I guess their sand was on top of our oil....

BY PETE CATAPANO
amNewYork Managing Editor

Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration warned Americans that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But after two years of hunting, the White House says that the active search for WMDs is over and that no evidence of the banned weapons has been discovered. Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said that the administration is not hopeful that any will be found. “There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that”
but the search has largely concluded, he said. The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two
years searching military installations, factories and laboratories where equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons. “If they have any reports of (WMDs) obviously they’llcontinue to follow up on those reports,” McClellan said. “A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now.” Focusing on Iraq’s stockpiles of banned chemical and biological weapons — as well as Saddam
Hussein’s dreams of building nuclear bombs — Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the case to invade Iraq before the U.N. Security Council on March 7, 2003. While President Bush focused on his promise to secure the U.S. from another 9/11, he never wavered on protecting Americans from the threat Iraq posed.
“On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. It has developed weapons of mass death,” Bush said on Oct. 2, 2002.
“We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in
the form of a mushroom cloud,” he said days later. Vice President Dick
Cheney was just as blunt as the president. “Simply stated, there is no doubt
that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney
warned on Aug. 26, 2002. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use
against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Democrats who’ve
doubted the WMD claims all along said the White House must explain.
“President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so
wrong, for so long,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said. “After a war that has consumed nearly two years and millions of dollars, and a war that has cost thousands of lives, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, nor
has any evidence been uncovered that such weapons were moved to
another country,” Pelosi said in a statement. In October the president formed am independent panel to taking on another investigation — to finding out how the WMD information could be so wrong. U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer, who’s set to deliver his final report on the search next month, reported in October that
Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.