Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By Massimo Calabresi and Timothy J. Burger for Time.
What Was Cheney’s Role?
Lawmakers who once saluted every Bush claim and command are beginning to express doubts. Two congressional panels are opening new rounds of investigations into the Administration’s prewar claims about WMD. One of their immediate inquiries, sources tell Time, involves Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in reviewing the intelligence before the bombing started. Cheney made repeated visits to the CIA in the prelude to the war, going over intelligence assessments with the analysts who produced them. Some Democrats say Cheney’s visits may have amounted to pressure on the normally cautious agency. Cheney’s defenders insist that his visits merely showed the importance of the issue and that an honest analyst wouldn’t feel pressure to twist intelligence. The House intelligence committee (and possibly its Senate counterpart, sources say) plans to question the CIA analysts who briefed Cheney, and that could lead to calling Cheney’s hard-line aides and perhaps the Veep himself to testify.
Is Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways?
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who staked his reputation on his February declaration at the U.N. about Saddam Hussein’s arms program, is also feeling the heat. Powell’s aides fanned out after that performance to say the Secretary had gone to the CIA and scrubbed every piece of intelligence to make certain it was solid. But since then, little of Powell’s presentation has been proved by evidence on the ground, and last week his aides were on the defensive over a memo from the State Department’s intelligence bureau that questioned whether two Iraqi trailers discovered in April were mobile bioweapons labs, as Powell has asserted. Questionable intelligence that made it into Powell’s February speech leaves him particularly vulnerable. Expect a push by Democrats, and perhaps some Republicans, to seek Powell’s testimony too.
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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030707-461781,00.html
Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By MASSIMO CALABRESI AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER
ERIC DRAPER/THE WHITE HOUSE/AP
QUESTION TIME: Bush huddles with Bremer and Franks in Doha, Qatar
Sunday, Jun. 29, 2003
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, “Are you in charge of finding WMD?” Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. “Who?” Bush asked.
It seems as if just about everyone has questions these days about the missing WMD. Did U.S. intelligence officials