'Easter egg hunt' for WMD is abandoned

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=422704

When the first American soldiers advanced through Iraq in March, every warehouse with bags of pesticide was eagerly examined in case they might be weapons of mass destruction.

"I can't get hold of any American officers because they are all out trying to win promotion by being the first to find WMD," said a Kurdish official in exasperation just after the fall of Mosul. "It is like a giant Easter egg hunt."

The search now is much more muted. US officers are more worried about the escalating guerrilla war. The Iraqi opposition, which in exile found no difficulty in passing on information about Saddam Hussein's stocks of WMD to intelligence agencies and journalists, has lost interest.

Before the war, the US and Britain insisted the surest way of finding the weapons would be through questioning senior members of the regime. The former Iraqi government was asked to allow them to be questioned without Iraqi officials present or outside the country where they would feel free to talk without fear. Many of the senior members are now in custody. They include Abed Hamid Mahmoud, Saddam's private secretary and confidant, detained last month who attended all meetings with the former leader.

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