The Sunday Times article referenced below does exist on the Sunday Times site, but I can't get at it without a subcription.
If this is true, so much for the much-ballyhooed "September Surprise."
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Iraq WMD report shelved due to lack of evidence
Sunday, 14 September, 2003, 13:53
London: After failing to get any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the US and Britain have decided to delay indefinitely the publication of a full report on the controversial issue, media reported today.
Efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, an Anglo-American team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to scour Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons have so far ended in failure, The Sunday Times claimed in its report.
It had been expected that a progress report would be published tomorrow but MPs on the British Parliaments security and intelligence committee have been told that even this has been delayed and no new date set.
British defence intelligence sources have confirmed that the final report, which is to be submitted by David Kay, the survey groups leader, to George Tenet, head of the CIA, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published, the paper said.
In July, Kay suggested on US television that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had had a programme to produce weapons of mass destruction.
He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.
But last week British officials said they believed Kay had been "kite-flying" and that no hard evidence had been uncovered.
The hunt for weapons is seen in London and Washington as a vital step in convincing an increasingly sceptical public that the war was justified.
Reports: Kay Iraq WMD report shelved, no evidence found
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Rspaight
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Reports: Kay Iraq WMD report shelved, no evidence found
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney
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Rspaight
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It's now on the AP wire...
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U.S., Brits Block WMD Report?
Sept. 15, 2003
(CBS/AP) The publication of a full report on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has been indefinitely postponed after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist, reports the Times of London.
The Times reports the decision by Britain and America to delay the report's release comes after efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, a team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to search Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons ended in failure.
In July, David Kay, the survey group's leader, suggested that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that Saddam Hussein had had a program to produce weapons of mass destruction. He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.
But last week British defense intelligence sources confirmed that the final report, to be submitted by Kay to CIA Director George Tenet, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published.
The United States and Britain invaded Iraq because they believed Saddam's regime was developing nuclear arms as well as chemical and biological weapons. So far, no weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq, nor has any solid new evidence for them been reported by Washington or London.
Last week, in a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief said U.N. inspectors found Iraq's nuclear program in disarray and unlikely to be able to support an active effort to build weapons.
Mohammed ElBaradei reiterated that his experts uncovered no signs of a nuclear weapons program before they withdrew from Iraq just before the war began in March.
"In the areas of uranium acquisition, concentration and centrifuge enrichment, extensive field investigation and document analysis revealed no evidence that Iraq had resumed such activities," ElBaradei said in the report, made available to the AP by a diplomat.
"No indication of post-1991 weaponization activities was uncovered in Iraq," he said.
Former weapons inspectors now say, five months after the U.S. invasion, that what the U.S. alleged were "unaccountable" stockpiles may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago.
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U.S., Brits Block WMD Report?
Sept. 15, 2003
(CBS/AP) The publication of a full report on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has been indefinitely postponed after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist, reports the Times of London.
The Times reports the decision by Britain and America to delay the report's release comes after efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, a team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to search Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons ended in failure.
In July, David Kay, the survey group's leader, suggested that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that Saddam Hussein had had a program to produce weapons of mass destruction. He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.
But last week British defense intelligence sources confirmed that the final report, to be submitted by Kay to CIA Director George Tenet, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published.
The United States and Britain invaded Iraq because they believed Saddam's regime was developing nuclear arms as well as chemical and biological weapons. So far, no weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq, nor has any solid new evidence for them been reported by Washington or London.
Last week, in a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief said U.N. inspectors found Iraq's nuclear program in disarray and unlikely to be able to support an active effort to build weapons.
Mohammed ElBaradei reiterated that his experts uncovered no signs of a nuclear weapons program before they withdrew from Iraq just before the war began in March.
"In the areas of uranium acquisition, concentration and centrifuge enrichment, extensive field investigation and document analysis revealed no evidence that Iraq had resumed such activities," ElBaradei said in the report, made available to the AP by a diplomat.
"No indication of post-1991 weaponization activities was uncovered in Iraq," he said.
Former weapons inspectors now say, five months after the U.S. invasion, that what the U.S. alleged were "unaccountable" stockpiles may have been no more than paperwork glitches left behind when Iraq destroyed banned chemical and biological weapons years ago.
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney
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lukpac
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Iraq dumped WMDs years ago, says Blix
No evidence to link Saddam with September 11 attacks, Bush admits
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian
The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, according to an interview broadcast yesterday.
The claim came on the same day that President George Bush stated more bluntly than ever that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 - despite 69% of Americans believing Saddam had a personal role, according to a recent Washington Post opinion poll.
Mr Blix, who spent three years hunting for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq as head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation listeners: "I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed all, almost, of what they had in the summer of 1991. The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found."
