Iraq Sought Missile Parts, President Says [View All]

But Report Disputes Other White House Claims

By Dana Priest and Dana Milbank
Saturday, October 4, 2003; Page A01

The Bush administration said yesterday that Saddam Hussein sought to buy $10 million worth of missile components from North Korea, as President Bush and his aides defended their prewar claims about the threat Iraq posed.

Bush and his aides provided the additional information yesterday following chief U.S. inspector David Kay's interim report Thursday on the weapons hunt, which has so far not turned up any of the chemical, biological or nuclear weapons the administration had said Hussein had. Even in furnishing additional information about the findings, Kay reported yesterday that he found no evidence for another one of Bush's key claims -- that Iraq sought uranium in Niger. In fact, another African country offered uranium to Iraq, but Hussein declined, Kay reported.

Bush, in nearly identical remarks delivered yesterday at the White House and at a speech in Milwaukee touting his economic policies, said the Kay report was vindication. "The report states that Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories, a live strain of deadly agent botulinum, sophisticated concealment efforts and advanced design work on prohibited longer-range missiles," Bush said.

(snip)

Bush aides reported being surprised that the news coverage of Kay's interim report focused on the absence so far of weapons of mass destruction. Yesterday, Kay said he wanted to emphasize "the remarkable amount that's been found" as compared to much of the news reporting on his findings. On Thursday, after briefing House and Senate intelligence committee members, Kay had said that the team had discovered no chemical or biological weapons and that the nuclear program was only rudimentary. "It had a long way to go," he said.

(snip)

In May, after inspectors found two trailers that could have been used to produce biological weapons, Bush said: "We found the weapons of mass destruction."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40013-2003Oct3.html