Digging Up The Dirt
The soldiers looking for Saddam’s WMD find their work hot, tedious—and a political minefield. On the ground with the weapons hunters

By Adam Piore
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

June 12 — Lt. Bryan Potts was mad—and frustrated. The U.S. squadron chemical officer had driven for six sweltering hours, even straying out of safety of radio range on the final six-mile stretch into the wastes of the Iraqi desert.

NOW, STANDING UPON a pile of dirt, he waved a “Star Trek”-like black box and shook his head slowly. “There ain’t nothing around here,” he said, unleashing a stream of tobacco juice onto the barren hardpack. “We drove 200 f—king miles for nothing.”

It was just another day in the so-far fruitless hunt for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. While Washington and London squabble over the quality of intelligence behind President Bush’s and Prime Minister Blair’s claims that Saddam Hussein was developing banned weapons, the military units assigned to track them down are running out of places to look. Some are even being given time off or being reassigned to other duties, The Associated Press reported this week.

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