Rumsfeld: 'really, we will find something!'

It's good that the press continues to ask about the lack of WMDs. It's comical hearing administration officials say, "give us time".

U.S. forces have not found any biological or chemical weapons in Iraq, and some Democratic presidential candidates have raised the WMD issue to criticize the current Republican administration.

"It's now less than eight weeks since the end of major combat in Iraq and I believe that patience will prove to be a virtue," Rumsfeld said.

Of course, patience was not a virtue for the UN weapons inspectors. But this classic Rummy moment takes the cake:

[Rumsfeld] said no one had contended that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

Granted, no one claimed Saddam had them. They claimed, repeatedly, that Saddam was on the verge of developing nukes. A technical distinction akin to "depends on what the definition of 'is' is."

Condi Rice led the "Iraq is developing nukes" drumbeat with gems as:

"Saddam Hussein is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs."

Or the all-time classic:

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

And Bush was not immune to the hyperbole (read: lies), in a State of the Union address, no less:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Rumsfeld, spinning furiously, is setting up straw men in a desperate bid to knock them down and deflect attention ("we never said he was in physical possession of an actual, working nuclear weapon!").

If the administration had a single document suggesting Iraq's nuclear program had not been dismantled, it would've found and released it by now. As it stands, there's nothing there but a long trail of lies, lies, lies.

Update: I'm reminded in the comments of the Cheney MTP appearance on march 16, where Cheney said:

And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

So Rumsfeld lied today. Par for the course.

Posted June 24, 2003 02:25 PM | Comments (152)