UPDATE: STILL NO WMDs
Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq
Task Force Unable To Find Any Weapons

Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff -- biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said in interviews.

Army Col. Richard McPhee, who will close down the task force next month, said he took seriously U.S. intelligence warnings on the eve of war that Hussein had given "release authority" to subordinates in command of chemical weapons. "We didn't have all these people in [protective] suits" for nothing, he said. But if Iraq thought of using such weapons, "there had to have been something to use. And we haven't found it. . . . Books will be written on that in the intelligence community for a long time."

So, according to this article, either there were no weapons of mass destruction from the beginning, OR invading Iraq caused them to fall into the hands of unknown "looters"--that is, if the weapons existed, the US may very well have caused the situation it wanted to avoid, terrorists posessing WMDs. I don't really think that Saddam had WMDs to begin with, myself. That's not really my point here, though: the Pentagon is cutting way back on it's efforts to find evidence of Iraqi nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. That's basically it. It's really starting to look like the Bush administration has absolutely no interest in validating its war. No WMDs. No al-Qaeda link. Only "liberation" and victory. The whole thing was based on lies and most of the American public militantly supported it.

But there can really be no doubt now. The war against Iraq was about oil and empire. The President and his lieutenants should be tried for war crimes.

Click here.

Thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe.

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