WMD report to raise new questions

By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent

The failure of the US-led Iraq Survey group to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is proving a significant embarrassment to President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

On Thursday, David Kay - one of the leaders of the team - is due to give his interim report in a closed-door session to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in Washington.

Bush reportedly wants a further $600m to fund the WMD search

Mr Kay is expected to say that while no weapons have been found, there was an elaborate Iraqi deception operation to hide evidence of their programmes and that Saddam Hussein's own behaviour may have been part of a calculated bluff to persuade London and Washington that he really had weapons when he did not.

Were Iraq's weapons programmes part of an elaborate bluff by Saddam Hussein to try to persuade the British and Americans not just that he had the weapons, but that he would use them if attacked?

If so, Iraq's effort at deterrence failed spectacularly.

Fundamental question

Much more work and more time is going to be needed - President Bush is reported to want a further $600m to fund the weapons search.

But one thing is clear - so far no weapons have been found.

What is equally clear is that at some point in the past Iraq certainly had weapons - it used them to chilling effect.

And, equally, Iraq retained the scientific know-how, sufficient funding, and probably the strategic rationale to have weapons again at some time in the future.

This capacity to reconstitute weapons programmes will also figure in Mr Kay's report.

But with no actual weapons discovered Mr Kay's evidence raises another fundamental question. Why did the US and British government's seemingly fall so readily for Saddam Hussein's alleged bluff, if bluff it really was?

Maximalist interpretation

Part of the answer is because they wanted to believe that Iraq had weapons programmes.

It is clear from both the Hutton inquiry into the death of the weapons expert David Kelly in Britain and a succession of revelations in Washington that the intelligence material on Iraq was often poor and inconclusive.

In both capitals the maximalist interpretation was put on the available intelligence.

Above all the imminence of the threat posed by Iraq was greatly over-stated.