Saturday, Aug 30, 2008
Dec 5, 2002 | The White House said Thursday it possesses solid evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and rejected Baghdad's denials, saying they have no credibility.
President Bush, asked if the United States was headed toward war, said: That's a question you should ask to Saddam Hussein.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declined to say what evidence the administration has on Saddam's weapons, but said the United States will provide intelligence to United Nations inspectors.
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, Fleischer said. The Iraqi government has proved time and time again to deceive, to mislead and to lie.
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told ABC News that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical, biological or nuclear weaponry, but we have equipment which was defined as dual use.
Fleischer responded: That statement is just as false as statements that Iraq made in the late '90s when they said they had no weapons of mass destruction, when it was found they indeed did. There is no basis to that.
Bush addressed the Iraq crisis during a Cabinet Room meeting with the leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia.
On the prospects that the United States will go to war to force Saddam, the Iraqi president, to surrender his weapons of mass destruction, Bush said: For the sake of peace, he must disarm. There are inspectors inside the country now and the inspectors are there not to play a game of hide and seek. They're there to verify whether or not Mr. Saddam Hussein is going to disarm.
Bush administration officials expect tricky and troubling deception from Saddam in response to a U.N. Security Council deadline this weekend for listing any hidden chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.
The assumption within the administration is that Saddam wants to hold on to the weapons and hopes to shift the burden of proof to the United States, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. What Saddam is most likely to do is to provide thousands of documents on such peripheral issues as dual-use equipment and commercial material of potential military application, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The schedule set by the Security Council calls for a full weapons declaration. In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi official said the list would be turned over to U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on Saturday, a day ahead of the deadline.
If the declaration is patently false, the administration may try to rally a consensus on the Council to explicitly approve using force against Iraq.
Iraq protested sharply Wednesday over U.N. weapons inspectors' surprise intrusion into one of Saddam presidential palaces, accusing the arms experts of being spies and staging the palace search as a provocation that could lead to war.
The harshest criticism came from Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who charged -- in language reminiscent of clashes with inspectors in the 1990s that the new teams of U.N. monitors are gathering intelligence for Washington and Israel. The White House dismissed Iraq's protest as part of its pattern of not cooperating with international inspectors.
If the Iraqi leader denies having weapons of mass destruction, President Bush will be faced with several options. One is to provide U.S. intelligence to the inspectors to have them disprove Saddam's claim. Another is for the president to take his case to the Security Council, several other U.S. officials said.
The resolution adopted unanimously by the Council on Nov. 8 requires Bush to consult. At the same time, the president has made plain he reserves the option of using force against Iraq if Saddam refuses to disarm.
Bush said on Wednesday that Saddam is not somebody who looks like he's interested in complying. This is not a game any more of, "Well, I'll say one thing and do another", Bush told reporters at the White House. We expect him to disarm, and now it's up to him to do so.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a news conference in Bogota, Colombia, said, We are absolutely sure they have continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we're sure they have in their possession weapons of mass destruction.
Powell said if a peaceful solution was not found the international community, I predict, will be unified in using force.
But if the outlook is the kind of extended debate that delayed last month's resolution or if a veto against force loomed, the United States might take action outside the United Nations with a coalition of willing allies, the senior U.S. official said.
The administration is confident it would have the support of many countries in a war with Iraq and more of them if a second anti-Iraq resolution is approved, he said.
Above all else, the United States is seeking permission to use foreign bases for combat flights and asking for troops to fight alongside Americans, the official said. Beyond that, there is a need for approval for overflights and other forms of access.
No country is prepared to make an ironclad commitment, and none has been requested, the official said. But most countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf share the U.S. analysis of Saddam, and the Nov. 8 resolution has accelerated their willingness to take part in contingency planning, he said.
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