August 15, 2002: US Intelligence Refuses to Confirm Iraqi WMD

USA Today reports: “US intelligence cannot say conclusively that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, an information gap that is complicating White House efforts to build support for an attack on Saddam’s Iraqi regime. The CIA has advised top administration officials to assume that Iraq has some weapons of mass destruction. But the agency has not given President Bush a ‘smoking gun,’ according to US intelligence and administration officials. The most recent unclassified CIA report on the subject goes no further than saying it is ‘likely’ that Iraq has used the four years since United Nations inspectors left the country to rebuild chemical and biological weapons programs.” [USA Today, 8/15/2002]