(White House) - In a televised address to the nation, President Bush stated Monday that Iraq poses a grave threat to peace, and that America is determined to lead the world in confronting that threat: Survellance photos reveal that the Iraqi regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade; al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq, including one very senior leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and rebuilding facilities that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
2002-10-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive