US forces will find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: Rice

WASHINGTON (AFP) Jun 08, 2003
Washington remains convinced that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program will be found, US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday, despite growing doubts that such weapons exist.

"I believe we will find them," Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"We will put together this whole picture and when the story is told, we will know how Saddam Hussein managed to deceive the world for the length of time he did."

"I don't see how anyone can say that there wasn't a true danger here, when the (UN) weapons inspectors themselves were saying that there were thousands of tons of missing VX, missing anthrax, missing sarin gas," she said.

"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all these agents were, where they were stored," Rice added.

President George W. Bush's administration has been on the defensive as US-led forces in Iraq have yet to find the banned weapons that Washington accused him of hiding.

Bush made Iraq's alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons central to his case for launching the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

But now US lawmakers have launched investigations into whether the US administration distorted intelligence information in order to justify military action, which faced strong opposition from traditional allies like Germany and France.

Critics, including some columnists in prominent newspapers, have alleged that Bush and top aides like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exaggerated Saddam's arsenal in order to convince the US public to support the war.

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