US should be "embarrassed" over failure to find WMDs: ex-CIA

WASHINGTON, April 17 (AFP) -

"...The US government should be "embarrassed" over the apparent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, retired intelligence officials who opposed the war said Thursday..."

http://story.news.yahoo.com

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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/18/1050172746785.html

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"It's going to be very embarrassing when it turns out they have nothing to declare," said Eugene Betit, a former defense intelligence analyst who belongs to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), formed in January to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war.

Another, former CIA station chief Ray Close, said: "I'm hoping they will be embarrassed into acknowledging a role for some independent body. And who could it be but the UN?"

As the "smoking gun" continued to elude US sleuths in Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix called for experts to return to the country to determine whether the weapons allegations -- the main justification for going to war -- had any foundation.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday he was "reasonably sure" that proof will be found.

"We are quite confident of our intelligence," he told Jim Lehrer of PBS public television..."

Banned weapons: where are they? (BBC)

"...It is one of the unanswered questions of the war: where are the weapons of mass destruction which both the United States and Britain said that Iraq possessed? snip

But if they are not found there will be recriminations. The war was justified on the grounds that Iraq had not complied with UN resolutions to declare and destroy them.

Jon B. Wolfsthal, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington said: "Failure to discover chemical and biological weapons in Iraq will be used by many groups to vilify the United States".

"It will also reinforce claims that such weapons were only a pretext for America to remove Saddam's regime for other political or geostrategic reasons," he added.

The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, remains open-minded about whether Iraq had such weapons, but is highly critical of Britain and the US. He accused them of planning the war "well in advance" and of "fabricating" evidence against Iraq..."

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