Early teams to seek hidden arms
The Bush administration has deployed mobile labs and new specialized teams of intelligence officials and disarmament experts to Kuwait to help the military find Iraq's hidden weapons of mass destruction as soon as war begins, according to senior administration officials. It is also reaching out to former international inspectors. These and other steps are part of an ambitious effort to find, secure and rapidly destroy the caches of chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons that the administration asserts that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, is hiding. The Pentagon has deployed new tactical units called "mobile exploitation teams," state-of-the-art equipment and novel tactics to find and survey what officials estimate are at least 600 sites considered most likely to be hiding prohibited weapons. In addition, they said the military is making plans to find and interview hundreds of Iraqi scientists who worked on germ, chemical, and nuclear-related projects and to seek their cooperation in disarming Iraq of the weapons Saddam was required by the United Nations to destroy after the 1991 Gulf War.
I always suspected the US withheld intel so that the inspectors would fail. One good bust and France would have won. "See, inspections work." |