For Immediate Release
May 13, 2003

Global Message

President Bush has made identifying and eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction a top priority.

We've had a major development in finding the biological weapons lab, which looks like the sketch that Secretary Powell talked about at the United Nations. There will be other breakthroughs.

The Coalition is taking a comprehensive approach by:

• Obtaining the cooperation of key Iraqi personnel;
• Accessing and assessing possible sites; and
• Obtaining and examining key documents and computers.

A new team working on weapons discovery and other surveys is entering Iraq to take advantage of the documentation and interviews with Iraqi personnel. This long-planned rotation enhances our WMD verification program. This team is larger and will have more experience in document exploitation, intelligence, and other key elements.

The Iraqi regime devised many concealment and deception tools. Iraq's "just-in-time inventory" allowed them to put together weapons at the last moment. It was inspections-proof.

They embedded as much as they could in the "dual-use infrastructure," allowing them - for example - to make as much as 50 percent more chlorine than needed. The making of chlorine looks perfectly innocent, but it is a precursor for some chemical weapons.

Printer-Friendly Version

Email this page to a friend