France, Germany, Canada, Belgium.........all rejected the old data, most of which was shaky at best.
After investigation following the invasion, the U.S.‑led Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical and biological programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production if the Iraq sanctions were lifted.[58] Only degraded remnants of misplaced and abandoned chemical weapons were found.[59] Paul R. Pillar, the CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, said "If prewar intelligence assessments had said the same things as the Duelfer report, the administration would have had to change a few lines in its rhetoric and maybe would have lost a few member's votes in Congress, but otherwise the sales campaign—which was much more about Saddam's intentions and what he "could" do than about extant weapons systems—would have been unchanged. The administration still would have gotten its war." Even Dick Cheney later cited the actual Duelfer report as support for the administration's pro-war case.[60]
However, George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, stated Vice President Cheney and other George W. Bush administration officials pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.[61]
On 16 March 2003, the U.S. government advised the U.N. inspectors to leave their unfinished work and exit from Iraq.[69]
Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
