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Coalition Forces Focus Search on Iraqi Chemical Weapons Three U.S. intelligence officials have said that U.S. forces searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are now only searching for a small stockpile of chemical weapons, USA Today reported today (see GSN, Sept. 25). The Iraq Survey Group, which is conducting the search, has concluded that prewar Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons and only possessed minimal elements of a nuclear weapons program, according to the officials. They also said Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of biological weapons would be now useless because of the agents’ short shelf life. The unit, headed by CIA envoy David Kay, has also found no evidence that Iraq attempted to smuggle weapons of mass destruction out of the country to avoid detection by U.N. weapons inspectors, the officials said. The unit now believes that Iraq hid small quantities of long-lasting chemical weapons agents at sites that have not yet been discovered, according to USA Today. The amount of unaccounted for Iraqi chemical weapons at the time the war began in March was small enough to fit in a swimming pool, according to a unit analysis. “There is still a huge set of missing chemical weapons that will be found,” one of the three intelligence officials said. “The guys have a lot of digging to do in hot, remote places to find them,” the official said (Diamond/Nichols, USA Today, Sept. 26). White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that the Bush administration still believes that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. “We continue to believe that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, had a weapons of mass destruction program and Dr. Kay is going to pull together a full picture,” McClellan said (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/Salon.com, Sept. 26). Powell Defends Earlier Iraq WMD Assessment Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday defended a statement he made in early 2001 that Iraq did not have “any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.” Powell was asked about the Feb. 24, 2001, remark after it was found on a U.S. State Department Web site, according to the Washington Post. He defended the statement by saying that more information on Iraq was later discovered. “What I said was, at that time, three weeks into the administration, when I was trying to get sanctions retained — and we did succeed in getting sanctions retained — I made that observation,” Powell said. “You’ll note that I did not say that he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. … He was a threat then. The extent of his holdings were yet to be determined. It was early in the administration and, fact of the matter, it was long before 9/11,” he said (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Sept. 26). U.S. President George W. Bush also defended Powell yesterday, saying the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks had led to a re-evaluation of the threat posed by Hussein. “9/11 changed my calculation. It made it really clear we have to deal with threats before they come on our shore,” Bush said. “You know, for a long period of time, we thought oceans could protect us from danger, and we learned a tough lesson on September the 11th. It’s really important for this nation to continue to chase down and deal with threats before they materialize, and we learned that on September the 11th,” he said (Federal News Service transcript, Sept. 25). New Evidence on Iraqi Drones A U.S. defense official has said that evidence found in Iraq helps to support the prewar claim made by the Bush administration that Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles for use in conducting biological and chemical weapons attacks, according to the Washington Post (see GSN, Sept. 2). The official described a report of an interrogation of a former member of Hussein’s “inner circle” who said Hussein had ordered accelerated production of drones shortly before the war for use in attack missions, the Post reported. Some U.S. analysts have argued, however, that the drones were meant to be used in reconnaissance missions (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, Sept. 26).
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