WMD Missing in Iraq, Bush Speeches
(2003-07-24)
By Patricia Wilson
DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Weapons of mass destruction have proven hard to find in Iraq and now they've disappeared from President Bush's speeches.
A reliable staple of past addresses, the four-words did not cross his lips during two public appearances in Pennsylvania and Michigan on Thursday. Nor did Bush use the phrase on Wednesday in a formal update on the progress U.S. forces have made in Iraq that he delivered from the White House Rose Garden.
Before the U.S.-led invasion and during the war's early stages, Bush speeches were peppered with references to weapons of mass destruction and the specter of apocalyptic havoc that chemical and biological arms might wreak on the United States, its friends and allies. He used the words so much that sometimes they became simply "WMD."
Now that Saddam Hussein has been ousted and with no conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the president has recently spoken more benignly of "weapons programs" and "illegal weapons," although he has said he remains confident that banned arms will be uncovered.
"A free and democratic and peaceful Iraq will not threaten America or our friends with illegal weapons," he said in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Livonia, Michigan. "A free Iraq will not provide weapons to terrorists, or money to terrorists, who threaten the American people."
It was his only reference to Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- the main U.S. justification for going to war.
Under fire from Democrats who accused the White House of exaggerating intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Bush and other senior officials have launched a concerted effort to shift attention to the democratic promise of a post-war and Saddam-free Iraq.
Some Democratic candidates seeking to unseat Bush in 2004 have accused the president of misleading the American people about the threat Iraq posed. They have seized on the controversy surrounding Bush's State of the Union speech last January, which included an unsubstantiated allegation that Iraq sought uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons.
White House officials now say it was a mistake to include the uranium claim in the State of the Union address and senior officials at the National Security Council have accepted blame. Asked last week if he should take responsibility, Bush dodged the question saying he was responsible for the decision to send American troops to oust Saddam.
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