Wrong on all counts

So when I was at work yesterday I saw a couple of news items about the Iraq Survey Group's report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Most of the cable news focused on the report as proof there are still no WMD's in Iraq, and there won't be any found. One news outlet, however, spun it as a report that claimed Iraq was trying to restart it's weapons production. Guess which one.

The actual nuts and bolts?

The comprehensive 15-month search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded that the only chemical or biological agents that Saddam Hussein's regime was working on before last year's invasion were small quantities of poisons, most likely for use in assassinations.

A draft of the Iraq Survey Group's final report circulating in Washington found no sign of the alleged illegal stockpiles that the US and Britain presented as the justification for going to war, nor did it find any evidence of efforts to reconstitute Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

It also appears to play down an interim report which suggested there was evidence that Iraq was developing "test amounts" of ricin for use in weapons. Instead, the ISG report says in its conclusion that there was evidence to suggest the Iraqi regime planned to restart its illegal weapons programmes if UN sanctions were lifted.

So the odds are pretty slim that the UN would lift sanctions against Iraq, which means the odds are even slimmer that Iraq would have been able to try and start production once again. So it seems a safe conclusion to draw is that the sanctions were working to stop Iraq from producing WMDs, one of the main justifications of the war.

Thank goodness we went to war then, eh?