No shit!
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U.S. ends search for WMD in Iraq
Wednesday, January 12, 2005 Posted: 10:59 AM EST (1559 GMT)
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for Iraq's possession of WMD in February 2003.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. inspectors have ended their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in recent weeks, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN.
The search ended almost two years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, citing concerns that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and may have hidden weapons stockpiles.
Members of the Iraq Survey Group were continuing to examine hundreds of documents and would investigate any new leads, the official said.
Charles A. Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group's search for WMD in Iraq, has returned to Iraq and is working on his final report, the official said.
In October, Duelfer released a preliminary report finding that in March 2003 -- the United States invaded Iraq on March 19 of that year -- Saddam did not have any WMD stockpiles and had not started any program to produce them.
The Iraq Survey Group report said that Iraq's WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended the country's nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.
The report found that Iraq worked hard to cheat on United Nations-imposed sanctions and retain the capability to resume production of weapons of mass destruction at some time in the future. (Full story)
"[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted," a summary of the report said.
Many of the military and intelligence personnel, who had been assigned to the weapons search, are now working on counterinsurgency matters, the official said.