Bush defiant over Iraq weapons report
US President George W Bush has defended the report from the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, claiming that it is proof that Saddam Hussein was “a danger to the world”.
The ISG, headed by Dr David Kay, admitted yesterday that it had failed to find stocks of banned weapons in Iraq, though the report stressed that evidence of facilities to develop and build weapons had been uncovered.
Mr Bush said that the report backed the case for war and proved that Iraq had been planning weapons of mass destruction programmes for two decades.
“Specifically Dr Kay’s team discovered what the report calls, and I quote, dozens of WMD-related program activities, and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002,” Mr Bush said.
The President added that the report proved that Saddam Hussein “actively deceived the international community” and was “in clear violation” of a key UN Security Council resolution.
Despite the lack of any so-called ‘smoking gun’ in the survey report, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also defended the decision to go to war, claiming that the report backed many of the reasons given by the US and Britain, most notably that Saddam Hussein “did unquestionably pose a very serious danger”.
However, he added, “The Prime Minister was not saying this week, month or even five years, but that it was a serious threat.”
UN weapons chief Dr Hans Blix said that it was ‘no surprise’ that the $300 million weapons hunt had not uncovered any banned weapons and added that Saddam had not proved an immediate threat, questioning the justification for America and the UK to defy the United Nations and invade Iraq.
