Bush administration officials ‘‘systematically’’ misrepresented the danger of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programmes, which were not an immediate threat to the United States and West Asia, a report from a US think tank said on Wednesday. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in its study WMD IN IRAQ: Evidence and Implications, said there was ‘‘no convincing evidence’’ Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program and that UN inspectors had found nerve agents in Iraq’s chemical weapons programme had lost most of their lethal capability as early as 1991. On biological weapons, it said threat was related to what could be developed in the future rather than what Iraq already had. The missile programme appeared to have been in active development in 2002. It was unlikely Iraq could have destroyed, hidden, or moved out hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles, and chemical and biological weapons facilities without US detecting some sign of that activity, the report said. ‘‘Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programmes,’’ the report said. They lumped nuclear, chemical and biological weapons together as a single threat, despite the ‘‘very different’’ danger they posed, which distorted the cost-benefit analysis of the war. The US also insisted without evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would give WMDs to terrorists, it said. ‘‘There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMDs to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it.” Before 2002, US intelligence had a generally accurate reading of the weapons programmes but from 2002, ‘‘the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers’ views’’. — (Reuters)
