As-Sayliyah, Qatar, June 06: US troops roared with approval Thursday at this Qatari base from where the coalition ran the war on Iraq, as President Bush defiantly vowed to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Ignoring the heated debate about the failure so far to turn up firm evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed the weapons which sparked the war, Bush renewed the US charges. “Here’s a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder,” he told some 2,500 cheering US Air Force, Navy and Army troops, as well as some Australians and Britons.
“He’s got a big country in which to hide ‘em. Well, we’ll look. We’ll reveal the truth. We found two mobile biological weapons facilities which are capable of producing biological agents,” Bush said, although experts say there is no evidence to suggest they did produce any such weapons. “No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more. We made sure that Iraq’s not gonna serve as an arsenal for terrorist groups.” he said
Chief UN inspector Hans Blix, meanwhile, said his search teams are ready to return to Iraq to pursue new leads and try to answer outstanding questions about Saddam’s programs for weapons of mass destruction. Blix, who is retiring after his contract ends on June 30, will present his final report to the Security Council on Thursday and the issue of future UN inspections is almost certain to be raised — especially since US-led teams have found no illegal weapons after visiting more than 230 suspected sites over the past 11 weeks. Bureau Report