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Powell: Mobile labs were for WMD
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Intelligence analysts have determined that two suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories found in Iraq were "certainly designed and constructed for that purpose," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday. "The intelligence community has really looked hard at these vans, and we can find no other purpose for them," Powell told reporters in Washington. But Powell said that the labs had been cleaned to the point that "you can't find actual germs on them." "We don't know whether they have been used for that purpose or not, but they were certainly designed and constructed for that purpose," Powell said. "We have taken our time on this one because we wanted to make sure we got it right. And the intelligence community, I think, is convinced now that that's the purpose they served." In February, Powell told the United Nations Security Council that U.S. intelligence officials had learned from an Iraqi defector that President Saddam Hussein's regime was using mobile labs to develop weapons of mass destruction. The administration used the account to bolster its argument that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and was in violation of long-standing U.N. resolutions. Wednesday, Powell said, "I think we knew what we were saying when we went to the U.N. on the fifth of February, and I was pleased to be the one to present the case. But this certainly is a good example of the kinds of activities that that regime was involved in for so many years." He said the labs show that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in "material breach" of U.N. Resolution 1441. "They stayed in material breach. They did not do anything to fix the situation; and, therefore, they suffered the serious consequences that followed." Across town, on the Senate floor, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, blasted the administration for its talk of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. "The Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," he said. "It appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false premises." He continued, "When it comes to shedding American blood, wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie -- not oil, not revenge, not re-election, not somebody's grand pipe dream of a democratic domino theory." Byrd said the truth will eventually emerge "like it always does." "And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall," he said. The mobile labs Powell referred to were discovered in northern Iraq in recent weeks. One was discovered last week near Mosul, Iraq, by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. That one was made up of refrigeration units and piping, compatible with weapons production, according to military sources. There was also believed to be a spraying device. A similar lab was found the week before, also in northern Iraq. Both were turned over to U.S. authorities for further testing.
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