US abandons hunt for WMD
The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President George Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said today.
The Iraq Survey Group, made up of 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said there no longer is an active search for weapons. “There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that” but that it has largely concluded, he said.
“If they have any reports of obviously they’ll continue to follow up on those reports,” McClellan said. “A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now.”
Chief US weapons hunter Charles Duelfer is to deliver his final report on the search next month.
“It’s not going to fundamentally alter the findings of his earlier report,” McClellan said.
Duelfer reported in September that Saddam Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any either. Bush unapologetically defended his decision to invade Iraq.
Duelfer is expected to report on the removal of enriched uranium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons production, and that the United States was offering jobs to Iraqis engaged in weapons programs, another administration official said on condition of anonymity.
Bush has appointed a panel to investigate why the intelligence about Iraq’s weapons was wrong.
