- WASHINGTON -- In the lead-up
to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S.
forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein
had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
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- Now, after both statements have been shown to be either
incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence
that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions.
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- In recent testy exchanges with reporters, Rumsfeld interrupted
the questioners and attacked the premise of the questions if they dealt
with his pre-war comments about weapons of mass destruction and Americans-as-liberators.
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- For example, on Feb. 20, a month before the invasion,
Rumsfeld fielded a question about whether Americans would be greeted as
liberators if they invaded Iraq.
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- "Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be
welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?" Jim
Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS' "The News Hour."
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- "There is no question but that they would be welcomed,"
Rumsfeld replied, referring to American forces. "Go back to Afghanistan,
the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and
doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them
do."
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- The Americans-as-liberators theme was repeated by other
senior administration officials in the weeks preceding the war, including
Rumsfeld's No. 2 - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - and Vice President
Cheney.
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- But on Sept. 25, - a particularly bloody day in which
one U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in
a mortar strike and a member of the U.S-appointed governing council died
after an assassination attempt five days earlier - Rumsfeld was asked about
the surging resistance.
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- "Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very
eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms,"
Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones said to Rumsfeld as the prelude
to a question.
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- The defense chief quickly cut him off. "Never said
that," he said. "Never did. You may remember it well, but you're
thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything
like either of those two things you just said I said."
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- When testifying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
before the House Armed Services Committee Sept. 18, 2002, Rumsfeld said
Saddam "has amassed large clandestine stocks of biological weapons,
including anthrax and botulism toxin and possibly smallpox. His regime
has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including
VX and sarin and mustard gas."
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- Saddam "has at this moment stockpiles of chemical
and biological weapons," he later added, repeating the charges the
next day before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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- He repeated that theme in the weeks preceding the war.
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- Last month, after U.S. weapons hunters reported to the
administration and Congress that they have yet to find a single weapon
of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld was asked about his earlier statements.
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- A reporter at a Pentagon news conference asked: "In
retrospect, were you a little too far-leaning in your statement that Iraq
categorically had caches of weapons, of chemical and biological weapons,
given what's been found to date? You painted a picture of extensive stocks"
of Iraqi mass-killing weapons.
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- "Wait," Rumsfeld interjected. "You go
back and give me something that talks about extensive stocks. The U.N.
reported extensive stocks. That is where that came from. I said what I
believed to be the case, and I don't - I'd be surprised if you found the
word 'extensive."'
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- With the weapons hunt in its eighth month, Rumsfeld also
has backtracked on his earlier assertions that American troops knew where
the forbidden weapons were hidden.
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- On March 30, 11 days into the war, Rumsfeld said in an
ABC News interview when asked about WMDs: "We know where they are.
They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and
north somewhat."
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- In comments Sept. 10 before the National Press Club,
Rumsfeld conceded that he may have overreached. "I said, 'We know
they're in that area'," Rumsfeld said. "I should have said, 'I
believe we're in that area. Our intelligence tells us they're in that area,'
and that was our best judgment."
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- © 2003 Hearst Communications Inc.
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