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August 26, 2002

At a speech in Nashville, Vice President Cheney says, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

He also says, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors --… including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction." The New York Times later reports that this is a gross misrepresentation. "The one specific source [Cheney] did cite was Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to Iraq." It was impossible that Saddam's son-in-law was the source of what "we now know."

Posted on 08/26/02 at 6:19 PM

Tags: Cheney, FALSE INTEL, Saddam, WMD

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