exert:
In the fall, as the debate intensified over whether to have inspectors return to Iraq, senior government officials continued to suggest that the United States had new or better intelligence that Iraq's weapons programs were accelerating — information that the United Nations lacked.
"After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more," President Bush declared in a speech in Cincinnati last October. "And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon."
"Clearly, to actually work, any new inspections, sanctions, or enforcement mechanisms will have to be very different," he added.
Now, with the failure so far to find prohibited weapons in Iraq, American intelligence officials and senior members of the administration have acknowledged that there was little new evidence flowing into American intelligence agencies in the five years since United Nations inspectors left Iraq, creating an intelligence vacuum.
Doug
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