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ONE OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS
'Weapons
of mass destruction'
The pretext for U.S. aggression against Iraq was the tale of imminent threat by Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction." Now, eight months and thousands of destroyed lives on, the world has yet to see a single one of those illusive weapons. Who supplied this dubious information? The following wire service story reveals one of the usual suspects, who even now is scurrying to cover his tracks.
Analyst
defends prewar findings on weapons WASHINGTON—A top U.S. intelligence analyst who supervised the production of the U.S. government's key prewar findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs says he believes those conclusions were sound, even though many have not been validated. Stuart A. Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence analysts which advises CIA Director George J. Tenet, argued in an article Friday that with all the evidence the U.S. government possessed, "no reasonable person could have . . . reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached." Distributed in October 2002, the findings judged that Iraq had prohibited biological and chemical weapons and missiles and was producing more. It also concluded that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program but did not have a finished weapon, while noting the State Department's intelligence branch dissented from that view.
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