Michael Burgess: “I have heard tonight several concerns about our ability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and whether that…”

“I have heard tonight several concerns about our ability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and whether that indicates the prewar intelligence on Iraq's program was either incorrect or biased. Where those weapons are today falls into several categories. Of course, they could still be hidden. Saddam had become a master of concealment. Please remember that in 1995 the United Nations was preparing to lift sanctions believing that Iraq had disarmed. It was only the defection of Saddam's son-in-law and the revelations that significant weapons were present that halted the U.N. from lifting those sanctions. Perhaps Saddam did destroy the weapons after the inspectors left in 1998. Why in the world then given the costs to him would he not be forthcoming about that? Please remember the burden of proof is clearly still on Saddam, not the United States, not the President of the United States or the United Nations to demonstrate that the destruction of weapons had occurred. Possibly the weapons had degraded over time or were destroyed in the bombing; but again, why would Saddam not be forthcoming and say so? I believe Congress is exercising its oversight authority and has set in place procedures to review comprehensively and on a bipartisan basis the intelligence surrounding Iraq prior to the outbreak of the war and to take into account any of the dissident views on the Iraq threat within the intelligence community.”