“In October [2] 2003, [chief weapons inspector David] Kay’s Iraq Survey Group reported on their preliminary findings. Their report confirmed that Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs ‘spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars.’ These programs ‘were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ Even as Coalition forces entered Baghdad, Iraqi officers were destroying records and equipment connected with chemical and biological weapons. ‘Some WMD personnel crossed borders in the pre-transconflict period and may have taken evidence and even weapons-related materials with them.’ The Iraqi [sic] Survey Group found a ‘clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service’ that successfully hid equipment and research materials on chemical and biological weapons from United Nations inspectors in the early months of 2003. They also found evidence of new research on deadly germ warfare agents. Kay’s group also discovered numerous ‘dual-use’ industrial facilities that had been specially prepared to resume the production of chemical weapons.”
– Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, Pages 546-547