Senator Expects 'Breakthrough' on Iraqi Weapons
Thu July 3, 2003 01:58 PM ET
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces have found documents that could lead shortly to "breakthrough" news about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, a Republican senator back from visiting Iraq said on Thursday, but Democrats on the trip seemed less convinced.
Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who just returned with several other senators from Iraq, declined to give details. But he and Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said they concluded from what they were told that Saddam did have the weapons.
Some Democrats who were on the trip were less persuaded by what they had learned and said the focus should be on rebuilding Iraq and getting other nations as well as NATO and the United Nations to help.
President Bush partly justified the invasion of Iraq by the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological arms, but so far none have been discovered.
"As the military continues, we are finding volumes of documentation, and it takes us time to go through it. That has led us to a couple of, what I would call breakthrough pieces of information that I hope in the near future will be very positive news," Roberts told a news conference.
"The focus is on people information and document exploitation. That will lead to the final puzzle to prove without a doubt he had the WMD," Roberts said.
Warner said David Kay, the head of the Iraq survey group looking for the weapons, shared classified information with senators that made him conclude the weapons did exist.
After the news conference, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on Warner's panel, said he could not join in Warner's assessment because the source of the information had not drawn conclusions about a recent weapons program.
"I would not say that the person who gave us that information has concluded anything in that regard yet. ... He urged us, as a matter of fact, to hold off on reaching any conclusions," Levin said.
Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, another Democrat, said no such weapons had been deployed with Iraqi troops, and he believed it was less likely they would be found. Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton thought the hunt for the weapons was "a huge red herring" distracting U.S. forces.
Saying U.S. troops were stretched thin, Levin said the United States should reach out to other countries, including those that declined to take part in the invasion, to finish the task of rebuilding Iraq.
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