Global Policy Forum

By Dana Milbank

In asserting last week that "we found the weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, President Bush presented a far less expansive estimate of Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities than the one his administration had used for months in justifying the war. Since last August, Bush and his top lieutenants said it was an absolute certainty that Iraq remained in possession of significant quantities of banned weapons, particularly chemical and biological munitions. But Bush's remarks Thursday, in an interview on Polish television, made clear the administration had lowered its standards of proof. The president asserted that the discovery in Iraq of two trailers, with laboratory equipment but no pathogens aboard, was tantamount to a discovery of weapons.

"We found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush asserted in the Thursday interview, released Friday. "We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them." Bush's assertion, one of many recent administration statements shifting focus from Iraq's weapons to Iraq's weapons programs, indicated the president would consider its accusations justified by the discovery of equipment that potentially could be used to produce weapons. But the original charges against Iraq, presented to the United Nations and the American public, were explicitly about the weapons themselves.

On Aug. 26, 2002, Vice President Cheney told the VFW National Convention: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." On Sept. 12, 2002, Bush told the U.N. General Assembly: "United Nations inspections also revealed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons." In Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, he cited evidence that Hussein had enough materials to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents. "He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them," Bush said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in the same speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5 in which he discussed evidence of the mobile weapons labs Bush referred to last week, argued: "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, he's determined to make more." A month later, on March 7, Powell told the United Nations that Hussein has "clearly not" made a decision to "disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction." Finally, in delivering his March 17 ultimatum to Hussein to go into exile, Bush told the nation: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Bush's political opponents ridiculed the suggestion Bush made last week that the discovery of two trailers validated the earlier accusations. "Just because they found two mobile labs, to say that's evidence of weapons of mass destruction is absurd," said Kristian Denny, spokeswoman for Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), a presidential candidate. As the war started in Iraq, the administration continued to say with confidence that weapons would be found. On March 21, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said "there's no question" biological and chemical weapons would be found and asserted that "this was the reason that the president felt so strongly that we needed to take military action."

But when heavy combat in Iraq ended without the discovery of banned arms, administration officials began to emphasize the search for evidence of weapons programs rather than the weapons themselves. In Lima, Ohio, on April 24, Bush raised the possibility that the weapons might not exist any longer. "We know he had them," the president said. "And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth." In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine on May 9, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, appeared to minimize the importance of the weapons. "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," he said, according to a Pentagon transcript in which he stressed other justifications for the war.

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