Google News round up for the day:

1. "David Kay, the arms inspector who changed his mind about the existence of unconventional weapons in Iraq, is perplexed by all the fuss he has caused. The weapons are simply not there, he says; it is empirical."

2. "With an election due in November, the US President has decided to defuse what threatens to be a red-hot political issue for Democrats who are accusing him of misleading Americans on the need for the war.  Mr Bush is expected to announce this week a bipartisan inquiry to examine the intelligence that was presented as the main reason for the invasion of Iraq."

3. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

4. "We also want to look at our war against proliferation and weapons of mass destruction in a broader context," Bush said. "So I'm putting together a independent bipartisan commission to analyze where we stand, what we can do better as we fight this war against terror."

5. "Saddam Hussein engages in acts of terrorism, he hates the United States and we know he has weapons of mass destruction," says [Richard] Perle [chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board]. "To ignore all that is too big a risk"

6. Rumsfeld: "My view of the past - with respect to Saddam Hussein - is that he spent all of his time trying to deceive inspectors and trying to prevent them from having knowledge of exactly what he has. And we know he has weapons of mass destruction, and thus far he denies it."

7. "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003

8. "Frankly, [the sanctions] have worked. [Saddam has] not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." - Colin Powell, Feb. 24, 2001

9. "...Fresh evidence emerged last night that Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was so disturbed about questionable American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that he assembled a secret team to review the information he was given before he made a crucial speech to the UN security council on February 5. At one point, he became so angry at the lack of adequate sourcing to intelligence claims that he declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."..."

10. "We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd." Tony Blair, March 18, 2003

 

11. "I'm sort of mystified," Kay said. "Quite frankly, the easier political strategy would be to say, 'Look, everybody agrees that we're better off with Saddam Hussein gone, but on the other hand, it's clear that not all our advance information was good."'

12. General Peter J. Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, "...said the attacks on America in September 2001 and subsequent events had given the US army a rare opportunity to change. "There is a huge silver lining in this cloud," he said. "War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph." He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train. "There's got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for," he said."..."

This entry was posted on Monday, February 02, 2004.
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