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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (100447)	6/5/2003 7:35:37 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 281500

White House's Ari Fleischer On The Search For WMDs Wednesday, 4 June 2003, 1:59 pm Press Release: The White House scoop.co.nz ..... Question; Can I go -- just a quick follow-up on Helen's question here -- that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq goes on, the President's expressed confidence that they will find them. But it seems that whatever is found, is discovered in Iraq will differ to some degree or more from the description that the administration gave of a locked and loaded stockpile, munitions ready to go on the ground, on the battlefield. That was essentially the description that the administration gave before the war. Does the President, as chief executive, not have any concern about the quality of the intelligence he's getting? MR. FLEISCHER: I think rewind the tapes, and you'll see what the administration said before the war and you'll find a series of statements, all of which are valid. <font size=4>The concern as it was expressed repeatedly at the United Nations is that when the United Nations was thrown out of Iraq in the late 1990s, the United Nations reported that Iraq had not accounted for the botchulin, the toxin, the VX, the sarin gas. They said, not accounted for. They didn't say, locked and loaded. And we repeatedly cited the U.N.'s words and said, not accounted for.

To: Bilow who wrote (100447)	6/5/2003 7:37:08 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Question; The President said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. <font size=4>MR. FLEISCHER: As the war was pursued, we, of course, had concerns about whether or not it would be locked and loaded, and that's why we had our forces in the defensive postures they were and with the uniforms and the equipment that they carried with them. So it was a result of their possession of it in a variety of forms, a variety of facts that led the United Nations to conclude, and to vote 15-nothing, that they had not provided adequate explanation of what was unaccounted for that the U.N. knew they had.

To: Bilow who wrote (100447)	6/5/2003 7:38:28 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 281500

Question; But let me just -- once again, as chief executive, does he not have any concern about the quality of intelligence on this, as he described it, one of the most critical security matters before the country, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? <font size=4>MR. FLEISCHER: No. As I described to you, when the proof came in about what was known so far -- and I think there's going to be more to learn as different people are talked to, as different documents are looked at, as additional forces arrive for the sole purpose of looking for the weapons of mass destruction and obtaining information from Iraqi scientists, particularly mid-level officials -- what else would those biological trucks have been for? Those biological trucks themselves -- and as Secretary Powell pointed out at the United Nations, it doesn't take a lot to produce a lot of deaths, that biological weapons can be small in quantity and large in death. And that's why the American people had a lot to fear about Saddam Hussein developing these weapons, including biological weapons, which there's now proof-positive that he had these biological mobile trucks for the purpose of producing biological weapons.