Saddam Singing Like a Canary- Information on Looted Funds

I remember your support for the WMD issue. I remember you touting the story of the drones that were supposed to be able to launch attacks in 45 minutes. I remember you betting that after the war was over your position would be vindicated in regard to Saddam and 9/11.

Dr Hope, Britain's second most senior church leader [Archbishop of York], criticised Mr Blair for not listening to opponents during the war in Iraq.

In an interview in the Times, he said: "We still have not found any weapons of mass destruction anywhere.

"Are we likely to find any? Does that alter the view as to whether we really ought to have mounted the invasion or not?

"Undoubtedly a very wicked leader has been removed but there are wicked leaders in other parts of the world."

'Not credible'

Dr Wright [Bishop of Durham] said he did not think Mr Blair and US President George W Bush had the credibility to deal with the problems in Iraq.

"For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug-dealing," he told the Independent.

Ok, but do understand that my objection is that proving a negative is frequently impossible

2:18pm (UK)
US Pulls Military Search Team Out of Iraq

By Mark Sage, PA News, in New York


A 400-member American team, tasked with searching Iraq for military equipment, has been withdrawn, senior US government officials said today.

According to some officials, the withdrawal of the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group was a sign that the Bush administration has lowered its expectations of finding hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

It comes as an independent report by a Washington think tank suggested that US intelligence officials came under political pressure to make a stronger case for war against Iraq.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "broken".

Report author Joseph Cirincione told CNN: "We looked at the intelligence assessment process and we have come to the conclusion that it is broken.

"It has now become deeply politicised... it is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform to the threat assessment of pre-existing policies."

He said a threat assessment published by the Bush administration in the run-up to the war was "strikingly different" from previous analyses.

He said Iraqi weapons programmes were "crippled" by years of sanctions and US air strikes.

"Some of the things we thought were not working, like UN inspections and sanctions, actually were working better than anyone anticipated," he said.

He added that Saddam Hussein was walking a fine line between trying to convince inspectors that he was complying with them while trying to give an impression of military strength to his neighbours.

The report concludes that US government officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war.

Mr Cirincione, whose think tank opposed the war, called for an independent inquiry into the report's findings.

Meanwhile, a 1,400-strong CIA-led Iraq Survey Group is continuing to hunt Iraq for the weapons of mass destruction which were the justification for war.

Among that team is a group specialised in disposing of chemical and biological weapons, but one group member told the New York Times they were "still waiting for something to dispose of".

The White House and Pentagon hope to find signs of possible weapons dumps among a massive collection of seized Iraqi documents, currently being stored in Qatar.

Many of the papers are still to be translated.

The developments come after new reports yesterday that Iraq may have destroyed its biological weapons as early as 1991.

The Washington Post said investigators had found no evidence of weapons dating back to the first Gulf War, or advanced weapons programmes in the years following that conflict.

It also repeated claims made last year that weapons scientists and engineers told Saddam that programmes were more advanced than they actually were.

Programme managers apparently exaggerated their successes to appease the dictator, or to advance their careers.

Last year, David Kay, who is leading the Iraq Survey Group, said his team had so far made no discoveries of actual weapons of mass destruction.

But he said there was evidence that Saddam's regime was attempting to develop such weapons.

Mr Kay said last month that he may leave his post earlier than was first expected.

Intelligence officials insist that the search for weapons will go on.

Stuart Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council said in an interview on Tuesday: "We worry about what may have happened to those weapons.

"Theories abound as to what may have happened," he told ABC.

He added: "It is too soon to close the books on this case."