was described as a poisons expert with strong ties to the former Iraqi regime and the terrorist groups Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam.
U.S. officials, who said they were getting new intelligence in the hunt for Zarqawi, also believe he had been attempting to produce large quantities of the toxin ricin in northern Iraq.

CNN.com - Expert: WMD dossier fears ignored

Some British intelligence officials believed Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability was overstated in a government dossier used to justify war, but their concerns were ignored, a former intelligence official said on Wednesday.
"In my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS (Defence Intelligence Staff) were overruled in the preparation of the dossier back in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities," Dr Brian Jones wrote in the Independent newspaper.

AP - Rumsfeld: WMD May Still Be Found In Iraq, By Robert Burns

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he is not ready to conclude that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose Saddam Hussein last year.

Rumsfeld offered several examples of what he called "alternative views" about why no weapons have been discovered in Iraq, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed. "I suppose that's possible, but not likely," he said.

Other possibilities cited by Rumsfeld:
- Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before U.S. troops arrived in March.
- Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.
- Weapons existed but were destroyed by the Iraqis before the war started.
- "small quantities" of chemical or biological agents may have existed, along with a "surge capability" that would allow Iraq to rapidly build an arsenal of banned weapons. "We may eventually find it in the months ahead."
- Lastly, he offered the possibility that the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction "may have been a charade" orchestrated by the Iraqi government. It is even possible, he said, that Saddam was "tricked" by his own people into believing he had banned weapons that did not exist.

Rumsfeld also said he saw a possibility that Iraq managed to hide some banned weapons of mass destruction. He said that it took 10 months to find Saddam Hussein and that the hole in which he was found on Dec. 13 "was big enough to hold biological weapons to kill thousands" of people. "Such objects, once buried, can stay buried," Rumsfeld said.

CNN.com - Blair orders Iraq WMD inquiry

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided to hold an inquiry into intelligence used to justify going to war with Iraq.

Powell Says New Data May Have Affected War Decision (washingtonpost.com)

This is the photo the Washington Post used, no really.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons, even as he offered a broad defense of the Bush administration's decision to go to war.

Even without possessing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein intended to acquire them and tried to maintain the capability of producing them in case international sanctions were lifted, Powell said in an interview. But he conceded that the administration's conviction that Hussein already had such weapons had made the case for war more urgent.

Powell said the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get" when deciding whether to go to war.

In the interview yesterday, Powell said he had "spent much of the weekend" reading Kay's testimony last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Powell came to the interview, held at The Washington Post, with an annotated and highlighted transcript, and suggested that Kay's testimony was more supportive of the administration than many news accounts have portrayed.

"Saddam Hussein and his regime clearly had the intent -- they never lost it -- an intent that manifested itself many years ago when they actually used such horrible weapons against their enemies in Iran and against their own people." That intent, Powell said, was also demonstrated by Hussein keeping in place the capability to produce weapons. He said Hussein continued to train and employ people who knew how to develop weapons, "and there's no question about that and there's nobody debating that part of the intelligence."

Moreover, Powell said, Iraq continued to have the "technical infrastructure, labs and facilities, that will lend themselves to the production of weapons of mass destruction." Such facilities "could produce such weapons at a moment in time, now or some future moment in time," Powell said. "I think there's evidence that suggests that he was keeping a warm base, that there was an intent on his part to have that capability."

"If you look at my presentation from last year, I talk about intent," Powell said. "I talk about the capability I think is there, the stockpiles, but a large part of the presentation is also what happened" and the unanswered questions about Iraq's weapons holdings. "He got a chance to answer the questions and he didn't answer the questions."

"I think it should be reassuring to the voters of the United States that we found a regime that's clearly demonstrated intent and clearly had the capability, and that the president had the information from the intelligence community." Powell added that the American people will understand "with that body of evidence, that was the information and intelligence that was available to the president at that time, the president made a prudent decision."

Spinsanity - The "Imminent threat" Misquote

A new myth is making its way through the media: that White House press secretary Scott McClellan said "This is about an imminent threat" about the Iraq war during a press briefing last February. This tall tale, first created by the liberal Center for American Progress, has been repeated several times by journalists who failed to check their facts.

Instapundit.com - What David Kay Said

"To Dr Kay, the war was absolutely necessary because Saddam had become "even more dangerous" than had been realised, and, he said last week, "it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat". Yet virtually no one has reported these remarks. Instead, Dr Kay is being quoted out of context to sustain the charge of Government duplicity by the anti-war brigade."

U.K. Prepares Iraq Intelligence Probe (washingtonpost.com)

The British government said Monday it was prepared to follow the U.S. lead and investigate the intelligence on which Prime Minister Tony Blair based his decision to join the United States in going to war with Iraq.

Blair was expected to announce on Tuesday an official inquiry in an appearance before a parliamentary committee, just days after a senior judge cleared the government of allegations it distorted what it knew about Iraq's weapons programs to build a case for war.

CNN.com - Bush to pick panel for WMD inquiry

Weapons inspector David Kay meets with President Bush on Monday at the White House

President Bush said Monday he would appoint a presidential commission to review U.S. intelligence on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

washingtonpost.com: Bush OK's Independent Probe of Prewar Intelligence

President Bush has agreed to support an independent inquiry into the prewar intelligence that he used to assert that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, Republican and congressional sources said today.
The shift by the White House, which had previously maintained that any such inquiry should wait until a more exhaustive weapons search has been complete, came after pressure from lawmakers in both parties and from the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.

Associated Press - BBC Reporter in Weapons Probe Resigns, by Jill Lawless

British Broadcasting Corp. reporter Andrew Gilligan, whose story about Iraqi weapons led to a feud with the British government and a judicial inquiry, said Friday he was resigning from the BBC.