more spin, lies and terra-terra-terra
Iraq Sought Missile Parts, President Says
But Report Disputes Other White House Claims By Dana Priest and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 4, 2003; Page A01
The Bush administration said yesterday that Saddam Hussein sought to buy $10 million worth of missile components from North Korea, as President Bush and his aides defended their prewar claims about the threat Iraq posed.
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Bush, in nearly identical remarks delivered yesterday at the White House and at a speech in Milwaukee touting his economic policies, said the Kay report was vindication. "The report states that Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories, a live strain of deadly agent botulinum, sophisticated concealment efforts and advanced design work on prohibited longer-range missiles," Bush said.
Though he made no assertion that Hussein had actual weapons of mass destruction, Bush read a passage from the report indicating the Iraqi leader was determined to get them. "Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and was elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," he said, quoting Kay's findings. "That is what the report said."
But hours after Bush spoke, Kay provided a more mixed assessment of his finding. He said his team had turned up "no conclusive proof" that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger, a controversial allegation made in Bush's State of the Union address. Kay said that cooperating Iraqi scientists had told his team about an unsolicited offer by another African country to sell uranium to Iraq, but that "there is no evidence," he added, that Iraq accepted the offer.