White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said: “That very first Monday [of President Bush’s first term January 22, 2001], the New York Times, citing a new internal U.S. government intelligence estimate, ran a front-page story about Iraq rebuilding factories ‘that the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons, according to senior government officials.’ The Times called it an early test of Bush’s pledge to ‘take a tougher stance against’ Saddam Hussein than his immediate predecessor had. …with no new policy yet firmly in place, we simply told the press that the president expected Saddam Hussein to live up to his agreement with the United Nations that his regime not produce weapons of mass destruction.”
– Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, Page 89