- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.
intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading military commanders
to believe their troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons
in the Iraq war, the top U.S. Marine general there said on Friday.
-
- But Lt. Gen. James Conway said in a teleconference with
reporters at the Pentagon that it was too early to say whether the United
States also was wrong in charging that Iraq had chemical and biological
arms when the invasion began 2-1/2 months ago.
-
- "We were simply wrong," he said of the assessment
that chemical shells or other weapons were ready in southern Iraq and likely
to be used against invaders by deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
forces.
-
- "Whether or not we are wrong at the national level
I think still very much remains to be seen. ... 'Intelligence failure,'
I think, is still too strong a word to use at this point," added the
commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who was speaking from Hilla,
62 miles south of Baghdad.
-
- U.S. forces have been scouring Iraq -- thus far unsuccessfully
-- for chemical and biological weapons. The United States cited the need
to rid Iraq of such weapons of mass destruction as a key reason for the
war.
-
- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration
officials have expressed confidence that such arms will be found, although
Rumsfeld this week conceded that Iraq may have decided to destroy them
ahead of the invasion.
-
- Conway said he was convinced when U.S. and British troops
swept into Iraq from Kuwait that they would come under chemical or biological
attack before they reached Baghdad.
-
- But such shells have not been found even in ammunition
storage sites, he told reporters.
-
- "It was a surprise to me then. It remains a surprise
to me now that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward
dispersal sites," said Conway.
-
- "Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've
been through virtually every ammunition supply site between the Kuwaiti
border and Baghdad. But they're simply not there."
-
- U.S. and British troops carried chemical masks and protective
outfits into Iraq during the invasion and donned them frequently early
in the war in anticipation of possible attack.
-
- "What the regime was intending to do ... in terms
of its use of weapons we thought we understood," the general said.
-
- "We certainly had our best guess -- our most dangerous,
our most likely courses of action -- that the intelligence folks were giving
us."
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