Meet the Press

MR. RUSSERT: Weapons of mass destruction: The president and people throughout the administration said that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat because he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Here’s what the president said.

“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.” And the vice president: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

Was there truly an imminent threat and where are the weapons of mass destruction?

DR. RICE: There are two separable issues here. What did we have in terms of intelligence estimates before going in and what have we found? In terms of intelligence estimates going in, the October 2002 intelligence estimate, national intelligence estimate, which is the definitive estimate by the intelligence community, said in its key judgments, Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, for instance, on chemical weapons, 100 to 500 metric tons of chemical agent in the country; a biological weapons program that was being rapidly reconstituted; evidence of efforts to reconstitute a nuclear program. And it was not just American intelligence. There was supporting intelligence from all over the world. There was, of course, the United Nations weapons inspectors talking about unaccounted for stockpiles of VX and anthrax and sarin gas. And this didn’t start in September of 2002 with the president’s speech to the United Nations. This goes back to 1991 where we know that he had weapons of mass destruction, 1994 to 1995 where more came out about his biological weapons program after he finally revealed that when a high-level defector left the country and spooked him into revealing. In 1996, a testimony by then CIA director John Deutch saying, “He has weapons of mass destruction.” In 1998, after weapons inspectors left the country, President Clinton addressing the country from the Oval Office and saying, “He has weapons that I am certain he will use. That’s why we’re using military force against Saddam Hussein.” There’s a bit of revisionist history going on here. The truth of the matter is that repeated directors of Central Intelligence, repeated reports by intelligence agencies around the world, repeated reports by U.N. inspectors asking hard questions of Saddam Hussein, and tremendous efforts by this regime to conceal and hide what it was doing clearly give a picture of a regime that had weapons of mass destruction and was determined to conceal them.