And in countries that opposed the war, the comments are being used as fodder to justify those positions.
Germany's Frankfurter Allge-meine Zeitung interpreted Rumsfeld's comments as a sign the United States was losing the credibility battle.
"The charge of deception is inescapable," the paper said.
And the leading French daily Le Monde called the weapons of mass destruction claim "the greatest lie told by statesmen in recent years."
US-led teams, made up of Special Forces, unconventional weapons experts, military intelligence and scientists began visiting suspected sites in the opening days of the war. Since the fighting broke out March 20, most US and British intelligence leads have been exhausted. Teams are now chasing tips from local Iraqis, none of which have panned out so far.
As of Monday, the weapons hunters will begin working for a new Pentagon-led group of some 1,400 people, including US weapons experts who once served as UN weapons inspectors.
The Iraq Survey Group will be led by Keith Dayton, a two-star general. Troops involved in the search hope the ISG will be able to provide the effort with better intelligence and analysis.
Dayton, a top official in the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he remains convinced his team will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Those assessments were doubted by many members of the UN Security Council, which last fall agreed to send international inspectors back to Iraq to verify the country no longer had the weapons it was prevented from producing after the 1991 Gulf War.
The quality of that intelligence is now being reviewed by the CIA, whose director, George Tenet, released a rare statement Friday defending his agency.
"Our role is to call it like we see it -- to tell policymakers what we know, what we don't know, what we think and what we base it on," Tenet said. "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong."
British intelligence is reportedly taking stock of its own assessments as well.
On Thursday, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported that agents were unhappy with a dossier Blair's office released on Iraqi weapons last year -- particularly its claim that Saddam was able to launch such weapons on 45 minutes' notice.
The network quoted an unidentified intelligence source who said intelligence agencies added that charge at the behest of the prime minister's office, but now believe it was wrong.
RSS