Report May Undercut Bush's Iraq Rationale: "'The report will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction,' McClellan said.
Compare that to the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion:
'Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,' he said. 'There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.'
The president made similar charges, laying out in an Oct. 7, 2002, speech what he described as Iraq's threat:
_'It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.'
_'We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.'
_'Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles � far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations � in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. ' "
- posted by geoff @ #