July 09, 2004

NRO Corner: The Intelligence Committee's Report, by Michael Ledeen

what gets me is that it has now become part of the conventional wisdom that Iraq did NOT have WMDs. None at all. Not hardly ever, that is. So when, say, Polish soldiers find some, "coalition authorities" are quick to say, nah, that doesn't count, that's older stuff. As if old WMDs weren't real.

...

my own experience has been that the CIA really doesn't want to find WMDs in Iraq. Others tell me emphaticaly that the CIA team virtually never leaves the Green Zone. And Rumsfeld has handed over total authority on WMDs to CIA, so Pentagon people in Iraq can't go explore leads (talk about a bad decision!)...

And before the war started you may recall that I said Iraq was shipping WMDs to Syria and Iran, and remember that a couple of weeks ago the government of Sudan publicly asked the Syrians to take back their WMDs.

In short, I believe there were WMDs, and the issue is, what happened to them?

If you don't believe that, you will have to explain how every major intelligence service in the world agreed there were WMDs. Do you think Ahmad Chalabi duped the Israelis? The Russians? The French?

Give me a break