Bush's Hope of Finding WMD in Iraq Is Futile, Kay, Blix Say

Bush's Hope of Finding Weapons in Iraq Is Futile, Kay, Blix Say

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April 19 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush said last Tuesday there "could still be'' weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Arms experts including David Kay, who led the search for the weapons until three months ago, say Bush is wrong.

"I don't know what evidence there is aside from hope,'' Kay, the chief U.S. arms inspector from June 2003 through January 2004, said in an interview. "I don't want to use the term zero possibility, but I have no optimism.''

Bush argued prior to the war that Iraq had to be attacked because it possessed weapons of mass destruction. Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet had told Bush "it's a slam-dunk case'' that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had the weapons at his disposal, according to "Plan of Attack,'' a book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that was to go on sale today. Those weapons haven't been found.

As violence in Iraq mounts, Americans' backing for the president has slipped. Support for Bush's policies in Iraq fell 7 percentage points to 44 percent in a CNN/Time magazine poll released April 9.

Bush, 57, cited at his press conference last week the discovery of 24 tons of mustard gas at a Libyan turkey farm by U.S. inspectors in January as an example of how weapons can be hard to locate. The inspectors were guided by Libyan officials to a metal barn at the farm outside Tripoli.

Exaggerated Threat

In December, Libya agreed to eliminate "all elements'' of its chemical and nuclear weapons programs, declare all nuclear activities to UN inspectors, and eliminate all chemical weapons stocks and munitions. Thousands of pounds of documents and equipment used to develop nuclear weapons are now in a secure facility in Tennessee, the White House said.

While Iraq is twice the size of Idaho and swaths of the country are almost off limits because of armed resistance, the weapons won't be found because they probably aren't there, arms experts said.

Hans Blix, a former United Nations chief weapons inspector, said in a recently published book, "Disarming Iraq -- The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction,'' that Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair exaggerated the Iraq threat when seeking support for the war.

Seeking Answers

Bush is under pressure from Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate for president, to say that prewar U.S. intelligence was flawed and prove his administration didn't skew the information.

Kerry, 60, a four-term senator who received a Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor while serving in Vietnam, said yesterday that Bush's international policies have been "arrogant'' and may keep other countries from working with the U.S. in the future.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press,'' Kerry said he would take the "poison out of'' U.S. policies and seek more foreign assistance in Iraq.

The president said at his press conference that he was looking "forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where'' the weapons are, from a commission he formed on Feb. 6 in response to calls for an investigation into intelligence failures prior to the war. "That's why we set up the independent commission,'' he said.

The commission has until March 2005 to complete its probe, four months after the November presidential election.

'Unresolved Ambiguity'

Since the U.S. invasion began on March 20 of last year, 687 U.S. troops have been killed, including more than 380 since Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, the Defense Department said as of Friday. More than 90 U.S. troops have been killed in action this month, making it the most deadly month since the invasion began.

Bush said the U.S. could yet find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq if it got cooperation from the ousted government. He said the discovery of mustard gas near Tripoli was a result of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's willingness to assist inspectors, in contrast to Hussein's refusal to do so.

There will always be "unresolved ambiguity'' with a government as secretive as Iraq under Hussein, said Kay, who also searched for weapons on behalf of the UN in the 1990s. "What mitigates against'' finding weapons in Iraq is that "we have not found a facility --nor have we found any Iraqi to come forward and said this is how it is done,'' he said.

Kay resigned as head of the U.S. weapons inspection team and was replaced by Charles Duelfer, the former number two UN weapons inspector in Iraq.

Getting Caught

Bush said at his press conference that Duelfer was "amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been toward Unmovic and Unscom,'' inspection teams that searched Iraq for more than a decade.

"We knew they were hiding things,'' Bush said. "A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught, and that was part of our calculation. Charlie confirmed that.''

Duelfer told Congress last month that Iraq's failure to cooperate in his search was undermining efforts to determine whether the country had a weapons program, the New York Times reported on March 31. Duelfer said his team hadn't found evidence of weapons, although he said they were continuing to pursue leads, the Times said, citing testimony he delivered to two Senate committees behind closed doors.

Duelfer didn't return calls seeking comment. Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment beyond Bush's remarks.

'One in 100'

Representative Curt Weldon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who backed the war, believes Iraq may still harbor weapons of mass destruction, said Michael Conallen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Republican.

"The congressman would agree and support'' Bush in his contention that the weapons may exist, Conallen said.

Weldon led a group a lawmakers who traveled to Iraq in February to meet with Army Major General Keith Dayton, director of the group searching for the weapons.

Dayton "indicated to the congressman and the delegation that there was a lot of work to do'' in tracking down leads and sifting through documents, Conallen said.

The chances that U.S. weapons inspectors will make a discovery in Iraq similar to the one in Libya are remote, said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for foreign policy for the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group based in Washington.

"You can't rule it out entirely,'' Carpenter said. "We have been in the country for a year and had access to their scientists. It's one in 100 at best.''

Either Bush was misleading the public or he was poorly briefed before the press conference, said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"There is no likelihood that we will find these stockpiles of chemical and biological compounds that were advertised before the war,'' Mathews said. "I think there was reason to know they were not there.''