The leading US Marine general in Iraq conceded on Friday that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were "wrong."
The admission came at a time when the quality of the intelligence underlying the US and British allegations against Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the conflict is increasingly questioned.
PHOTO: AP
Lieutenant General James Conway, the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said he had been convinced that before and during the war, shells with chemical warheads had been distributed to Republican Guard units around Baghdad.
"It was a surprise to me then -- it remains a surprise to me now -- that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites," he told reporters in a video-conference at the Pentagon yesterday.
"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," he added. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
"We were simply wrong," he said. "Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."
The Pentagon has retreated from its initial predictions that a "smoking-gun" justification for the war would be found. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz suggested in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine that the elimination of banned weapons was chosen as the main reason for going to war for "bureaucratic" reasons, and that the invasion's strategic impact on the region -- allowing US troops to be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia -- was a "huge" factor.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld this week said it was possible that Saddam's regime had destroyed banned weapons before the US-led invasion. Wolfowitz said there were several motives for the invasion, including weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's alleged links with al-Qaeda and the oppression of the Iraqi people.
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on -- which was weapons of mass destruction -- as the core reason," he said.
Wolfowitz said that the "criminal treatment" of the "Iraqi people is a reason to help the Iraqis, but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did."
He admitted that the al-Qaeda link had been the subject of "the most disagreement within the bureaucracy."
He also pointed to another important consequence of the war -- the strategic reordering of the Middle East.
"There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed -- but it's huge -- is that by complete mutual agreement between the US and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia," he said. "I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."
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