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US, UK backtracking?
10/07/2003 12:11 - (SA)
Baghdad - Three more US soldiers were reported killed in separate attacks in Iraq on Thursday, amid growing controversy in the United States and Britain over the reasons for waging war against Saddam Hussein.
One attack targeted a US convoy in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad about 19:30 on Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding another, Specialist Nicci Trent said, without providing further details.
In Mahmudiyah, south of the capital, two soldiers were killed when they were ambushed with small arms fire about 15:30 on Wednesday, Sergeant Patrick Compton said. He did not elaborate.
The deaths brought the toll from attacks on US troops to 32 since May 1, when the United States declared major combat operations over, and highlighted the human as well as the financial cost of the occupation.
US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld told senators on Wednesday that Iraqi operations were costing the United States $3.9bn per month, and said Washington wanted to draw in other nations to help police and rebuild the country.
Washington and London meanwhile appeared to backtrack on their main reason for waging war against Saddam Hussein's regime, the existence and imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction, while still insisting that they were right to invade Iraq.
'We saw the existing evidence in a new light'
Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States "did not act in Iraq because we have discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder", he said.
"We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on September 11," he said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks in the United States that killed about 3 000 people.
"That experience changed our appreciation of (the) vulnerability the US faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons," he added.
The statement seemed to conflict with those made before the war by officials from President George W Bush's administration, that military force was needed against Saddam's regime because Iraq's weapons of massive destruction threatened the security of the United States and its allies.
In London the BBC quoted unnamed senior British government officials as saying they no longer believe that such weapons will be uncovered in Iraq.
"Senior government sources are telling me that they no longer believe that physical weapons of mass destruction are actually going to be found in Iraq," said the BBC's Andrew Marr.
"They don't think that there were no weapons programmes. They believe that interviews with Iraqi scientists, perhaps documentation will be uncovered which will reveal the extent of programmes that were there in the past," Marr said.
"But when it comes to physical evidence I have to say that the belief that that will be found and can be paraded in front of the cameras seems to be trickling into the sand," Marr said.
Downing Street said that Prime Minister Tony Blair was standing by his comments to MPs at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he is convinced that evidence of Iraq's weapons programmes will be found.
Commentators said that here again Blair seemed to be changing his tack, talking about evidence of weapons programmes rather than weapons themselves.
False intelligence
"One theory is that Saddam Hussein did have it, but dismantled his weapons of mass destruction before the war started, perhaps because he had made promises to countries like France and Russia and he hoped that those countries would help him," Marr said.
"The people I am talking to were not cynics, they are not people who made the evidence up or who believed it wasn't there in first place, they are genuinely bemused," he said.
The latest twist follows an admission by the White House that claims by Bush that Iraq had tried to obtain nuclear materials from the African state of Niger were based on false intelligence.
Bush deflected a question on whether he regretted highlighting the allegation in his State of the Union address in January.
"There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace and there is no doubt in my mind the United States along with our allies and friends did the right thing in removing him from power," he said in Pretoria.
But the opposition Democrat leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, again said the issue underscores the need for a full congressional investigation on US intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.
In London, Britain stuck fast by the same claim, made in a dossier published by the government in September.
"I don't accept in any shape or form that the information in that briefing was wrong," Blair told the House of Commons.
"We had included the material in our dossier on the basis of our knowledge, which was different," a government spokesperson added.
Rumsfeld also said that postwar reconstruction needed the contribution of a broad array of nations.
"We've got 19 countries on the ground, we've got commitment from another 19...Italy and Spain have both made commitments," he said, adding that he expected additional deployments of foreign troops from September.
"Our goal is to get a large number of international forces from a lot of countries," he said, including France and Germany, which both opposed the war.
But French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin said in an interview published Thursday that Paris will only join a multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq if it is under a UN mandate.
- AFX
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