Mass Destruction

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace spent five months studying whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world, and last week it concluded that the answer was no. The study -- by Jessica Mathews, president of the think tank, George Perkovich, its vice president for studies, and Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the nonproliferation project -- concludes that U.S. officials distorted intelligence to...

LONDON -- The most recent crisis with Iraq was foreshadowed in the tent where Iraqi officers came to receive the truce terms nearly seven years ago.In ''Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander,'' Gen. Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia writes that he and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf worried that the Iraqi officers might bring weapons -- might even be killers on a suicide mission: ''So, in order to search them without causing...

CHICAGO - In the usual sequence, a nation is presented with a powerful cause for war and then proceeds to fight. After Sept. 11, Americans didn't need tortured explanations of why the United States should invade Afghanistan. But in the case of Iraq, the Bush administration began by making plans to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and realized only later that it might need to explain why. Judging from Vice President Dick Cheney's recent effort to rally support, it's still groping for a good excuse.

WASHINGTON -- The claims of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq might join with terrorists to strike the United States at any time are far-fetched. Very little about the historical record or current intelligence lends credence to that view. It cannot be fully dismissed as a possibility, but it appears to be a remote one at worst. There is a serious argument for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but it is not as conclusive as Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney argue.

WASHINGTON - The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now. Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason. The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world.

BASRA, Iraq - Two right feet. That was the tip-off. The skeleton in the coffin had two right feet. The skeleton, actually just a skull and a pile of bones, was in one of the 33 wooden coffins laid out in the courtyard of the Jumhuriya Mosque in Basra, in southern Iraq. It was part of a collection of skeletal remains found in one of several mass graves that dot the countryside here. You can still see the blindfolds wrapped around the eye sockets of each human skull, and the ropes that bound the feet before people were shot.

WASHINGTON - At the heart of Operation Iraqi Freedom is the hunt for the chemical and biological weapons that U.S. officials have long said pose Saddam Hussein's greatest threat to America and the world. While officials said that sites related to these weapons were among the targets pounded by cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs during the past two days, they are silent about specific locations and how many sites were hit. No chemical or biological weapons caches have been located by U.S. ground troops, said defense officials.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Waiting until almost the last possible moment, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein complied yesterday with one demand of the U.N. weapons inspectors by issuing a presidential decree that bans the construction or importation of weapons of mass destruction. Hussein acted only a few hours before the two top U.N. weapons inspectors delivered their most recent report to the Security Council on Iraq's cooperation since inspections began anew here, under threat of war, in November. Last night, the government offered no official response to the report itself.

WASHINGTON - Does the truth matter in politics? The question arises in the cases of two 2004 presidential candidates named Howard Dean and George W. Bush. The former Vermont governor is currently under heavy fire from his Democratic competitors for various contradictory statements he has largely sought to dismiss. And the president is similarly dismissive with regard to his yet-to-be proved claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction warranting its invasion. One example from Dr. Dean, on the heels of his statement that the United States is no safer with the capture of Saddam Hussein, was his declaration on a Sunday talk show last year that there was "no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat" to this country.

LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair conceded privately that Iraq did not have quickly deployable weapons of mass destruction as the British government was claiming as justification for war, says Robin Cook, a former foreign minister. Cook quit his post as leader of the House of Commons in March because of Britain's decision to join the American-led war in Iraq. He says Blair also made it clear to him in a conversation two weeks before combat began that he did not believe Saddam Hussein's weapons posed a "real and present danger" to Britain.