THE US: Long-standing policy divisions in the Bush administration have come into the open after US chief weapons inspector Mr David Kay reported that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld testified to a Congressional committee yesterday that it was too early to conclude there were no WMD in Iraq before the war.
However US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell, who has often clashed with Mr Rumsfeld over Iraq and other issues, stated on Tuesday that he was not sure he would have recommended an invasion if he had known Saddam Hussein did not have arms stockpiles.
That would have changed the "political calculus", Mr Powell said in an interview with the Washington Post.
Mr Powell reportedly angered Mr Rumsfeld and other more hawkish members of the administration with his remark and after consultations with the White House to achieve a united front, the Secretary of State said: "The bottom line is this: the President made the right decision".
Mr Bush has yet to name the members of a bipartisan commission to examine intelligence failures, but the director of the CIA, Mr George Tenet, is planning to deliver a ground-breaking speech in Washington today defending his agency's work.
The CIA provided the assurances about the threat from Iraq's unconventional arms that the White House used to justify the March invasion.
Mr Rumsfeld hinted that the Tenet speech would make news, telling Congress it would dispel the impression of intelligence failures.
The Defence Secretary told the Senate Armed Services Committee that US weapons inspectors needed more time to reach final conclusions about WMD, and asserted that pre-war intelligence, while possibly flawed, was not manipulated by the administration to justify its war aims.
He offered several examples of "alternative views" about why no weapons have been discovered. It was "possible, but not likely" that they never existed, he said.
They might have been transferred to a third country. They might have been dispersed throughout Iraq and hidden, or destroyed before the war.
"Small quantities" of chemical or biological agents might have existed, along with a "surge capability" that would allow Iraq to build rapidly an arsenal of banned weapons, he said. He also said it was possible it was all a charade, where Saddam Hussein was "tricked" by his own staff into believing he had banned weapons.
Mr Bush also went on the offensive yesterday, proclaiming in a speech to commemorate Winston Churchill that "Iraq is no longer a grave and gathering threat to free nations - it is a free nation."
The White House reluctantly agreed yesterday to extend by 60 days the deadline for the commission investigating the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
The commission said it needed the extra time to conduct interviews and review documents.