Comments Revive Doubts Over Iraq Weapons [ AP World News ] European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Fr

Comments Revive Doubts Over Iraq Weapons [AP World News]

bq. European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official seen as playing down the importance of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as a reason for going to war.

In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for focusing on Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal.

“The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason,” Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of the interview.

If those European critics are really shocked, they must have been asleep for the past year. It’s been obvious all along that the government was using “weapons of mass destruction” as one of many excuses, which were changed or played up whenever it was convenient.