Saddam kept up the appearance that he had the weapons to deter a military attack, Mr Blix added. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, 'Beware of the dog,' without having a dog," he said, speaking from his home in Sweden.
Investigators with the US-led Iraq survey group would be unlikely to find anything more than some "documents of interest", he predicted.
Mr Blix had previously declared himself "agnostic" on the issue of if or when Saddam destroyed such weapons, and has never dismissed so forcefully the arguments of Mr Bush and Mr Blair.
"Time will tell," the prime minister's official spokesman responded in London. "We have to exercise a bit of patience and recognise the survey group has been operational for a matter of some weeks. And clearly there is a lot of work to get through."
Mr Bush's remarks, made to reporters as he met members of Congress at the White House, place him at odds with his vice-president, Dick Cheney, who sought conspicuously to leave the question of Saddam's links with September 11 open in a TV appearance at the weekend.
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 [attacks]," Mr Bush said, though he said there was "no question" that the Iraqi dictator "had al-Qaida ties".
On Sunday, by contrast, Mr Cheney said the popular belief in a link was "not surprising ... we don't know." Victory in Iraq, he went on, would strike at "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Mr Cheney also returned in the interview to an allegation, attributed to Czech intelligence, that the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001 in Prague. According to numerous reports, the FBI and CIA found no evidence of such a meeting, and Vaclav Havel, the then Czech president, told the White House that there was none.
But Mr Cheney told NBC's Meet The Press: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."
Democrats have accused the Bush administration of deliberately seeking to convey a false impression about the relationship between the terrorist network and Saddam.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, told a US television interviewer on Tuesday that Saddam was targeted because he posed a danger in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged".
Asked about Saddam's weapons, Mr Cheney referred only to the Iraqi leader's "capabilities" and "aspirations", not to weapons themselves.
"To suggest that there is no evidence there that [Hussein] had no aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons I don't think is valid," he said.
No evidence to link Saddam with September 11 attacks, Bush admits
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Thursday September 18, 2003
The Guardian
The former UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, according to an interview broadcast yesterday.
The claim came on the same day that President George Bush stated more bluntly than ever that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 - despite 69% of Americans believing Saddam had a personal role, according to a recent Washington Post opinion poll.
Mr Blix, who spent three years hunting for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq as head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation listeners: "I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed all, almost, of what they had in the summer of 1991. The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found."
Saddam kept up the appearance that he had the weapons to deter a military attack, Mr Blix added. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, 'Beware of the dog,' without having a dog," he said, speaking from his home in Sweden.
Investigators with the US-led Iraq survey group would be unlikely to find anything more than some "documents of interest", he predicted.
Mr Blix had previously declared himself "agnostic" on the issue of if or when Saddam destroyed such weapons, and has never dismissed so forcefully the arguments of Mr Bush and Mr Blair.
"Time will tell," the prime minister's official spokesman responded in London. "We have to exercise a bit of patience and recognise the survey group has been operational for a matter of some weeks. And clearly there is a lot of work to get through."
Mr Bush's remarks, made to reporters as he met members of Congress at the White House, place him at odds with his vice-president, Dick Cheney, who sought conspicuously to leave the question of Saddam's links with September 11 open in a TV appearance at the weekend.
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 [attacks]," Mr Bush said, though he said there was "no question" that the Iraqi dictator "had al-Qaida ties".
On Sunday, by contrast, Mr Cheney said the popular belief in a link was "not surprising ... we don't know." Victory in Iraq, he went on, would strike at "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
Mr Cheney also returned in the interview to an allegation, attributed to Czech intelligence, that the 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001 in Prague. According to numerous reports, the FBI and CIA found no evidence of such a meeting, and Vaclav Havel, the then Czech president, told the White House that there was none.
But Mr Cheney told NBC's Meet The Press: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."
Democrats have accused the Bush administration of deliberately seeking to convey a false impression about the relationship between the terrorist network and Saddam.
Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, told a US television interviewer on Tuesday that Saddam was targeted because he posed a danger in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged".
Asked about Saddam's weapons, Mr Cheney referred only to the Iraqi leader's "capabilities" and "aspirations", not to weapons themselves.
"To suggest that there is no evidence there that [Hussein] had no aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons I don't think is valid," he said.
lukpac wrote:The claim came on the same day that President George Bush stated more bluntly than ever that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 - despite 69% of Americans believing Saddam had a personal role, according to a recent Washington Post opinion poll.
This is very offensive. 69% of people believe that because W rammed it down their (gullible) throats. They'll never see the retraction - or maybe they don't care. The toothpaste is already out of the tube.
It reminds me of Bush bitching about how people saying "March to War, March to War, March to War" had destroyed the confidence of investors. And who, praytell, was the one leading that chant?
"To suggest that there is no evidence there that [Hussein] had no aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons I don't think is valid," he said.
It depends on what your definition of "is" is.