"After searching for nearly six months, U.S. forces and CIA experts have found no chemical or biological weapons in Iraq and have determined that Iraq's nuclear program was in only 'the very most rudimentary' state, the Bush administration's chief investigator formally told Congress yesterday.
"Before the war, the administration said Iraq had a well-developed nuclear program that presented a threat to the United States," the Washington Post notes.
Now, "It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based on what we discovered," former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who heads the government's search, said yesterday after briefing House and Senate intelligence committees in a closed session on his interim report. He said he will need six to nine months to conclude his work, and congressional sources said the administration is requesting an additional $600 million toward the effort to find weapons of mass destruction.
Kay, who heads the CIA's 1,400-person Iraq Survey Group, said the team had "discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment" that Iraq had hidden. He said he believes "there was an intent . . . to continue production at some point in time." Among the evidence unearthed was a network of laboratories and safe houses, a laboratory complex hidden in a prison and evidence of a program for ballistic and land-attack missiles with ranges prohibited by the United Nations.
Kay's statement and a few, undated, supporting photographs are here. The New York Times provides Kay report highlights here.
