US President George W. Bush on Wednesday defended his and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to go to war against Iraq by casting both of them as the spiritual heirs of Winston Churchill.
At the same time, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday it was possible, but not likely, that there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when US-led forces invaded.
Rumsfeld held out the possibility that a US-led team searching for chemical and biological weapons might eventually find them despite last month's conclusion by the group's departing leader, David Kay, that no stockpiles of such arms existed in Iraq when it was invaded last March.
Testifying to Senate and House of Representatives committees, Rumsfeld defended the war which Washington sought to justify at the time by saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Publicly addressing Kay's comments for the first time, Rumsfeld acknowledged Iraq may not have possessed weapons at the start of the war.
"I suppose that's possible, but not likely," Rumsfeld testified.
He mentioned several competing theories to explain why such arms had not yet been found in Iraq:
-- They may not have existed at the start of the war;
-- Iraq had such weapons but they were "transferred in whole or in part to one or more other countries";
-- Such weapons existed but were "dispersed and hidden throughout Iraq";
-- The weapons were "destroyed at some moment prior" to the war;
-- Iraq possessed small quantities of biological or chemical agents, and had "a surge capability for a rapid build-up -- and that we may eventually find it in the months ahead";
-- Possession of these weapons was "a charade by the Iraqis," either with Saddam fooling everyone into thinking he had them, or "his own people" tricking him into believing he had capabilities that did not exist.
Rumsfeld indicated he thought weapons still may be hidden, but did not state which, if any, of the other theories he believed.
"It took us 10 months to find Saddam Hussein. The reality is that the hole he was found hiding in was large enough to hold enough biological weapons to kill thousands of human beings," Rumsfeld said.
"But unlike Saddam Hussein, such objects, once buried, can stay buried. In a country the size of California, the chances of inspectors finding something buried in the ground without their being led to it by people knowledgeable about where it was is minimal," Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld faced sharp questioning by Democrats.
Representative Loretta Sanchez of California decried "a pattern, from my standpoint, of you all leading us down a path on information that's either made up or exaggerated or pulled from God knows where, or connect the dots with really no correlation going on."
Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts confronted Rumsfeld with his own statement before the war that "we know where they are," referring to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Rumsfeld said he meant to say suspected weapons sites.
"I'm sure from time to time I say something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't," Rumsfeld said.
Bush called the Iraq war pivotal to his vision of a democratic transformation in the Middle East and compared it with the challenges Churchill faced in World War II and the early stages of the Cold War.
"In some ways, our current struggles or challenges are similar to those Churchill knew," Bush said in a speech at a Library of Congress exhibit honoring Britain's famous war-time prime minister.
Bush frequently refers to Churchill as a hero and on Wednesday he called him "a rallying voice of the Second World War, and a prophet of the Cold War."
"I keep a stern looking bust of Sir Winston in the Oval Office," Bush said. "He watches my every move."
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