Fragments of the shuttle were offered for sale on eBay within a few hours. President George W. Bush gave a State of the Union address that focused largely on the state of his plans to go to war with Iraq. Bush also unveiled a $15 billion program to fight AIDS around the world, particularly in Africa, and he announced the creation of a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which will merge different units of the CIA and the FBI. The president said that Secretary of State Colin Powell will soon present new evidence of Iraq's evildoing, including its alleged ties to Al Qaeda, to the United Nations Security Council. CIA analysts continued to maintain that there is no evidence of Iraqi aid to terrorists, and officials at the FBI also said they were baffled by the president's claims: "We've been looking into this hard for more than a year," said one anonymous source, "and you know what, we just don't think it's there." Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations chemical and biological inspections team, rebutted many of the president's reasons for attacking Iraq; Blix said that there was no evidence that Iraq was hiding illegal weapons or weapons scientists in neighboring countries, that there was no credible evidence of Iraqi intelligence agents posing as scientists, and that there was no evidence of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda. "There are other states where there appear to be stronger links," he said. Blix also said that there has been "no trace" of chemical or biological agents in the many samples his inspectors have taken all across Iraq.
Roger D. Hodge Harper's Weekly Review FEBRUARY 4, 2003
