wmd

We at bpost found this to be a very disturbing article. Why? Other than weapons of mass destruction [program activities] being used as justification for the war, over $600 million dollars was set aside for investigating wmd's. So a) where did the money go and b) why did the White House request the funding if they knew it was a mock investigation?

US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD by Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Harris February 1, 2004 for The Observer.

Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer has learnt.

Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling, despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

On May 30, 2003 a press briefing was held with Stephen A. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence, and Army Major General Keith W. Dayton, director for operations, Defense Intelligence Agency, to discuss the Iraq Survey group. Briefing on the Iraq Survey Group

Dayton:  Oh, I think we've learned something in the past couple of months.  The fact that we've gone to a lot of these sites and haven't found anything that is of value tells us that, okay, we took the top priority sites, didn't find them, so now, before we go to other sites, we're going to want to get a bit more analytic assessment of the site done before we go back and try it again, because things have changed in the last two months.  They may well have been excellent targets back in February or March, but, you know, we just want to know more about it before we take resources and send them out there.

It never occurred to us to take the press briefing literally. We assumed they were being somewhat obtuse for the reasons of security. Now it looks like they knew then there were no weapons of mass destruction. And yet they continued to spend tax payer dollars doing what--sifting sand?

If we sound shrill today in our anger, it's because President Bush wants the Iraq Survey Group to keep looking. Bush de-emphasizes weapons claim

Bush said the Iraq Survey Group, the U.S. team looking for weapons in Iraq, must keep searching for evidence of weapons programs to determine how the administration's prewar claims about the threat posed by Iraq compare with the evidence on the ground.

"It's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office...

Anyone remember Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors that the White House forced out of Iraq?