Recent admissions by top U.S. officials that Iraq might not have had weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, demand an explanation. Questions must be answered and the damage done to both U.N. and U.S. credibility must be repaired.
In October 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush said Iraq had "a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions." Mr. Bush pushed for an invasion of Iraq because that country's WMD stockpile and the Baghdad government's history of aggressive behavior made it a threat to its neighbors.
Iraq's possession of WMD was a certainty for many. Baghdad's denials, and the failure by U.N. inspectors to find those weapons, did not shake their faith. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a presentation to the United Nations last year that detailed some of the grounds for U.S. suspicions. He declared that Iraq had, by "conservative estimate," 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons on hand. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government backed those claims, adding that the weapons could be deployed at short notice.