Sunday, July 20, 2003

A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons On paper, the Pentagon's plan for finding Iraq's unconventional weapons was bold and original. Four mobile exploitation teams, or MET's, each composed of about 25 soldiers, scientists and weapons experts from several Pentagon agencies, would fan out to chase tips from survey units and combat forces in the field. They would search 578 "suspect sites" in Iraq for the chemical, biological and nuclear components that the Bush administration had cited time and again to justify the war. The Pentagon said the weapons hunters would have whatever they needed � helicopters, Humvees in case weather grounded the choppers, and secure telecommunications. But the "ground truth," as soldiers say, was this: chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap plagued the postwar search for evidence of Iraq's supposed unconventional weapons. To this day, whether Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons when the war began remains unknown. It is the biggest mystery of the war and a thorny political problem for President Bush. His administration has expanded the hunt and has urged patience, expressing the belief that some weapons may still be found. Others believe that to be increasingly unlikely. If only they'd had more patience wit the UN inspectors. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/worldspecial/20SEAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=