June 10, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 9, 1424

WASHINGTON, June 9: Top officials of the Bush administration were on the defensive on Monday as demands for a full-blown congressional inquiry into Iraqi weapons of mass destruction gained momentum.

The demand for the inquiry follows media reports that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

“The nation’s credibility is on the line, as well as that of the President,” said Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, while supporting the demand for “a full-blown congressional investigation.”

“This nation has got to lead in this world. If we’re going to really lead in a war against terrorism, we must have people who believe in us, who, when we say that something is true, believe that it is true.”

Senator Levin said there’s “real doubt now” whether the Bush administration’s claims about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were true. There’s too much evidence that intelligence was shaded, he added.

The demand, however, was rejected by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is from the ruling Republican Party. “A congressional investigation of how intelligence was used in the run-up to the war is premature,” he said.

Instead, he said, the committee would conduct a “review” of pre-war intelligence documents provided by the CIA.

But the committee’s vice chairman, John D. Rockefeller, disagreed. “I strongly disagree with the notion that we should wait to decide on a formal investigation until we complete a review of CIA documents regarding WMD and Iraq,” said Senator Rockefeller, who is a Democrat.

“Reviewing documents from the CIA is only one step. This limited approach clearly falls short of the important oversight responsibilities entrusted to the members of this committee.”

Responding to the demands for a full congressional inquiry, White House officials are saying that the administration did not hype intelligence about the threat from Iraq’s suspected weapons.

The absence so far of a “smoking gun,” they say, does not mean that there are no WMDs in Iraq.

But their opponents point out that it’s been two months since the fighting in Iraq ended and the US forces are yet to find any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

“Iraqis have had weapons throughout their history. They have used chemical weapons. They have acknowledged that they had biological weapons. And they never accounted for all that they had or what they might or might not have done with it,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Fox News.

Mr Powell told reporters that the paper trail and interviews with Iraqis involved in the weapons programmes would lead to the discovery of evidence. He said the media, not the American people, were calling the pre-war intelligence bogus.

“How can it be bogus when I can show you pictures of people that were gassed by Saddam Hussein? I can show you reports from UN inspectors all through the 1990s that demonstrated that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr Powell asked.

He also dismissed allegations that Vice President Dick Cheney, during several visits to the Central Intelligence Agency, applied political pressure to get intelligence officials to exaggerate their reports of the Iraqi threat.

US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also defended the Vice President saying that he was simply doing his job, when he visited CIA headquarters to make sure he knew the truth about the Iraqi weapons.

A Key opposition leader Dick Gephardt, who is also a candidate for the Democratic Party’s ticket for the next presidential elections, said he hoped the weapons would be found.

But, if President Bush, the United Nations and international leaders were “all duped, or if they didn’t have the right information, then this is the most colossal hype that ever was,” he added.