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Bush: 'We
Found' Banned Weapons
By Mike Allen
KRAKOW, Poland, May 30 -- President Bush, citing two trailers that
U.S. intelligence agencies have said were probably used as mobile
biological weapons labs, said U.S. forces in Iraq have "found the
weapons of mass destruction" that were the United States' primary
justification for going to war. In remarks to Polish television at a time of mounting criticism at
home and abroad that the more than two-month-old weapons hunt is turning
up nothing, Bush said that claims of failure were "wrong." The
remarks were released today. "You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in
front of the world, and he said, 'Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs
to build biological weapons,' " Bush said in an interview shortly
before leaving on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East.
"They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions,
and we've so far discovered two. "And we'll find more weapons as time goes on," Bush said.
"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing
devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them." Bush arrived today in Poland, a U.S. ally in the Iraq war and the
first stop on his trip. Later he will meet with fellow heads of
government in St. Petersburg, and Evian, a resort city in the French
Alps, before presiding over a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan. Bush administration officials have recently been stressing a hunt for
"weapons programs" instead of weapons themselves. Among the
officials who have hedged their claims in recent public statements is
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said this week that deposed
president Saddam Hussein may have destroyed all the weapons before the
war. U.S. authorities have to date made no claim of a confirmed finding of
an actual nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. In the interview, Bush
said weapons had been found, but in elaborating, he mentioned only the
trailers, which the CIA has said were intended for production of
biological weapons. The agency reported that no pathogens were found in the two trailers
and added that civilian use for the heavy transports, such as water
purification or pharmaceutical production, was "unlikely"
because of the effort and expense required to make the equipment mobile.
Production of biological warfare agents "is the only consistent,
logical purpose for these vehicles," the CIA report concluded. Preparing for Bush's visit to the Middle East, administration
officials said they were assembling a team of 24-hour-a-day monitors to
mediate between the parties and measure performance in implementing the
"road map" peace plan that aims to create a Palestinian state
and permanent peace in the region. Powell said the move stopped short of naming a "major envoy,
with constant negotiations." But it would deepen U.S.
responsibility in the peace-making process. Powell, joining Bush aboard
Air Force One today, said the head of the U.S.-led team would be chosen
soon. Recounting his February speech to the U.N. Security Council, which
included the display of satellite images and the playing of
communications intercepts, Powell said that he "went out to the
CIA, and I spent four days and four nights going over everything that
they had as holdings." Powell said he had access to "a room
full of analysts, the raw documents, the papers." "Where I put up the cartoons of those biological vans, we didn't
just make them up one night," he said. "Those were eyewitness
accounts of people who had worked in the program and knew it was going
on, multiple accounts." "I have been through many crises in my career in government and
there are always people who come after the fact to say, 'This wasn't
presented to you,' or 'This was politicized or this wasn't,' "
Powell continued. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said during a brief visit to Warsaw
today that he was confident that illegal weapons would be found and
urged people to "have a little patience," the Reuters news
agency reported. "The idea that we authorized or made our intelligence agencies
invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd," Blair said,
referring to news media reports in London that British intelligence
officials feel that Blair's office overstated the case in a dossier
issued before the war. "Saddam's history of weapons of mass
destruction is not some invention of the British security
services." Bush plans to use a speech in Krakow on Saturday to argue anew that
the liberation of the people of Iraq was a legitimate cause for war,
according to an administration official. He will speak after a solemn
visit to the firing squad's "Death Wall" at the site of the
Auschwitz concentration camp, and will draw a line from that to modern
evil, including to Hussein and terrorists. Bush told Polish television
that the visit's purpose is "to remind people that we must confront
evil when we find it." Bush began his sprint through six countries by offering conciliatory
words to such traditional allies as France that tried to thwart the war
in Iraq. But his aides said he planned to use the trip to continue
projecting American might to try to change the world on his terms. "I understand the attitudes of some, but I refuse to be stopped
in my desire to rally the world toward achieving positive results for
each individual," Bush told foreign reporters before leaving
Washington. A senior administration official said the theme underpinning the
diplomatic tour was "what does President Bush do with his military
victory?" Bush will lay out his answers beginning with the speech
in Krakow, where he will call for greater transatlantic cooperation on
controlling AIDS, poverty and weapons of mass destruction. "Together, we can achieve the big objective," he said
Thursday in remarks to foreign reporters that the White House released
today. "And that is peace and freedom." From here, Bush heads Saturday afternoon to St. Petersburg for
celebrations and a gathering of world leaders on the occasion of that
city's 300th anniversary. Then he flies to Evian for the annual meeting
of the heads of the Group of Eight industrial powers. There, supporters
and opponents of the war in Iraq will try to work out continuing
resentments.
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