Rumsfeld won't give up on WMD

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not ready to conclude that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction before US troops invaded to depose him last year.

The arch-hawk told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that US weapons inspectors need more time to reach final conclusions about whether chemical and biological weapons existed in Iraq before the war, as the Bush administration had asserted before sending American troops into battle.

In a prepared statement, Rumsfeld said he was confident that pre-war intelligence, while possibly flawed in some respects, was not manipulated by the administration to justify its war aims.

In his first public comments on the subject since chief US weapons inspector David Kay said he believed that US intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programmes was fundamentally flawed, Rumsfeld praised the efforts of the intelligence agencies.

He stressed the difficulty of penetrating secretive societies like Iraq.

Rumsfeld offered several examples of what he called ”alternative views” about why no weapons have been discovered in Iraq, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed.

“I suppose that’s possible, but not likely,” he said.

Other possibilities cited by Rumsfeld:

:: Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before US troops arrived in March.

:: Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.

:: Weapons existed but were destroyed by the Iraqis before the war started.

Or, Rumsfeld postulated, “small quantities” of chemical or biological agents may have existed, along with a “surge capability” that would allow Iraq to rapidly build an arsenal of banned weapons.

Commenting on that possibility, Rumsfeld said, “We may eventually find it in the months ahead.”

Lastly, he offered the possibility that the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction “may have been a charade” orchestrated by the Iraqi government.

It is even possible, he said, that Saddam was “tricked” by his own people into believing he had banned weapons that did not exist.