BUSH just doesn't get it!!!! MORE MONEY FOR IMAGINARY WEAPONS SEARCH??????????
Officials Say Bush Seeks $600 Million to Hunt Iraq Arms
October 2, 2003
By JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - The Bush administration is seeking
more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt
for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government
had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday.
The money, part of the White House's request for $87
billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan,
comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been
spent on the weapons search, the officials said.
The budget figures for the weapons search are included in
the classified part of the administration's supplemental
appropriations request, and have not been made public. The
size of the request suggests the White House is determined
to keep searching for unconventional weapons or evidence
that they were being developed under Mr. Hussein. The
search so far has turned up no solid evidence that Iraq had
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when the American
invasion began in March, according to administration
officials.
Counting the money already spent, the total price tag for
the search will approach $1 billion.
The money is intended specifically to pay for the
activities of the Iraq Survey Group, made up of teams of
troops and experts who are managed by the Pentagon but
whose activities are coordinated by David Kay, a former
United Nations weapons inspector who reports to the
director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet.
Officials said the money for the Iraq Survey Group comes
under the classified intelligence part of the Pentagon's
budget request. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on
the classified category.
The request for increased funding comes just as Mr. Kay is
scheduled to brief Congress in closed sessions on Thursday
on an interim report of the Iraq Survey Group's findings so
far.
He is to testify before the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence. The C.I.A. is expected to publicly release
a declassified statement based on Mr. Kay's testimony after
the briefings, officials said.
C.I.A. and other officials said last week that Mr. Kay's
report would be inconclusive, suggesting that he will not
say that he has found strong evidence of the existence of
illegal weapons in Iraq.
Since the fall of the Hussein government, the failure to
find evidence of illegal weapons has been a major political
embarrassment for the Bush administration.
After the initial military-led effort to find such weapons
came under fire, President Bush turned to the C.I.A. to
oversee an expanded search. In June, Mr. Tenet asked Mr.
Kay to act as his personal adviser on the issue and to
provide strategic advice to the weapons hunters.
Officials familiar with the request said that if the
administration gets all the money it is seeking, it will
provide funding for a staff of 1,400 for the Iraq Survey
Group. It currently has more than 1,200 members.
The cash infusion is being sought even though the group has
gotten off to what experts and military officials said had
been a rocky start.
Though a larger group than the 75th Exploitation Task
Force, the military weapons hunting group that preceded it,
the Iraq Survey group includes many members drawn from
reserve units.
Some weapons hunting units have sat in Baghdad for days,
sometimes weeks, waiting for missions, officials say.
"Even when hot tips have come in, it often takes days to
mobilize a unit to visit a suspect site or talk to a
suspect scientist," said a former member of one unit, who
spoke on condition that he not be identified.
The Iraq Survey Group has also been slow to mobilize former
international arms inspectors who had volunteered to
accompany the Exploitation Task Force and the Iraq Survey
Group, those inspectors say.
"Most of us have just given up waiting and gone on with our
lives," said one former weapons inspector, who was told he
would be sent to Baghdad.
The group has also concentrated on installing an
unnecessarily elaborate infrastructure to support its
operations, said several military officials who complained
there was a disparity between the resources allotted to the
two programs.
While the Exploitation Task Force worked out of an
abandoned palace and the servants' housing quarters near
Baghdad airport and remained short of vehicles, air
support, computers and even electricity during the initial
months of the weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group spent its
first weeks installing air-conditioned trailers, a new
dining facility, state-of-the-art software and even a
sprinkler system for a new lawn, according to officials and
experts who worked with the group this summer.
"They kept unloading crates and crates of new Dell
laptops," said one Pentagon official who complained that
the exploitation force lacked resources.
nytimes.com
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