July 14, 2003	Monday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 13, 1424

NEW YORK, July 13: The issue of Baghdad’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, a primary reason cited for the US- British led invasion of Iraq, is coming full circle to haunt the Bush administration with many calling it WMDgate.

Besides, another pre-war assertion of an alleged link between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Al Qaeda is coming under intense scrutiny.

President George Bush, who returned from his African trip, is bruised amidst charges of false assertions and reasons to go to war with some critics challenging him, saying he does not possess the ability to make decisions without the input of his advisers some of who were driven to attack Iraq even before Sept 11 tragedy.

On Sunday, the Bush administration officials led by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continued to defend president’s assertion in his State of the Union address that Iraq tried to buy uranium from African nations despite the fact that the assertion had been thoroughly discredited by the administration’s own officials.

With US causalities in Iraq mounting Mr Rumsfeld warned that attacks on US troops in Iraq might worsen this summer, but he insisted that occupation forces making progress.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to expect this to go on and there’s even speculation that during the month of July, which is an anniversary for a lot of Baathists events, we could see an increase in the number of attacks,” Mr Rumsfeld said in NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

Even though major fighting ended, Mr Rumsfeld cautioned, “we’re still in a war”. He also said American forces — now totalling about 150,000 — would likely remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Mr Rumsfeld said he was not sure that WMDs were either hidden underground somewhere in Iraq or Saddam Hussein had forced people to keep them in their houses.

Since President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat was over, 96 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq and scores of others wounded in hit-and-run attacks.

On Al Qaeda connection, Mr Bush and members of his cabinet said before war that Saddam Hussein was harbouring top Al Qaeda operatives and suggested Iraq could slip the terrorist network chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Now, two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda was never more than sketchy at best.

“There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist operation,” former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann said the other day.

Critics attacked the Bush administration’s assertions about Al Qaeda and Saddam connection for being short on corroborating evidence from the beginning.

A United Nations terrorism committee says it has no evidence — other than Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertions in his Feb 5 UN speech — of any ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

On a Sunday talk show, host John Mcloughlin opened the news programme by observing that following CIA director George Tenet’s admission that the CIA could not substantiate the charge that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from African nations the Iraq war was becoming more and more like a WMDgate.

And US officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam’s regime with Al, Qaeda.

“One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There’s not much evidence to support that linkage,” said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate.

Gen (retd) Wesley Clark, who headed US forces in Western hemisphere until a year ago and is being tipped as a presidential candidate in 2004 elections, said that even before the Sept 11 tragedy some on the Defence Department wanted to attack Iraq.

He told ABC news programme that the 9/11 tragedy was used as a reason to attack Iraq although there was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

In the weeks and months before the war, Mr Bush and administration officials repeatedly said Saddam Hussein had ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups which could provide a pathway for weapons of mass destruction to find their way to terrorists. US forces have not found any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.

“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda,” Mr Bush said in his State of the Union address in January.

“Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own,” Mr Bush said.

“There was scant evidence there had been any contact between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden,” Senator Bob Graham told reporters on Friday.