This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 7/13/04

Where did they go?

I’m talking about the WMD...the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had.

After the Gulf War, the United Nations declared that Hussein had lots of biological weapons on hand....tons of them in fact.

For years.....our planes patrolled the no fly zone in Iraq....and almost daily were harassed or even shot at by Iraq planes.

The United Nations demanded that he let inspectors in to verify that he had destroyed those weapons. The inspectors failed to find anything meaningful, although admittedly they were permitted in only certain areas....the Iraqi scientists who might have worked on such weapons could not be interviewed.

Eventually, Hussein booted the inspectors out...despite warnings from the United Nations of consequences to such action.

Then....when he violated the last U.N. resolution and that body failed to act. the United States took matters into its own hands, invaded Iraq and destroyed the Hussein regime.

Now...the Senate Intelligence Committee issues its findings, saying that it was all a sham.....there were no weapons of mass destruction, and that the intelligence that said they did...was flawed.

Not only that but the committee blamed faulty intelligence.

The hue and cry now is to completely overhaul the intelligence gathering organizations in this country. The committee blamed what they called a “mind set” on Weapons of Mass destruction as the fault of the intelligence groups.

True....huge caches of weapons have not yet been found In Iraq. There have been traces of the deadlin Sarin gas found in artillery shells....there have been some experimental aerial units that could be used to carry such weapons....and they have found rockets with a range far beyond that authorized.

There is the possibility that at the outbreak of the conflict with the U.S. Hussein secreted such weapons into either Syria or Iran or hid them somewhere in the country...which is the size of California.

The Senate Committee approached the problem from the premise that there were no weapons.

It would be a bit embarrassing to them if those still searching were able to find such weapons....or determine that they once were there, but now have been hidden elsewhere.

The one conflict between the Democrats and Republicans on the committee was that one side wanted to blame the President for the weapons lack....and the other blamed strictly flawed intelligence that the President received.

Never has there been thought of what the extinction of the Hussein rule has meant and will mean to the Iraqi people themselves.

But until and unless such weapons are discovered....the intelligence of the United States will be the scapegoat....even though the United Nations, and most of our allies believed the same information.

In the meantime....the Iraq situation continues to play out...with violence still the order of the day and unfortunately more Americans being killed along with many Iraqi civilians in the struggle for control of the country.

But....in my mind the question still remains.....what happened to those weapons.....were they mythical....or were they real?

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.