Rumsfeld - It's too early to say no Iraq weapons

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he still thinks Iraq may have had weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded, the Bush administration's hardest push-back against a weapons inspector's assertions that stockpiles did not exist.

President Bush and his aides have in recent days backed away from their often-stated predictions that such weapons would be found.

But in a sometimes contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld still held out the possibility and denied assertions by Democrats that Bush administration officials manipulated intelligence to push for war.

Ten months into the weapons hunt, Rumsfeld said U.S. inspectors need more time to make conclusions about whether chemical and biological weapons existed in Iraq before the invasion.

Rumsfeld offered examples of what he called "alternative views" on why no weapons have been discovered, starting with the possibility that banned arms never existed.

"I suppose that's possible, but not likely," he said.

Other possibilities Rumsfeld cited:

Weapons may have been transferred to a third country before the March invasion.

Weapons may have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden.

Weapons existed but were destroyed by Iraqis before the war started.

Or "small quantities" of chemical or biological agents may have existed, along with a "surge capability" that would allow Iraq to rapidly build an arsenal of banned weapons, Rumsfeld said.

Commenting on that possibility, Rumsfeld said, "We may eventually find it in the months ahead."

He also offered the possibility that Saddam was "tricked" by his own people into believing he had banned weapons that did not exist.

President Bush is planning an independent investigation to examine whether U.S. intelligence on Iraq was wrong and why.

Bush agreed to the investigation this week partly to calm a storm created days before by former head weapons inspector David Kay, who said intelligence officials and other experts "were almost all wrong" about Saddam's alleged programs.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., told Rumsfeld that Kay's conclusion are "a devastating refutation of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq" that "seriously undermines our credibility in the world."

Kennedy noted that there were dissenters in the intelligence community. "So the debacle cannot all be blamed on the intelligence community," he said. And he suggested the independent commission "look hard and fast at not just what the intelligence was, but how it was manipulated" by administration policy-makers.

"You've twice or thrice mentioned manipulation," Rumsfeld responded. "I haven't heard it. I haven't seen any of it except in the comment you have made."

Critics have charged publicly for months that the administration may have exaggerated prewar intelligence.

As he has done previously, Rumsfeld acknowledged under questioning that he had incorrectly asserted during the war that "we know" where weapons of mass destruction are hidden in Iraq. Rumsfeld told the panel he was referring to suspected weapons sites, but he acknowledged that he had made it sound like he was talking about actual weapons.

The remark "probably turned out not to be what one would have preferred, in retrospect," he said.

The Kay team did confirm one thing, Rumsfeld said: It found Iraq was working on missiles of longer range than was permitted under U.N. sanctions.

The team's findings, Rumsfeld said, so far have "not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated he had and what we believed he had. But it also has not proven the opposite."

Bush last week deflected questions about the discrepancies between his dire prewar warnings on Iraq and Kay's findings. Rather than repeat predictions that weapons would be found, Bush said, "There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a grave and gathering threat to America and the world."

Rumsfeld's comments also are in contrast to those of the other main administration foreign policy official, Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Powell, asked if he would have recommended an Iraq invasion if he'd known Iraq had no prohibited weapons, replied: "I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world," according to an interview Monday in The Washington Post.

When asked Tuesday about the comments, he said, "Other information that might have been available earlier I don't know would have changed the outcome."