Balkinization  

Monday, September 15, 2003

JB

Report On WMD's Will Surface After All

The London Times reported Sunday (an abbreviated account can be found here) that both the U.S. and Great Britain had blocked release of the Iraq Survey Group report on WMD's because the report failed to find any evidence of WMD's. CBS News now reports that the report will be published after all, but that it will be inconclusive.

The Times reports the decision by Britain and America to delay the report's release comes after efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, a team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to search Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons ended in failure.

In July, David Kay, the survey group's leader, suggested that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that Saddam Hussein had had a program to produce weapons of mass destruction. He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.

But last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had met with Kay, and that the onetime weapons inspector had not informed him of any finds.



UPDATE: CBS originally reported, consistent with the Times article, that the WMD report would be blocked indefinitely, but later was informed that the report would in fact be issued. It seems clear, at any rate, that once the original story alleging that the report would be blocked ran in the London Times, the report would eventually have to be released to the public whatever the Bush and Blair Adminstrations' qualms about it might have been.


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