No WMDs? No Big Deal, Says Bush

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"The man leading the US hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction [David Kay] will leave his post prematurely in the next few months amid dwindling expectations that there is anything to be found. ... 'This is a big blow to the administration and it will signal the effective end of the search for weapons of mass destruction,' said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment Institute for Peace in Washington. 'Some will continue looking but very, very few expect there to be any significant finds at this point.' ... But the White House has not mentioned weapons of mass destruction as a justification for the war in recent months, stressing the removal of Saddam instead. In a television interview this week, President George Bush appeared to deny there was a distinction between his pre-war claims that Saddam had an arsenal of non-conventional weapons, and his administration's current argument that the regime was planning to restart its weapons programmes. When an interviewer for ABC television, Diane Sawyer, reminded him of claims of the "hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons", Mr Bush asked: "What's the difference?"