No Banned Weapons Found In Iraq: U.S. Report

"We have not found at this point actual weapons," David Kay told reporters Thursday, October 2, after giving closed door briefings to the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on the work of the Iraq Survey Group, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Neither was his team able to confirm pre-war intelligence stating that Iraqi military units were prepared to use chemical warfare agents against U.S. forces.

In the report to the committees that was released in declassified form, Kay’s team found that Iraq had little or no capacity to produce chemical warfare agents before the invasion because of damage inflicted by U.S. air strikes and years of sanctions.

Meanwhile, one of the staunch supporters of war, Australian Prime Minister John Howard now faces a parliamentary censure motion next week after political opponents said Friday, October 3, that the U.S. failure to find WMDs in Iraq showed he misled the public over the need for war.

However, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted Weapons of mass destruction could yet be found in Iraq, as the findings of the Iraq Survey Group drew a mixed reaction in Britain.