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Iraq’s WMDs Might Have Been Destroyed: Rumsfeld
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"We don't know what happened. We may actually find out what happened," said Rumsfeld
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WASHINGTON
, May 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With the U.S.
failure to come up with any evidence of
Iraq
’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the main pretext of
the invasion, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday, May 27,
Iraq
might have destroyed its WMD before the war.
Rumsfeld's
remarks are the closest admission the Bush administration has yet come
to that it may never find any weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq
, the BBC News Online reported Wednesday, May 28.
Rumsfeld,
however, said that the search for hidden weapons was continuing and it
would "take time" to investigate hundreds of suspected
sites.
The
allegation that
Iraq
possessed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons was the main reason
why the
US
attacked
Iraq.
Baghdad
had consistently insisted it had destroyed all such weapons in
compliance with United Nations resolutions.
In
a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York
, Rumsfeld said he did not know why Iraqi troops had not used chemical
weapons against his forces.
He
suggested the Iraqis might have been caught off guard by the speed of
the U.S.-led advance on
Baghdad
.
"It
is also possible that they [the Iraqis] decided that they would
destroy them prior to a conflict," Rumsfeld said.
"We
don't know what happened [to
Iraq
's banned weapons]. We may actually find out what happened."
On
Friday, May 23, the Congress demanded
CIA to determine whether the
U.S.
intelligence community erred in its pre-war assessments of
Iraq
's weapons programs or links with al-Qaeda network.
The
demand came as Rumsfeld also asked the CIA to conduct an internal
analysis of the quality of secrets collected by various
U.S.
intelligence agencies.
Kirkuk
Mayor
Meanwhile,
the new council of the northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk
elected, under the watchful eyes of a
U.S.
general, a popular Kurdish lawyer as mayor on Wednesday.
Journalists
were allowed to observe as 20 councillors voted for Abdul Rahman
Mustapha, 59, while the 10 other votes went to rivals Nayef Al-Jaburi,
an Arab, and Turkmen Mustapha Echechli.
Ismail
Al-Hadidi, from the Arab community and an oil expert, defeated Turkman
Tahsin Kahia in a vote for deputy mayor.
U.S.
General Raymond Odierno, who supervised the elections, persuaded the
gathering to appoint Kahia as "director" of the council, a
new post apparently created to satisfy the Turkman minority after its
candidates lost.
The
new mayor is a native of
Kirkuk
and a popular figure in
Iraq
's northern oil capital.
He
ran as an independent but enjoyed the backing of various Kurdish
groups.
The
election, set for Tuesday, was delayed due to the slow pace of
negotiations over candidates for the post of deputy mayor.
On
Monday, the new council in this ethnically split city elected three
assistant mayors, including one who will focus on getting Saddam
Hussein's followers out of public office.
However,
the Arab community of
Kirkuk
said the result did not reflect the demographical composition of the
city, asserting that they were ruled out from the elections,
Al-Jazeera correspondent reported.
Each
of the city's four communities -- Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds and Turkmen
-- had been given six seats.
But
U.S.
forces controlling the city gave six more seats to
"independents," five Kurds and an Assyrian.
The
council was
voted in on Saturday by 300 delegates selected to give the ethnic
groups a chance to run their own lives in the
province
of
Kirkuk
which has a populated of some 850,000.
Mass
Graves
Found
In
another development, a suspected mass grave of dissidents killed in
Saddam Hussein's suppression of the 1991 uprising in southern Iraq was
unearthed in a Basra schoolyard on Wednesday, AFP correspondents
witnessed.
Relatives
rented a pneumatic drill to break through the layer of concrete that
had been laid down over the former playing field at the al-Makdad
school behind the military hospital in the centre of the southern
capital.
Three
bodies had been unearthed by mid-morning. Local resident Ali Kharam
found the identity card of one of his four missing sons.
The
relatives started digging after being tipped off by a lecturer at
Basra
University
that he had seen military intelligence officers dumping bodies in the
yard following the abortive rebellion that followed the 1991 Gulf war.
Dozens
of mass graves have been uncovered all over
Iraq
since Saddam's overthrow
seven weeks ago.
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