Sen. Edward Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I still believe to some degree that Iraq had WMD.
Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, precursor chemicals. The inspectors, over a period of ten years, had managed to gain access to much of those precursor chemicals.
Further, not only the United States, but the French, British, Germans and the United Nations all thought Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction before the United States intervened.
Saddam Hussein has openly admitted to the rest of the world that he had weapons of mass destruction. He used those weapons to kill his own people.
The truth was, there was never a connection between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden. There were no weapons of mass destruction, either.
Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, we know that neither this President nor prior Presidents of both parties did everything right or we would not have had a 9/11.
I don't think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons.
There is no direct evidence that nuclear weapons prevented a world war. Conversely, it is known that they nearly caused one.
We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were told repeatedly by President Bush and Vice President Cheney that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found.