May 29, 2003

Several US military officers involved in the hunt in Iraq have raised the possibility that the illegal arms might have been destroyed, but the official line in Washington has been that Saddam Hussein had artfully hidden them, and sooner or later they would be found.

But now, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary and one of the leading hawks on Iraq, has admitted that the weapons may not exist. "We don't know what happened," he told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "It is also possible that [Saddam's government] decided they would destroy them prior to a conflict."

What Mr Rumsfeld did not discuss was when the weapons might have been destroyed - immediately before the war, or long beforehand (as suggested by Iraqi defectors, who said as long ago as 1995 that they had been destroyed). Experts also doubt that, in the past few weeks or months, Iraq could have got rid of chemical and germ warfare stockpiles of the size alleged by Bush officials, without it being picked up by US and British intelligence.

Pentagon officials insist that Mr Rumsfeld broke no new ground and say that interrogations of senior Baathist officials and scientists will lead to the weapons' whereabouts. But his remarks may fuel the debate on whether the American public was sold the war on a false premise. As post-war reconstruction falters and US soldiers continue to die (four in recent days) at the hands of snipers and ambushers, questions are starting to be asked.

On Capitol Hill, in particular, scepticism is growing, despite a reluctance by Democrats to challenge Mr Bush on a national security issue that plays to a popular President's strengths. "This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time," said Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

The quality of the intelligence is to be looked at by a CIA-led team. This was suggested as long ago as October, with the aim of monitoring the process leading up to a war in Iraq, which even then seemed likely.

Intriguingly, the prime instigator of the investigation was Mr Rumsfeld who, disappointed by the lukewarm findings of the CIA, set up an intelligence unit inside his office to assess the Iraq threat. This body is known to have relied heavily on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress exile group, led by Ahmed Chalabi, long the preferred choice of the Pentagon and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, to lead post-Saddam Iraq.

Whether the initiative will uncover the truth remains to be seen. The involvement of Mr Rumsfeld has been memorably likened by Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, to "O J [Simpson] vowing to find the real killers" of his wife.

Even so, the controversy is unlikely to assume the proportions it has in Britain unless Iraq descends into anarchy and substantial numbers of US troops are lost. At present, complaints are directed at the shortcomings of the Pentagon's post-war planning, and the inadequate number of American soldiers in Iraq to restore order.

More than 100,000 troops are said to be in the country. But experts say at least double that will be needed. Weeks before the war, General Eric Shinseki, the outgoing army chief of staff, told a congressional panel that "several hundred thousand" troops would be required to keep the post-war peace. General Shinseki was slapped down by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, as "way off the mark". But he may have been right.