MIAMI - Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a finding by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that Saddam Hussein 's government produced no weapons of mass destruction after 1991 justifies rather than undermines President Bush 's decision to go to war.
"The headlines all say no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad. We already knew that," Cheney said.
He said other parts of the report were "more intriguing."
Vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) called Cheney's claim "amazing" and accused his Republican rival of using "convoluted logic."
"They are willing to say left is right and up is down," Edwards said while campaigning in Bayonne, N.J. "The vice president, Dick Cheney, and the president need to recognize that the Earth is actually round and that the sun is rising in the east."
Cheney's comments reflect a GOP strategy to use portions of the report, including abuses of the oil-for-food program, to try to move discussion away from the central conclusions on the absence of weapons of mass destruction.
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