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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (414001)	6/11/2003 3:27:32 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

June 9, 2003, 10:50AM URL:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/1942642 Bush insists Iraq had weapons program Associated Press WASHINGTON -- President Bush insisted today that Baghdad had a program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, seeking to rebut critics who charge his administration doctored evidence to justify an invasion of Iraq. "Iraq had a weapons program," Bush said. "Intelligence throughout the decade shows they had a weapons program," Bush told reporters during a meeting of his Cabinet. "I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons program," Bush said. Weeks of searches in Iraq by military experts have not validated the administration's portrayal of Iraq's cache of weapons. Alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have not turned up, nor has significant evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Bush was asked whether American credibility was on the line in the hunt for illicit weapons. In answering, he pointed to the outcome of the war, not the weapons search. "The credibility of this country is based upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful, and the world is now more peaceful after our decision," he said. Bush also insisted that al-Qaida had a presence in Baghdad. "History will show, history and time will prove that the United States made the absolute right decision in freeing the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein," Bush said. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday he wants a full congressional investigation. "I think that the nation's credibility is on the line, as well as (Bush's)," he said. Asked about a joint congressional inquiry, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "It's appropriate for Congress to look at it." But, he added, lawmakers have already seen much of the intelligence that led the administration to invade Iraq. "Congress has always been part of this," Fleischer said. "Congress was provided information both in a declassified and classified manner in the months and indeed the years leading up to the war. ... There is nothing new here for members of Congress." Bush administration officials say they are confident proof will emerge that Saddam Hussein possessed the chemical and biological weapons cited as a key reason to invade Iraq. "We have thousands and thousands and thousands of documents that we've not yet gone through," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. More sites need to be investigated and many more Iraqis must be interviewed about Saddam's weapons capabilities, she added. "We will put together this whole picture, but the preponderance of evidence is that this was a regime that had the capability, that had unaccounted-for stockpiles and unaccounted-for weapons," Rice told CBS' "Face the Nation." The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, acknowledged last week that he had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons last fall but did believe Iraq had a program to produce them. Secretary of State Colin Powell said parts of the DIA report were taken out of context in news reports. "The sentence that has gotten all of the attention, in this two-page, unclassified summary, talked about not having the evidence of current facilities and current stockpiling," he told "Fox News Sunday." "The very next sentence says that it had information that weapons had been dispersed to units. Chemical weapons had been dispersed to units." Because Iraq concealed its banned weapons so well, it will take time to find them, Powell said. But he said, "I'm sure more evidence and more proof will come forward as we go down this road."