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Home > News & Policies > January 2004

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For Immediate Release
January 30, 2004

Global Message

From remarks by NSA Rice during interviews with CBS and NBC, 1/29/04

We don't yet know the full story of what became of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

However, we do know:

• Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction on his neighbors and on his own people.
• Saddam Hussein concealed hundreds of weapons-related activities and programs from the United Nations.
• Saddam Hussein refused to account for large amounts of botulinum toxin and anthrax despite the fact that the UN gave him one last chance in November to disclose what was happening with his weapons programs.

The excellent work that David Kay has done will be continued by the Iraq Survey Group. That will give us an opportunity to gather all of the facts that we possibly can.

We will never know some things because there was systematic looting of some of the weapons program sites. However, we will be able to compare what we knew before the war with what we found on the ground.

President Bush had intelligence that was shared by the Clinton administration and by intelligence services around the world saying that Saddam Hussein had active weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

President Bush saw a grave and gathering threat in Saddam Hussein, a threat that had been gathering for more than 12 years.

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