CIA director speaks

The ammunition that Mr. Tenet gave was of various kinds . First, he admitted that intelligence is never absolutely right or absolutely wrong which suggested that the US President was advised tentatively on the case against Saddam Hussein. Second, he admitted that WMDs have not been found and only the "intent" was revealed. Finally, and this is dangerous to the UK, he admitted that Saddam's regime never posed any immediate threat at the time of the invasion which was the main argument for Mr. Blair to take his country to war. The panellists revealed a number of interesting points. First, that containment was working in Iraq. The former chief weapon's inspector Mr. Kay's revelations before resigning that Iraq had no stockpiles of WMDs at the point of invasion strengthens this argument. Second, Saddam Hussein was not that uncooperative as the US stated and one panellist who was a UN weapons inspector said that Iraq did not allow inspection of the sites such as Presidential Palaces because among the inspectors were CIA agents who were known to be plotting to assassinate Saddam. By hindsight now, the places that Iraq did not allow inspectors to enter were places that were not even remotely related to any WMD programme and Saddam Hussein was right not to let the CIA agents in to his security areas on grounds of national and his own security. Finally, the claim by Mr. Tenet that action in Iraq encouraged Libya and Iran to cooperate with IAEA on the nuclear programme is misplaced and wrong. One panellist said that Libya was trying for the last 10 years or so to talk to the Americans to come back to the fold but without success. He just cleverly used the Iraq issue to draw the attention of the USA, which he received. Of Iran, the panellists said that Iran's decision to open its facilities was taken when the US got bogged down in Iraq and was in no position to mount an additional assault and that too only after the EU foreign ministers who had been working with Iran for a long time made a visit to Tehran.

A year ago, Mr. Tenet was leaving no one in doubt that Iraq had WMDs. In his speech, all he could say was that intelligence now available proved only Iraq's intent to posses WMDs which not only weakens the case for invasion; it destroys it. It would now be interesting to see how the US administration handles the fallout and whether Mr. Tenet becomes the fall guy. Also, we would wait to see how Mr. Blair handles Mr. Tenet's categorical assertion that Iraq was not an imminent threat when he allied with the US to invade Iraq.