Saturday, Jun 14, 2003
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By Sridhar Krishnaswami
Gen. Powell made those comments in an interview to the Associated Press at the State Department saying, among other things, that Iraqi scientists could hold the key and Washington could help them if they came forward with information on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. "This isn't a figment of somebody's imagination. This isn't something that was overblown or made up in the basement of the CIA late one night," Gen. Powell argued. "These were real weapons, real programmes that Saddam Hussein refused to come forward and explain... Do you want to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt? Well, we didn't. And now, we don't have to worry about it anymore," the top administration official said in the interview. More than two months into the `liberation' of Iraq, the United States and the "Coalition of the Willing" have come up with virtually nothing on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The American search teams have spotted two mobile labs that had supposedly been used for experimentation purposes. But so far, none of the weapons and systems have been found. Gen. Powell has maintained that the administration would be able to "demonstrate convincingly" that the two mobile labs were places where biological weapons could be made. Lawmakers have been turning up the heat on the Republicans even while being careful in not questioning the sincerity of the Bush administration. On the one hand, the argument is being made that perhaps down the line, the search teams will find or figure out those proscribed weapons; but if in the very end nothing did show up, then this could the "biggest hype" that ever was. "We believe there were weapons in Iraq. We have solid judgment of the intelligence community," Gen. Powell said making the point that intelligence agencies of other Governments, as late as 1998, were convinced that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. The determination of senior administration officials, in many ways, indicate the position in which the President, George W. Bush, is finding himself in. The President still has high approval ratings with a solid majority of Americans not questioning his sincerity. But politically, and in the context of the Presidential elections of 2004, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is a major problem. Senior officials are also stressing that no one was involved in the game of `pressuring' intelligence analysts to look at information in a particular fashion. This after a recent media report that the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, may have sought to pressure analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency to make assessments that was more in tune with the administration's point of view. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been vowing to get to the bottom of the proscribed weapons in Iraq even though the Grand Old Party has already started accusing the Democrats of trying to make a little politics out of the issue. Panels of the House of Representatives and the Senate will hold hearings on the matter, but for the most part, it will be behind closed doors.
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