'Course, they're just a buncha fuzzy-minded panty-waist non-producer
Repugnicans, so whattya expect. Maybe they'll ask OJ to look for the
MWDs after he finds the Real Killers.
U.S. quietly ends search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
Associated Press
January 12, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has
quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that
President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House
said Wednesday.
Democrats said Bush owes the country an explanation of why he was so
wrong.
The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 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 and the administration does not hold out hopes
that any weapons will be found. ``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 (weapons of mass destruction) obviously
they'll continue to follow up on those reports,'' McClellan said. ``A
lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now.''
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said Bush should
explain what happened.
``Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to
the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons
for war,'' she said.
``After a war that has consumed nearly two years and millions of
dollars, and a war that has cost thousands of lives, no weapons of mass
destruction have been found, nor has any evidence been uncovered that
such weapons were moved to another country,'' Pelosi said in a written
statement. ``Not only was there not an imminent threat to the United
States, the threat described in such alarmist tones by President Bush
and the most senior members of his administration did not exist at all.''
Chief U.S. 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, referring to
preliminary findings from last September. Duelfer reported then 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.
``Nothing's changed in terms of his views when it comes to Iraq, what
he has previously stated and what you have previously heard,'' McClellan
said. ``The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous
region we are making the world a safer place.''
Bush has appointed a panel to investigate why the intelligence about
Iraq's weapons was wrong.
McClellan said the Iraq experience would not make Bush hesitant to
raise alarms when he deems it necessary.
``But we're also going to continue taking steps to make sure that that
intelligence is the best possible,'' he said.
``Our friends and allies had the same intelligence that we had when it
came to Saddam Hussein,'' McClellan said. ``And now we need to continue
to move forward to find out what went wrong and to correct those flaws.''
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday about
120 Iraqi scientists who had been working in weapons programs were being
paid by the U.S. government to work in other fields.
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