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CNN Live Saturday
Why Is Bush Confident U.S. Will Find WMDs in Iraq?
Aired May 03, 2003 - 18:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Why is the president so confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found? For more on that, we want to turn to CNN's Chris Plante at the Pentagon -- Chris.
CHIRS PLANTE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Hi, well what we're hearing here is that they are basically supremely confident that they will be able to make the case to the world over time. It is becoming abundantly clear that patience is running out with the length of time that's being taken here.
But there are what they call "exploitation teams" on the ground, throughout Iraq and more arriving every day. They expect to have roughly 1,000 experts on the ground in Iraq within a matter of the next few weeks, working with special operations teams and other, again, exploitations teams, moving throughout the country examining hundreds of sites that they have on suspect lists.
They are collecting serious quantities of documentation. They have taken into their custody a couple of vehicles that we reported on last week that are suspected at this point of being mobile biological weapons laboratories. And officials here are quietly saying that, A, they do believe that those are the biological laboratories that Colin Powell had indicated to the United Nations, Iraq was in possession of.
They do believe that as they go through these many thousands of pages of documentation that they will be able to provide documentation and show this to the world.
And they're also interviewing large numbers of people, as President Bush said from the ranch in Crawford, Texas, there today. It may not be the senior leaders, the Tariq Azizes of the regime that come forward with this information. It may be their horse holders, as it were, they're drivers, their assistants that come forward with information on where these programs were ongoing.
And they do seem to have a very high level of confidence here at the Pentagon, that once they have accumulated all of the information that they are collecting, that they will be able to present the case to the world and show that their intelligence prior to going into Iraq was correct and that the regime did have weapons of mass destruction, even if they destroyed them as Tariq Aziz has told U.S. intelligence officials as the U.S. troops were amassing around Iraq.
Tariq Aziz said that many of the weapons and many of the facilities related to these weapons of mass destruction were destroyed shortly before the war itself. But still, they feel that they'll be able to bring forward enough evidence, finding these locations, soil samples may indicate that chemical weapons were poured into the sand, in the desert. Biological weapons can be easily destroyed, but there may be evidence left behind.
And depending a lot, I think, on the personal testimony of individuals who were involved with these programs.
One Pentagon officials said to me, today, that they want to under promise and overproduce when the time comes to present the evidence to the public.
COOPER: Well, a lot of people are watching. Chris Plante at the Pentagon, thanks very much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 3, 2003 - 18:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Why is the president so confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found? For more on that, we want to turn to CNN's Chris Plante at the Pentagon -- Chris.
CHIRS PLANTE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Hi, well what we're hearing here is that they are basically supremely confident that they will be able to make the case to the world over time. It is becoming abundantly clear that patience is running out with the length of time that's being taken here.
But there are what they call "exploitation teams" on the ground, throughout Iraq and more arriving every day. They expect to have roughly 1,000 experts on the ground in Iraq within a matter of the next few weeks, working with special operations teams and other, again, exploitations teams, moving throughout the country examining hundreds of sites that they have on suspect lists.
They are collecting serious quantities of documentation. They have taken into their custody a couple of vehicles that we reported on last week that are suspected at this point of being mobile biological weapons laboratories. And officials here are quietly saying that, A, they do believe that those are the biological laboratories that Colin Powell had indicated to the United Nations, Iraq was in possession of.
They do believe that as they go through these many thousands of pages of documentation that they will be able to provide documentation and show this to the world.
And they're also interviewing large numbers of people, as President Bush said from the ranch in Crawford, Texas, there today. It may not be the senior leaders, the Tariq Azizes of the regime that come forward with this information. It may be their horse holders, as it were, they're drivers, their assistants that come forward with information on where these programs were ongoing.
And they do seem to have a very high level of confidence here at the Pentagon, that once they have accumulated all of the information that they are collecting, that they will be able to present the case to the world and show that their intelligence prior to going into Iraq was correct and that the regime did have weapons of mass destruction, even if they destroyed them as Tariq Aziz has told U.S. intelligence officials as the U.S. troops were amassing around Iraq.
Tariq Aziz said that many of the weapons and many of the facilities related to these weapons of mass destruction were destroyed shortly before the war itself. But still, they feel that they'll be able to bring forward enough evidence, finding these locations, soil samples may indicate that chemical weapons were poured into the sand, in the desert. Biological weapons can be easily destroyed, but there may be evidence left behind.
And depending a lot, I think, on the personal testimony of individuals who were involved with these programs.
One Pentagon officials said to me, today, that they want to under promise and overproduce when the time comes to present the evidence to the public.
COOPER: Well, a lot of people are watching. Chris Plante at the Pentagon, thanks very much.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
