Duelfer Report: Saddam Planned to Restart WMD Programs
The Associated Press headline reads: U.S. Report Finds No Evidence of Iraq WMD.
But the most important part of the report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, is that Saddam Hussein planned to restart his weapons programs as soon as he could convince a gullible UN to lift economic sanctions. This stark truth, directly contradicting the mainstream media spin, is of course buried deep in the article.
But Duelfer also supports Bush’s argument that Saddam remained a threat. Interviews with the toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials made clear that Saddam had not lost his ambition to pursue weapons of mass destruction and hoped to revive his weapons program if U.N. sanctions were lifted, his report said.
“What is clear is that Saddam retained his notions of use of force, and had experiences that demonstrated the utility of WMD,” Duelfer told Congress.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Bush defended the decision to invade.
“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks,” Bush said in a speech in Wilkes Barre, Pa. “In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”
But a top Democrat in Congress, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said Duelfer’s findings undercut the two main arguments for war: that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he would share them with terrorists like al-Qaida.
“We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction,” said Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee
Notice: Levin said this immediately after the release of a report that stated Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
The Democratic Party is simply not serious about national defense.