BBC reports: no WMDs in Iraq

Boy, remember all those onimous warnings from GOoPer congressmen and senators and administration officials to "shut up" about WMDs in Iraq? You see, David Kay would wait until September (no product launches in August, remember?) to show us a report with damning evidence of Saddam's massive, extensive, lethal WMD program.

Boy, is that falling flat in its face.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq by the group looking for them, according to a Bush administration source who has spoken to the BBC.

This will be the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group's interim report, the source told the presenter of BBC television's Daily Politics show, Andrew Neil.

Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".

Mr Neil said the draft report - which the source said is due to be published next month - concludes that it is highly unlikely that weapons of mass destruction were shipped out of the country to places like Syria before the US-led war on Iraq [...]

Mr Neil said that according to the source, the report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material".

They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.

For domestic consumption, we get this Reuters wire piece:

An eagerly awaited U.S. inquiry is expected to report finding "documentary evidence" that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programs but no proof of actual arms, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

The expected finding in a report by David Kay, who served as a U.N. nuclear inspector in Iraq in 1991, would be a blow to President Bush (news - web sites) who, before ordering the invasion of Iraq last March, argued Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat that justified war.

It's funny how the administration has been trying to move the goalposts for some time, laying foundation to trumpet the findings of a WMD program. The fact the Kay report is being squashed is tacit admission the tactic wasn't working.

After the alarmist rhetoric coming from the White House and 10 Downing Street, no one would be satiated with a few floppy disks and schematics.

This story won't help those Bush numbers.

And what will O'Reilly do? On March 18, on Good Morning America, he said:

"Here's, here's the bottom line on this for every American and everybody in the world, nobody knows for sure, all right? We don't know what he has. We think he has 8,500 liters of anthrax. But let's see. But there's a doubt on both sides. And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right? But I'm giving my government the benefit of the doubt," O'Reilly said.

I can't wait to hear that apology.

Posted September 24, 2003 01:14 PM | Comments (86)