July 2, 2004

More WMD Found in Iraq

The transcript of a radio interview with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals that more of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq - and the administration is still investigating evidence that some of Saddam's WMD were hidden in Syria.

ROGER HEDGECOCK, Newsradio 600 KOGO: A couple of other issues I want to get to were weapons of mass destruction and the Supreme Court rulings. And so quickly, on the weapons of mass destruction, obviously, the opposition to the administration says we should never have invaded. The Bush administration lied about the WMD, never found any, never were any, etcetera, etcetera. Now, I'm reading recent reports in fairly easily accessible published accounts that Syria is holding the weapons of mass destruction or some of them, that others were destroyed, that others might still be hidden in Iraq, etcetera. What is the status on WMD? And if Syria is holding any of them and you guys know about it, how come we haven't heard about it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, let me respond this way. The decision to go to war was a concern on the part of, first, the president, then the Congress of the United States and ultimately the United Nations that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, had used them on his neighbors in Iran and had used them on his own people in Iraq – chemical weapons – that he was known to have various other WMD programs and that he was required by the United Nations over a period of some 17 resolutions to file a declaration declaring what he had. And everyone agreed he had filed a fraudulent declaration as to what weapons of mass destruction he had. The debate as to whether to go to war was not whether or not he'd filed a fraudulent declaration. Everyone agreed to that. The only question was should you give him another chance, should you wait and go 18 resolutions or 19 resolutions, another five years or however many.

Now what's actually happened? Right now you have the Iraqi Survey Group, which is a multinational group that's out there reviewing documentation and looking at suspect WMD sites. I was with the Polish minister of defense this weekend in Istanbul, Turkey at the NATO Summit. And in the course of that, he pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across – I've forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 – warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas.

Now these are weapons that we always knew Saddam Hussein had that he had not declared and they have tested them and I have not seen them and I have not tested them, but they believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons - sarin and mustard gas - quite lethal and that is a discovery that just occurred within the last period of days. If you think about - most people remember the image of where Saddam Hussein was captured in that hole - that pit that he was living in. That pit, that hole in the ground was probably big enough to hold chemical and biological weapons sufficient to kill tens of thousands of people. And therefore, it is not hard to hide things in a country the size of California. It's quite easy to hide things. In fact, we finally found a bunch of jet aircraft that they've buried underground.

In answer to your question on Syria, there have been a lot of intelligence speculation and rumors and chatter about the fact that Saddam Hussein may have placed some of his weapons of mass destruction in Syria prior to the start of the war. Until that can be validated and proved, you'll find people in the administration not talking about it.