Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=OCTOBER 7, 2004

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=BUSH / WMD (L-O)

NUMBER=2-319499

BYLINE=SCOTT STEARNS

DATELINE=WHITE HOUSE

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

HEAD: White House Reacts to Iraq Weapons Report

INTRO: The White House says President Bush was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power despite a new CIA report that concludes the then-Iraqi leader had not produced or possessed weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade. The immediacy of the threat from those weapons was the president's biggest justification for invading Iraq. From the White House, correspondent Scott Stearns has the story.

TEXT: White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Saddam Hussein was a threat because he retained the intent and capability to produce weapons of mass destruction and was trying to undermine United Nations sanctions to further that goal.

Mr. McClellan says it was the right decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein because after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, he says the Iraqi regime posed a threat Americans could not afford to ignore.

The justification for last year's U.S.-led invasion has become a political issue in campaigning for November's presidential election.

Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, says President Bush misled the nation into war on faulty intelligence and failed to build a broad enough international coalition to fairly share the financial and human costs of invading and occupying Iraq.

In March of 2003, President Bush prepared Americans for the coming invasion with a nation-wide address in which he said events in Iraq had reached the final days of decision.

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"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."

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Mr. Bush said the danger of Saddam Hussein helping terrorists acquire those weapons would be removed.

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"The danger is clear. Using chemical, biological, or one-day nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of innocent people in our country or any other."

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The one-thousand-page report released this week by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group says there is no indication that Saddam planned to pass weapons material to al-Qaida terrorists.

It concludes that Iraq's illicit-weapons programs were essentially destroyed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and were never rebuilt. While it says Saddam intended to reconstitute some weapons programs if U.N. sanctions were eased, there were no systems in place to do so.

White House spokesman McClellan says the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that he says everyone thought were there were not there, so that's why President Bush created an independent commission to investigate U.S. intelligence gathering in the run-up to the war.

Mr. McClellan says the president has already addressed many of the issues in the CIA report and does not intend to discuss its findings on the campaign trail. (SIGNED)

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