Iraks våpen

Av Bo Brekke

Hans Blix og hans våpeninspektører gjorde en fruktesløs jobb, skriver New York Times. Foto: Scanpix/Reuters

New York Times skriver under overskriften "Teams of Experts to Hunt Iraq Arms" at en av de første og høyest prioriterte oppgaver for de amerikanske styrkene er å finne de masseødeleggelsesvåpnene Saddam Hussein har skjult for FNs våpeninspektører. Hvis amerikanerne ikke finner disse våpnene vil USA bli sårbar for kritikk om at de har startet krigen uten grunn, påpeker avisen:

The Bush administration has deployed mobile labs and new specialized teams of intelligence officials and disarmament experts to Kuwait to help the military search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as soon as war begins, according to senior administration officials.

Defense officials are also reaching out to former international weapons inspectors, as part of an ambitious top-secret effort to rapidly find, secure and ultimately destroy the caches of chemical, biological and other unconventional weapons the administration asserts President Saddam Hussein is hiding.
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In addition, officials said the military was planning to find and interview hundreds of Iraqi scientists who worked on germ, chemical or nuclear-related projects, and to seek their cooperation in disarming Iraq of the weapons that the United Nations required Mr. Hussein to destroy after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

The administration has assigned top priority to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, officials said. After months of relatively fruitless international inspections, the discovery of such arms, officials said, would vindicate the administration's decision to go to war to disarm Iraq. Conversely, failure to find them would leave the administration vulnerable to charges that it had started a war needlessly.

Administration officials are determined to find illegal weapons before Mr. Hussein can send them out of the country and perhaps sell them to other rogue nations or terrorist groups.