Posted on: Thursday, October 7, 2004

EDITORIAL
Justification for war further undermined

With publication of the latest report from the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, it's difficult to see what more can be done to get President Bush and his administration to recognize the utter bankruptcy of their claim that the invasion of Iraq was necessary because of that country's "clear and imminent threat" to Americans.

Yesterday's report concluded that Iraq had not possessed military-scale stockpiles of illicit weapons for a dozen years and was not actively seeking to produce them.

It did say, however, that Saddam had the capacity to develop such weapons and an interest in doing so. That's a terrifying thought, but it's true of many modern nations.

Yet President Bush now seems to be saying an interest in WMDs and the capability to produce them was worrisome enough to go to war.

He had this to say yesterday while campaigning in Pennsylvania: "After Sept. 11, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light. Our nation awakened to an even greater danger: the prospect that terrorists who killed thousands with hijacked airplanes would kill many more with weapons of mass murder.

"We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons, and one regime stood out. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."

Yesterday's inspector's report makes it clear that Bush and his administration were looking in the wrong place.

While Bush was obsessing about phantom weapons programs in Iraq, his ally Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan was pretending not to see the regional swap meet through which A.Q. Khan was peddling nuclear weapons materials to regimes such as North Korea, Iran, Libya — even Burma.

Now it appears North Korea, and soon Iran, will have become nuclear powers on this president's watch.

Bush insists that Saddam would have built nuclear weapons given the opportunity. Of course he would. But it's now clear that without resort to war, he was effectively denied that opportunity by international sanctions.

For the complete report go to: www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html.