Search for Illicit Weapons in Iraq Ends

By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - The White House confirmed today that the search in Iraq for the banned weapons it had cited as justifying the war that ousted Saddam Hussein has been quietly ended after nearly two years, with no evidence of their existence.
That means that the conclusions of an interim report last fall by the leader of the weapons hunt, Charles A. Duelfer, will stand. That report undercut prewar administration contentions that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons, was building a nuclear capability and might share weapons with Al Qaeda. A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, insisted today that the war was justified. He rejected the suggestion that the administration's credibility had been gravely wounded in ways that could weaken its future response to perceived threats.
The administration appeared to be dropping today even the suggestion that banned weapons might be deeply buried or well hidden in Iraq. Mr. McClellan said that President Bush had already concluded, after the October release of an interim report from Mr. Duelfer, "that the weapons that we all believed were there, based on the intelligence, were not there."
Some administration officials have suggested that some arms might have been moved out of Iraq, perhaps to Syria. But Mr. McClellan appeared to rule that out.
Democrats immediately called for Mr. Bush to explain how he and his advisers could have insisted so confidently that dangerous stocks of the banned weapons existed inside Iraq. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader of the House, said the president needed to explain why he was "so wrong, for so long."
While some military or intelligence specialists of the Iraq Survey Group remain at work, nearly all have turned away from searches of military bases, factories and laboratories for illicit arsenals or any sign of efforts to construct banned weapons, Mr. McClellan said.
Their search work had essentially been completed, he said. "A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now."
Mr. McClellan was confirming the gist of a report in The Washington Post, which quoted unidentified officials of the survey group as saying that it had largely wound up its search in late December, with few leads left to follow and amid persistent violence that made its work dangerous.
Two security guards died Nov. 10 in a suicide attack near Baghdad on a convoy carrying Mr. Duelfer. About 10 other people linked to the arms search have died in Iraq.
Mr. Duelfer is to deliver a final report next month, Mr. McClellan said, adding, "It's not going to fundamentally alter the findings of his earlier report."
Mr. Duelfer's interim report to Congress had said that Mr. Hussein had a demonstrated intent to acquire weapons.
But while the administration, in the run-up to the war, portrayed Mr. Hussein as an unstable tyrant amassing dangerous weapons that he was prepared to share with terrorists, Mr. Duelfer found little evidence of any imminent threat.
He reported that Mr. Hussein had built no banned weapons since 1991 and had little or capability of making them.
The Post reported that the Iraq Survey Group had interviewed everyone it could find with any link to weapons programs, and had visited every suspect site, many of them by now stripped bare by thieves or insurgents.
It said a few Iraqi scientists held in connection with weapons investigations were still in United States military custody, and it said that the survey group, after interviewing the scientists extensively and finding them cooperative, had urged the Pentagon to free them. They included Gen. Amir Saadi, who served as a liaison between the Hussein government and United Nations inspectors; Rihab Taha, a biologist nicknamed "Dr. Germ" for her work on biological warfare; and Huda Amash, a biologist known as "Mrs. Anthrax."
Representative Pelosi, in her statement today, said: "After a search that has consumed nearly two years and millions of dollars, and a war that has cost thousands of lives, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, nor has any evidence been uncovered that such weapons were moved to another country. Not only was there not an imminent threat to the United States, the threat described in such alarmist tones by President Bush and the most senior members of his Administration did not exist at all."
She added: "The primary justification for the invasion of Iraq was not supported by fact. Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war."