In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapon stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda.
So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.
Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time.
Iraq is a long way from the U. S. , but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Can we be sure that terrorism and WMD will join together? If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.
I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
U. S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction.
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.
If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.
Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if — as the war ends, or at least starts to end — if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there — Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?
The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are. That means terrorists have access to all of that.
We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001 He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we.
The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.