No WMD, but Bush unrepentant

2004-10-06 20:40

Washington - The US government on Wednesday will release a report saying Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction or concrete plans to make them, reports said, but President George W Bush remained unrepentant over the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Charles Duelfer, the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq, has produced a 1 000-page report which says Saddam, who was ousted after a US-led invasion, had the desire but not the means to produce biological, chemical and nuclear arms, The Washington Post reported, quoting US officials.

The report would be a new blow to US administration efforts to justify the invasion, which has been made into a central theme of the presidential election race by Democratic contender John Kerry.

The report into the September 11 2001 attacks has already concluded that Iraq had no part in the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington.

And defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week he had seen no "strong, hard evidence" linking Saddam to al-Qaeda.

The Post quoted officials as saying that Duelfer, a former UN weapons inspector, found that the state of Iraq's weapons programmes in 2003 was less advanced than in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

White House spokesperson Scott McClellan acknowledged on Tuesday that the United States had not found the weapons stockpiles it expected in Iraq.

McClellan said: "I think the report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction.

"So let's let the report come out, and we can talk more about it at that point."

Invasion 'had been right'

Bush reaffirmed his insistence that the invasion had been right.

Without mentioning the report, he said at an election speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, there was a "real risk" that Saddam would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

"After September 11, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light," Bush said.

"We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons and one regime stood out: the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

"We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America.

"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks.

"In the world after September 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

The president acknowledged "strong concerns" held by some Americans about Iraq.

"I respect the fact that they take this issue seriously, because it is a serious matter.

"I assure them we're in Iraq because I deeply believe it is necessary and right and critical to the outcome of the war on terror."

- AFP