Rebuilding Iraq is the toughest of all missions, Abizaid says

Abizaid said he has found it perplexing that no weapons of mass destruction have been found to date in Iraq, when the evidence from intelligence reports before military hostilities was so pervasive that it did exist.

He told the Senate committee that he met with the CENTCOM intelligence staff after the main hostilities ended and asked if anyone believed they would not find any WMD in Iraq. "To a man and to a woman, they all said we would find it," he said.

Abizaid said he believes that "when the Iraqi Survey Group conducts their work, that through the documents we look at, through the interviews that we conduct and through the people that are going to come forward, that we'll piece the picture together, but I think it will take some time."

Abizaid holds a master's degree from Harvard and is an expert on the Middle East. He said the military mission of bringing security and stability to Iraq is a task the current forces, which number 145,000 troops, are adequately prepared to meet. But he said the coalition forces are not prepared to rebuild governmental institutions.