Comments fuel doubts over Iraq’s weapons
Otis Willie
(EXCERPT) Official implies top reason for war was to get U.S. out of
Saudi Arabia
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
May 30 — As the Pentagon sent hundreds of new weapons hunters into
Iraq and said it was changing how they would search for Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, critics expressed shock at
published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down those weapons
as the reason for the war in the first place.
IN AN INTERVIEW in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is quoted as saying a “huge” reason
for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi
Arabia. “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of
mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree
on,” Wolfowitz was quoted as saying. “Almost unnoticed but huge” was
the need to maintain U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was
in power, he was quoted as saying. Wolfowitz had little comment when
asked about the report in Singapore, where he was meeting with Asian
leaders. He referred reporters Friday to a separate transcript of the
interview posted on the Pentagon Web site. Some of the quotations in
the Vanity Fair article diff...
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Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com