http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=3&story_id=23987

US search for WMD in Iraq is over: report Wed Jan 12, 9:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended
before Christmas and an interim report by top US weapons inspector Charles
Duelfer saying that there are no weapons to be found will likely stand,
according to a report in a US newspaper.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," a senior
intelligence official who asked not to be identified told the Washington
Post.

"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We
received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's
possible there is a supply some place, but what is much more likely is that
(as time goes by) we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that
we've already put forward," he added.

The daily said officials who served in the Iraq Survey Group, tasked with
the search of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq, wrapped up
their job shortly before Christmas.

The ongoing violence in Iraq together with the lack of new information,
they said, led to the decision.

Duelfer's report to Congress, which officials say he is finishing and will
be published by the end of June, said deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein  had the intent but not the capacity to make weapons of mass
destruction.

The report contradicted the US government's chief, publicly stated reason
for overthrowing Saddam in a quick war in April 2003.

President George W. Bush's administration has recently insisted weapons of
mass destruction might still be hidden in Iraq, but the intelligence
official told The Washington Post that possibility was very small.

A Pentagon spokesman told the daily that details of how hundreds of
millions of dollars allotted by the US Congres for the WMD search in Iraq
were spent remained classified

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