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WMD, MIA?
Hasty, incomplete news reports have suggested that coalition troops found chemical weapons, or even nukes, in Iraq. They haven't -- at least not yet. And the rest of world is watching skeptically.

Responding last June to Iraqi denials that it possessed weapons of mass destruction, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told U.S. troops in Bahrain that Saddam Hussein was "a world-class liar" whose claims were "false, not true, inaccurate and typical." Then came President Bush's Sept. 12, 2002, demand at the United Nations that iraq "immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction" and Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, follow-up presentation of alleged evidence of these weapons of mass destruction -- or "WMD," as they've come to be known -- to the U.N. as well.

For now, everyone is staying on script: We fought the war to get rid of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and we still intend to -- as soon as we find them. "There's strong evidence and no question about the fact there are weapons of mass destruction," Powell asserted Sunday on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost. "We will find weapons of mass destruction." Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, told Fox News that same day that he has "absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country." White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer noted last week that "we know Saddam Hussein is there, but we haven't found him yet, either."

Weapons of mass destruction are "what this war was about -- and it is about," Fleischer said.

But none have been found yet.
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  thanks to Tapped