The U.S. has disbanded its team that searched for weapons of mass destruction in post-war Iraq.
Instead, the 1,700 members of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) are being re-assigned to counter-insurgency efforts, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
"You can only search so many places for WMD," one official told Reuters.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said "there may be a couple, a few people that are focused on that," but otherwise, the search is over.
"If they have any reports of (weapons of mass destruction) obviously they'll continue to follow up on those reports," McClellan said. "A lot of their mission is focused elsewhere now."
Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser and leader of the ISG, will deliver a final report next month.
In September, Duelfer reported that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, had not made any and had no capability to make new ones.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were cited by both the U.S. and Britain as the primary reason for the March 2003 invasion of the country and the overthrowing of Hussein's regime.
Former CIA director George Tenet had told U.S. President George W. Bush that finding such weapons would be a "slam dunk."
In the lead-up to the war, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the United Nations in which he said the U.S. possessed "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Iraq was hiding banned weapons.
"I cannot tell you everything that we know, but what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling," Powell said.
In April 2004, he told reporters, "It appears not to be the case that it was that solid."
Bush has ordered an investigation into why the intelligence about Iraq's weapons was wrong.
Since March 2003, more than 1,350 U.S. troops have died and at least 10,000 more wounded. Another 160 coalition troops have also died.
The death toll of Iraqi civilians has been estimated at 17,000 from direct military causes, but one study estimated the total number of civilian deaths attributable to the invasion and occupation could be as high as 100,000.
With files from The Associated Press
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