weapons hunters return empty-handed

two years, two hundred billion dollars, a thousand dead troops and ten thousand wounded --- and they found nothing that threatens us. not to mention tens of thousands of dead iraqis, and a shattered country.

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Top Stories - washingtonpost.com
By Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writer

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq (news - web sites) has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush (news - web sites) ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The top CIA (news - web sites) weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.
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