Bush, still a little sensitive that the reason for the war in Iraq turned out to be wrong, addressed the weapons of mass destruction argument briefly in last night’s speech.
“After the swift fall of Baghdad, we found mass graves filled by a dictator — we found some capacity to restart programs to produce weapons of mass destruction — but we did not find those weapons.”
This “capacity to restart weapons programs” argument seems to be a new White House favorite. During his interview with Jim Lehrer on Friday, Bush made a similar comment and credited weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.
“[O]ne thing Charles Duelfer did find, he’s the guy who went in to look for weapons, and the weapons inspector inspector found out that Saddam Hussein still had the intent of weapons, had the capacity and the intent, and had used the Oil For Food program to try to slip out from underneath the sanctions. Guilford was convinced that when the world looked the other way, Saddam would have weapons. And that’s dangerous.”
Official WH talking points and Scott McClellan have made similar arguments over the last month. The Bush gang seems to have a tragically short memory, so it’s worth taking a moment to remember exactly what Charles Duelfer actually said.
The government’s most definitive account of Iraq’s arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West.
There’s no reason in the world for the president to rely on the Duelfer report. To say we found “some capacity to restart programs to produce weapons of mass destruction,” is stretching the words to the point in which they have no meaning.