And so the web spinning begins. Note this appears today when the “itty
bitty” tax cut package was signed by the President with great fanfare. I wonder what the shelf life of this
will be? - KWC
Iraqi
Weapons Only One Reason for War-Wolfowitz
Wed May
28, 2003 05:20 PM ET
LOS ANGELES
(Reuters) - The U.S.
decision to stress the threat posed by Iraq's supposed weapons of mass
destruction above all others was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons to justify
the war, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in
remarks released on Wednesday.
Wolfowitz,
seen as one of the most hawkish figures in the Bush administration's policy on
Iraq, said President Saddam Hussein's alleged cache of chemical, biological
and possibly nuclear weapons was merely one of several reasons behind the
decision to go to war.
"For
bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction,
because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz
was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine's July issue.
No
chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq despite repeated
assertions by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair before the
March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam's vast stocks of banned
weapons warranted a war to eliminate them.
The
United Nations and America's allies were not convinced by the argument that it
was justification for a war, which was launched amid protests in many world
capitals. Washington's ties were major allies France and Germany are still
strained.
Wolfowitz
said another reason for the invasion had been "almost unnoticed but huge" --
namely that the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its
troops from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al Qaeda
grievance.
"Just
lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door" to a
more peaceful Middle East, Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
The
magazine said he made the remarks days before suicide bombings, attributed to
al Qaeda, against Western targets in Riyadh and Casablanca two weeks ago that
killed 75 people.
The
United States announced last month that it was ending military operations in
Saudi Arabia, where they have long generated Arab resentment because of their
proximity to Islam's holiest sites.
Wolfowitz's
remarks were released a day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, seeking
to explain why no weapons of mass destruction had been found, said Iraq may
have destroyed them before the U.S.-led invasion.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2840293