Rumsfeld spars with audience over Iraq

May 4, 2006, 22:16 GMT

Washington - Anti-war protestors repeatedly interrupted US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday, and a questioner challenged him over the reasons for invading Iraq.

Rumsfeld was addressing the Southern Centre for International Studies in Atlanta when hecklers disrupted his speech three times. Rumsfeld, who frequently faces such interruptions, shrugged off the yelling and continued speaking after each protestor was taken from the room.

During a questioning period with the audience afterward, one man grilled Rumsfeld on his claims leading up to the war in Iraq that he was certain Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction.

'You said you knew where they were,' said the questioner, who CNN reported was a former CIA analyst.

'I did not,' Rumsfeld replied. 'I said I knew where suspect sites were.'

'It's easy for you to make a charge,' Rumsfeld added. 'But why do you think that the men and women in uniform every day, when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits? Because they liked the style?'

'That's what we call a non sequitur,' the man said. 'It doesn't matter what the troops believe - it matters what you believe.'

CNN later posted quotes of Rumsfeld saying in 2003 that the US government knew where Saddam was hiding the weapons. Rumsfeld on Thursday conceded that US intelligence about Iraqi illicit weapons were incorrect.

Rumsfeld, in a rare display of emotion, was slightly choked up when he addressed a question from a woman whose son, a soldier, was killed in Iraq.

'I'm so sorry about your son,' he said.