http://billmon.org.v.sabren.com/archives/000172.htmlWith links to orignals
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Dick Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George W. Bush
Speech to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002
If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
December 2, 2002
We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
January 9, 2003
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
George W. Bush
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003
We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
George W. Bush
Radio Address
February 8, 2003
If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.
Colin Powell
Interview with Radio France International
February 28, 2003
So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher
Press Briefing
March 21, 2003
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks
Press Conference
March 22, 2003
I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
Washington Post, p. A27
March 23, 2003
One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
Press Briefing
March 22, 2003
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld
ABC Interview
March 30, 2003
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan
Washington Post op-ed
April 9, 2003
But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
April 10, 2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush
NBC Interview
April 24, 2003
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
April 25, 2003
We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 3, 2003
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell
Remarks to Reporters
May 4, 2003
We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Fox News Interview
May 4, 2003
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 6, 2003
U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice
Reuters Interview
May 12, 2003
I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne
Press Briefing
May 13, 2003
Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps
Interview with Reporters
May 21, 2003
Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
NBC Today Show interview
May 26, 2003
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld
Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations
May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz
Vanity Fair interview
May 28, 2003
It was a surprise to me then — it remains a surprise to me now — that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Press Interview
May 30, 2003
Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there."
Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency
Press Conference
May 30, 2003
*************
ALSO there are many many many many more in the comments section of that post. to wit:
Mr. Rumsfeld said on CBS's "Face the Nation, "that American intelligence reports indicated that Iraqi forces "have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them, and that they are weaponized, and that, in one case at least, that the command and control arrangements have been established."
New York Times, March 24, 2003, p. B12.
Ari Fleischer responded to Iraq's claims that it possesses no weapons of mass destruction by declaring that "Iraq has lied before, and they're lying now."
New York Times, December 8, 2002, Section 4, p. 2.
"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it,"
Ari Fleischer New York Times, December 6, 2002, p. A1.
“We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and is all about.”
Ari Fleischer
"'Our experts who are in the field right now ... have said this is an ingenious, unique and Iraqi design, not the way anyone else would have manufactured biological agent,' one official said. 'It's probably not how you would want to design a biological weapon. It was designed to evade inspection, not to be efficient.'"
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2838965Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons
George Bush, US President 18 March, 2003
We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd
Tony Blair, Prime Minister 18 March, 2003
Saddam's removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary 2 April, 2003
Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit
Tony Blair 28 April, 2003
It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy them prior to the conflict
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary 28 May, 2003
May 29, 2003
Reuters: Rumsfeld Denies 'False Pretext' for Iraq War
"Well I can assure you that this war was not waged under any false pretext. We believed then and we believe now that the Iraqis have had chemical weapons (and) biological weapons and that they had a program to develop nuclear weapons but did not have nuclear weapons. That is what the United Kingdom's intelligence suggested as well. We still believe that."
May 29, 2003
In congressional testimony last week, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said he was "confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD programs, but the process will take months, and perhaps years."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51355-2003May28.htmlWe don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
Condoleeza Rice, CNN's Late Edition, September 8, 2002
September 9, 2002 Washington Times
headline "U.S. reprisal to be 'annihilation'"
Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.
Colin Powell, presentation to the UN Security Council, February 2, 2003 BBC Transcript
Rumsfeld concedes banned Iraqi weapons may not exist
29 May 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=410468Press Conference - President George W. Bush & British Prime Minister Tony Blair - January 31, 2003
Q: One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.
Fleischer, December 5, 2002
The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.
Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press," March 16, "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, May 14, "I don't believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons."
But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them.
G.W. Bush, May 30, 2003
Washington Post article
"Iraq has aggressively pursued weapons of mass destruction, even while inspectors were inside the country."
President Bush
Address to the Nation
September 8, 2002
"Saddam Hussein is not disarming. This is a fact. It cannot be denied."
President Bush
News conference
March 6, 2003
"The Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised...Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed."
President Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
"I do not accept as fact the US and UK’s repeated assertions that Baghdad has used the time
to rebuild its weapons of mass destruction."
UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Hans Blix
March 2002 (reported in London Financial Times)
"After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."
Mohammed ElBaradei
Director-General International Atomic Energy Agency
Statement to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003
"It behooves me to admit that I find present allegations about Iraq's nuclear capability, as continuously advanced by the Americans and the British, to be ridiculous."
Imad Khadduri, PhD
Seneca College, Toronto
Former Nuclear Scientist, Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (1968-1998)
November 21, 2002
"Its capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections and is probably more limited now than it was at the time of the Gulf war."
Central Intelligence Agency Report, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs"
October 2002
"Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be 'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq. "
Neil Mackay
Edinburgh Sunday Herald
May 3, 2003
"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."
President Bush
Remarks to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002
"All the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use."
Secretary of State Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003
"Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81mm tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets...even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question."
Mohammed ElBaradei
Director-General, International Atomic Energy Agency
March 7, 2003
"According to Albright government experts on nuclear technology who dissented from the Bush administration's view told him they were expected to remain silent."
Washington Post
September 19, 2002
"The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?
US State Department "Fact Sheet"
December 19, 2002
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
President Bush
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
"The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic."
Mohammed ElBaradei
Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency
March 7, 2003
"The regime...has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda."
President Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
"There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British intelligence report."
BBC News
February 5, 2003
"Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."
Secretary of State Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003
"Most experts...dispute his possible role as Qaeda-Iraq link."
New York Times
February 10, 2003
"There is a really serious problem in intelligence. It’s virtually impossible to prove these kinds of conspiracies. . . . It is going to require a great deal more debate and reporting than simply accepting the U.S. statements without further review."
Anthony Cordesman
Former Director-Intelligence Assessment
US Department of Defense
Transcript of February 6, 2003 radio interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation
"American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil."
Ahmed Chalabi
Leader, Iraqi National Congress
(Reported by Washington Post Septembert 15, 2002)
"Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas; reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to."
Kenneth T. Derr
Chevron CEO
1998 speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
"It's pretty straightforward. France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance...we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them."
R. James Woolsey
Former Director
Central Intelligence Agency
"When there is regime change in Iraq, you could add three million to five million barrels of production to world supply. The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy."
Larry Lindsey
White House Economic Advisor
September 2002
"All Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells."
President Bush
Address on the Start of War
March 20, 2003
"The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security."
President Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
"Not only will the United States impose preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses, but the nation will also punish those who engage in terror and aggression and will work to impose a universal moral clarity between good and evil."
President Bush
West Point Commencement Address
June 2002
"Under Resolutions 678 and 687 -- both still in effect -- the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction."
President Bush
Address on the Start of War
March 20, 2003
"...a formal cease-fire is effective between Iraq and Kuwait and the Member States cooperating with Kuwait in accordance with resolution 678."
UN Security Council Resolution 687
April 3, 1991
"All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
United Nations Charter, Article 2, Section 4
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."
United Nations Charter, Article 51
"The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all of its Members."
Ibid. Article 2, Section 1
"The United States has no right to invade another state because of speculative concerns about that state's possible future actions. The current international order does not support a special status for the United States or a singular right to exempt itself from the law."
Mary Ellen O'Connell, The Myth of Preemptive Self-Defense
The American Society of International Law Task Force on Terrorism
August 2002
"You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60140-2003May30.html?nav=hptop_ts
Washington Post
Saturday, May 31, 2003
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