No Hard Evidence on Iraq Illegal Weapons: US Magazine

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No Hard Evidence on Iraq Illegal Weapons: US Magazine

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The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the US Department of Defense said in a report last September that it had "no reliable" evidence that the Iraqis had chemical weapons, the U.S. News and World Report reported in its latest edition dated on June 9.

"There is no reliable information on whether Iraqi is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons," DIA, an intelligence service of the Pentagon, said in a classified assessment of Iraq's chemical weapons.

But, at about the same time, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told US congress that the Iraqi "regime has amassed large,clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas," the U.S. News said.

In an investigative report, the U.S. News told a story of how the United States worked on a speech US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented before the UN Security Council last February.

The story also disclosed that the first draft of Powell's speech was written by Vice President Dick Cheney's staff and the National Security Council.

The United States has justified its war against Iraq because it possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed threat to the US security.

However, almost two months after the end of major fighting in Iraq, no hard evidence has been found to support its charge that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US national security, the U.S.News said.

Over the past few days, the Bush administration has been facing mounting criticism for the failure to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and questions have been raised in the United States and Britain about whether they exaggerated the Iraqicase and why the US-led forces have so far not found solid evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in stock and ready to use.

On Thursday, President George W. Bush vowed during a visit to Qatar to "reveal the truth" about the weapons of mass destruction of the Saddam regime.

But, Rumsfeld said recently there was the possibility that Iraq destroyed the weapons before the war started March 20.

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