opinion

Saddam has still not answered the questions concerning thousands of missing munitions and tons of chemical and biological agents unaccounted for.

Tony Blair, February 3

The weapons of mass destruction that we're talking about today are new. They're little viruses, they're bacteria, they're chemicals, things you can't see, you can't touch, you can't smell. So intelligence is tough.

US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Rep)

I believe that if we had interrupted the movement of chemical weapons from the depots to the guns, that we would have found them in the depots. But we've looked in the depots, and they're not there.

US CENTCOM's Lt. Gen. John Abizaid

I have reason, every reason, to believe that the intelligence that we were operating off was correct and that we will, in fact, find weapons or evidence of weapons, programs, that are conclusive. But that's just a matter of time.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

I have seen the American people apparently deceived into supporting invasion of sovereign nation, in violation of UN charter and international law, on the basis of what now appear to be false assurances. The power of the Congress to declare war was usurped. The consent of the governed was obtained by manipulation rather than candid persuasion.

US Rep. John Conyers (Dem)

The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.

CIA director George Tenet

There is a pervasive concern --- when and how we will find them.

Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacios

It is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have 100 percent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are.

UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix

We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm. We asked other nations to join us in seeing to it that he would disarm, and he chose not to do so, so we disarmed him.

George W. Bush

We could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction program, specifically the chemical warfare portion.

DIA chief Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby

The story does seem to be shifting as time goes by --- who can tell exactly where the truth lies?

British MP Richard Ottaway (Con)

Even if signs of weapons of mass destruction are found, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain "immediacy of the threat" posed by the Iraqi regime.

James J. Zogby, president, Arab American Institute

US faces embarrassment in bid to find Saddam, Iraqi weapons

AFP headline

For me, the real issue is that we were told things as a justification for war which have plainly turned out to be wrong since the war was over.

British MP Robin Cook (Lab)

I think the problem was the way that the British and Australian governments took those reasonably measured assessments and exaggerated them for their own purposes. Words used, such as 'massive program, imminent threat,' I do not believe were words ever offered to governments by their intelligence agencies.

Andrew Wilkie, ex-analyst for Australia's Office of National Assessment

What bothered me wasn't just whether the United States would find the weapons Americans were warned about with such terrifying, repetitive certainty. The question was whether it would matter.

Columnist Ellen Goodman

I know skepticism is fine, but are we really so cynical that we think any prime minister is going to make prior decisions to send British forces into conflict and wouldn't rather avoid doing that?

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's press secretary

The Bush Administration didn't have proof, so they spent last fall making it up.

Editorial cartoonist - columnist Ted Rall

Intelligence doesn't necessarily mean something is true.

Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

If we are going to hit first, based on perceived dangers, the perceptions had better be accurate.

US Sen. Robert Byrd (Dem)

Also in this section:
What they're saying about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction
Girvan, CARICOM
Carson, The mass firing in Venezuela's oil industry
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Music file sharing
Jackson, Impunity and revolutionary justice
Reporters Without Borders, Fidel's crackdown on journalists
Teachers Association of the Republic of Panama, Message to the Panamanian People

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