Cheney presses case on Iraq

WASHINGTON -- In a media blitz to rally support for toughened action against Iraq, the Bush administration charged Sunday that Baghdad's intensifying efforts to develop a nuclear weapon increase the urgency of ousting the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

Iraq is "actively and aggressively" working on a nuclear bomb, with the growing potential for the United States to become a victim of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction, said Vice President Dick Cheney, one of five top officials who appeared on Sunday television talk shows to press the U.S. case for strong action on Iraq.

Based on the looming dangers, the United States does not need additional U.N. resolutions, international participation or other justification to act against Baghdad, administration officials emphasized.

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CNN's "Late Edition." "How long are we going to wait to deal with what is clearly a gathering threat against the United States, against our allies and against his own region?"

The administration can invoke President Bush's new policy of pre-emptive action to eliminate the threat, the officials noted.

"If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against the U.S., has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think the U.S. is justified in dealing with it, if necessary, by military force," Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Despite the regime's buildup of weapons of mass destruction, the vice president predicted that a war against Iraq would not be "that tough a fight." He conceded, however, that it would be costly and could involve a prolonged U.S. presence in the country.

New intelligence

The increased danger in Iraq's nuclear capability has become clear over the past 12 to 14 months from new intelligence and the interception of equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, including specialized aluminum tubes to enrich uranium, Cheney said.

"We know about a particular shipment. We've intercepted that. We don't know what else -- what other avenues he may be taking out there," he said.

"But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. And increasingly, we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities."

In recent years, Hussein is widely believed to have used illicit funds derived from smuggling oil to procure goods to advance his weapons programs, in violation of several U.N. resolutions and the cease-fire terms of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The United States is still uncertain when Iraq might have a bomb, although Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC's "This Week" that he does not believe Baghdad has a nuclear capability yet.

As the administration prepares to mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked the horrific magnitude and casualties of the terrorist actions against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in describing Iraq's weapons program.

"Imagine a Sept. 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000 -- it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

'Working hard'

Administration officials also warned Sunday that Baghdad has stepped up the development of non-nuclear weapons, particularly its ability to produce and deliver biological agents such as anthrax and smallpox.

Iraq also has been "working hard" to develop delivery systems, among them aerial devices and drones, to disperse biological weapons, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."

In light of the dangers, Cheney said, stronger action is warranted because U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq -- the toughest ever imposed on a nation -- have broken down after 11 years and because growing trade with Baghdad by other nations is allowing Hussein to both defy the outside world and strengthen his position at home.

A day after Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to plot a joint U.S.-British strategy to win international backing for what the administration calls "regime change," officials said Sunday that they believe other allies will eventually agree with the U.S. call for Hussein's ouster.

Bush is expected to lay out at least some aspects of the administration's rationale for ousting Hussein during a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

But Russia weighed in Sunday with a warning that any effort to use the war on terrorism to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state would cause "irreversible damage" to the global coalition amassed by the United States to confront Islamic extremists. Powell left open the possibility that the United States could go it alone.

"The president will retain all of his authority and options to act in a way that may be appropriate for us to act unilaterally to defend ourselves," he said.

The administration's domestic campaign to win support came on the same day that former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter told the Iraqi National Assembly that the United States is on the verge of making a "historic mistake" by launching a war against Iraq.

Ritter, a former Marine who resigned from the inspections team in 1998, also told the parliament that Iraq is no longer a threat to its neighbors or the outside world because it has eliminated up to 95 percent of its deadliest arms.

"The rhetoric of fear that is disseminated by my government and others has not to date been backed up by hard facts that substantiate any allegations that Iraq is today in possession of weapons of mass destruction or has links to terror groups responsible for attacking the United States," he said.

U.S. officials dismissed his allegations. The United States has facts, not speculation, Powell said.

But Ritter did call on Hussein's government to allow the inspectors to return and have unfettered access to all Iraqi installations.

Ritter spoke to the 250-member National Assembly, which is tightly controlled by the ruling Baath Party, on the same day it formally ratified a motion nominating Hussein to lead Iraq for another seven years. Iraqis will go to the polls to vote on the uncontested nomination Oct. 15. Hussein has ruled the country since 1979.