[Paula Zahn, Cnn Anchor:] For more on Saddam Hussein's defiant speech and the reaction to it, Rym Brahimi is standing by in Baghdad; John King joins us from the White House. We're going to start with Rym this morning. Good morning Rym.
[Rym Brahimi, Cnn Correspondent:] Good morning, Paula. Well, a speech, an address to the nation by President Saddam Hussein on a day that marks the 12th anniversary of the beginning of the 1991 Gulf War. That anniversary is here seen as a victory. The president referring to it as Iraq's military, political and moral victory over the United States and its more than 30 nations in the coalition back then. Also comparing the current U.S. threat to threats that Iraq faced in the second century by an invader who destroyed Baghdad, comparing that invader to the United States and its regional ally, Israel. Here is how he put it
[Pres. Saddam Hussein, Iraq:] To the Zionist Jews and to the Zionists who are not of Jewish origin, particularly those who are in the U.S. administration and who stood in opposite front of our nation of Iraq. The force in America proved itself to be incapable of
[Brahimi:] Well, with the findings yesterday by U.N. weapons inspectors of empty chemical warheads, this is a very tense time. President Saddam Hussein, however, sending a very clear message, he will not step down Paula.
[Zahn:] Rym, have you been given any indication of when some of the testing might be done, finished, on these chemical warheads?
[Brahimi:] Paula, no specific indication for now, but we do know that the site where they found those empty chemical warheads has been sealed. We also know from the United Nations that they still do not consider this a smoking gun. They're still evaluating and trying to find whether they will find it in the declaration that Iraq submitted. We've just heard from the state-run Iraqi news agency that an Iraqi official says that those artillery rockets were in fact registered, he says, and accounted for with the commission Paula.
[Zahn:] Rym Brahimi, we're going to leave it there. Right now, we're going to check in with John King, who stands by at the White House. And we're going to lean on you, John, to try to cut through the clutter of this morning's conflicting information. "The Washington Post" is reporting that these warheads were not declared in this latest declaration, and yet, we know a Western diplomat has told CNN that they're still in the process of going through those documents to make sure they were in fact declared. They're not sure. What are you hearing from the White House?
[John King, Cnn Senior White House Correspondent:] White House officials, Paula, taking largely a wait-and-see approach here. They say that they can recall no specific mention of these warheads in the report, and indeed that was one of the first criticisms of the Bush administration when the Iraqi declaration came out that Iraq was known to have dozens, if not hundreds, of warheads capable of carrying chemical weapons. And the White House said it could not find the proof in the Iraqi documentation either of where those warheads were still stored or whether, as Iraq promised to do, they had been destroyed. Now, the White House also not thinking much of Saddam Hussein's speech overnight here in Washington, especially at the White House. Their basic line is, they don't listen to what Saddam says, they watch what he does, although one White House official this morning noting that in the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein promised the quote "mother of all battles," and when it came to military conflict, the Iraqi troops, most of them, fled instead of opposing the U.S. forces coming through Kuwait. Now the White House, as I said, is taking a wait-and-see attitude, waiting to hear official word from the inspectors about those chemical warheads. Also playing down the discovery was the chief weapons inspector himself, Hans Blix. Hans Blix is in Paris for consultations with the French president, Jacques Chirac. He says he will wait for a final report on those warheads, but he did say it is yet again more proof to him that Iraq is not meeting the test, not complying with the resolution that demands it disclose everything about its weapons programs.
[Hans Blix, Chief U.n. Weapons Inspector:] There is not yet confidence, there is not yet certainty that all of the chemical, biological weapons and missiles are gone and that all of the equipment is gone. There is not yet that certainty, and it is above all for Iraq to demonstrate that everything has been done away with.
[King:] Now here at the White House, they are, of course, aware of efforts by the Saudis and others to perhaps convince Saddam Hussein to step down or to fester a coup within Iraq. They don't put much stock in the fact that that will happen, Paula. You would not see the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops if anyone here at the White House believed Saddam Hussein was about to leave voluntarily or be kicked out by his own troops.
[Zahn:] Let's come back to this discovery yesterday for a moment. So, once again, "The Washington Post" is reporting this morning that these weapons were not or the warheads were not listed in the declaration, and they even go on to say to contradict that that a senior Iraqi official played down the importance of this finding, saying his government simply forgot to mention the warheads. If the Iraqis try to pass this off as a simple accounting mistake, what are you inclined to think the administration will say about that?
[King:] Remember the president said he would have zero tolerance. And that in the last weapons inspections regime, that is exactly what the president says Iraq's conduct was, to say it had nothing, then when it got caught to say, oh, gee, we forgot about that. The White House says it will not tolerate that. The question is: When will the president decide to build a cumular case? White House officials say they now believe there is a good cumular case to make the case that Iraq is simply defying the United Nations yet again, just not so overtly and so aggressively. White House officials say they want the inspectors to make the report. But here at the White House, Paula, they say they have no recollection of any warheads. They say Iraq said it had no weapons of mass destruction. They're going back through the documents, but they believe they've caught Saddam Hussein in a lie.
[Zahn:] John King, thanks for the update. Stay warm. Hope they let you go inside at some point today.