US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted Wednesday there was no definitive proof that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction as he launched a strong defence of US intelligence on Iraq.
Rumsfeld said testimony by chief US weapons expert David Kay had not proven that Iraq had the banned weapons that the US administration had claimed before the war.
"But it also has not proven the opposite," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Responding to whether US intelligence analysts were pressured to make their findings fit the administration's case for war against Iraq, Rumsfeld said "the answer is absolutely not."
Rumsfeld said it was too early to come to a final conclusion about what happened to Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Of Kay's view that they did not exist at the start of the war, Rumsfeld said, "I suppose that's possible but not likely."
Kay said last week that the intelligence had been wrong, after resigning as head of the Iraq Survey Group looking for weapons.
Rumsfeld highlighted theories that the weapons were transferred to other countries, that they were dispersed and hidden throughout Iraq, that they were destroyed before the US invasion, or that they had small stockpiles and a surge capability for a rapid build-up.
Rumsfeld said the size of the country would make it easy for things to be hidden, recalling that it took 10 months to find ousted president Saddam Hussein.
"The reality is the hole he was hiding in was large enough to hide enough biological weapons to kill thousands of human beings," he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.