US team concludes Saddam had no WMD
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

FT
April 26 2005 19:24

The US team investigating whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction has finished its 18-month search without finding any such
weapons, underscoring the inaccuracy of the intelligence that
triggered the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The Iraq Survey Group [ISG] issued its final report this week, saying
its 1,700-member team had found no evidence that Iraq possessed
biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

In October, Charles Duelfer, the former United Nations weapons
inspector who heads the Central Intelligence Agency's ISG, released an
interim report, concluding that Iraq's illicit weapons programmes had
been destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war and by subsequent UN inspections.

That report prompted President George W. Bush to admit that much of
the US intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq was `wrong'. But
the Bush administration dismissed arguments that it was wrong to
invade Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein still possessed the `intention' to
develop WMD weapons.

Administration officials more recently have focused on the transition
towards democracy, including the Iraq elections in January, to play
down the faulty intelligence that led to the war.

`As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as
feasible,' concluded Mr Duelfer in the report. `After more than 18
months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related
detainees has been exhausted.'

The ISG also found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq had
moved WMD to Syria before the war, which some administration officials
had said was possible.

John Shaw, then a deputy undersecretary of defence, in October said
Russian `units' had helped move weapons out of Iraq to Syria. But
Pentagon officials dismissed the allegations, which were also denied
by the Russians.

Mr Duelfer said: `Based on the evidence available at present, ISG
judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material
from Iraq to Syria took place.'

Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has
refused to investigate claims by critics of the Bush administration
that officials politicised intelligence before the war.

Prior to the war, administration officials raised concerns about a
possible link between Mr Hussein and the September 11 2001 attacks on
the US following reports of an alleged meeting between one of the
September 11 attackers and an Iraq intelligence officer in Prague.

Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee,
recently criticised the administration over the claims, saying
officials continued to raise the alleged meeting despite a CIA report
disputing that the meeting ever took place.