IRAQ: President Bush promised yesterday that "history and time will prove" Saddam Hussein had unconventional arms, vindicating the as-yet unsubstantiated US case for invading Iraq.
"Iraq had a weapons programme. Intelligence throughout the decade showed he had a weapons programme. I am absolutely convinced, with time, we'll find out that they did have a weapons programme," he said.
US-led forces have yet to locate conclusive evidence backing the central case for war that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons, was pursuing nuclear arms, and could one day have armed terrorists with them.
Asked whether US credibility was on the line, President Bush bristled, saying that the US had accomplished its central mission by toppling the Iraqi dictator. He said the world was now "more peaceful" and the Iraqi people were "free".
In Iraq, meanwhile, an American soldier was shot dead at a checkpoint near the Syrian border, the US military said yesterday, as UN experts carried out more checks on a looted storage site at Iraq's main nuclear facility.
The UN team, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been in Iraq since Friday under tight US restrictions on its mission. It wants to establish how much material, previously under IAEA seal, is still missing.
The United States wants no precedent to be set for IAEA or other UN inspectors to play a role in the search for Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
UN inspectors found little evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in four months of work before their hunt was cut short by the US and British invasion on March 20th.
Meanwhile Saddam himself may be missing, but his face lives on. A cash crisis has forced the US-led administration to print banknotes with his face on them.
The central bank began printing millions of Saddam dinars last week to ease a crisis over discredited 10,000-dinar notes. Nobody wants the high-denomination notes, worth about $10, for fear they may be declared worthless, hence a decision to print smaller denominations. It was not possible to change the banknotes because there was no national authority to change the design, the central bank said. -