BAD NEW DAYS

IF the American election was being fought on ascertainable facts on current issues, rather than allegations over a war that ended thirty years ago, President Bush would surely take a deep drop in the opinion polls this weekend. The situation in Iraq is bad and getting worse and the justification for going to war on account of the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has just been holed below the water line. Two reports circulating in Washington in the past two days have shown that: there was no evidence that Iraq had started any large-scale programme of weapons production at the time of the US/UK invasion last year; the prospects for Iraq to the end of 2005 range from civil war at worst to a tenuous stability in political, economic and security terms at best.
The conclusion about the absence of weapons of mass destruction is contained in the final draft of a report by the Iraq Study Group; it is the same conclusion as was contained in the earlier draft report of October 2003. The latest draft also says that Saddam Hussein probably intended to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons if United Nations sanctions were lifted; however,if there had been no invasion sanctions would have remained in place.
The gloomy prediction on Iraq's future comes from a classified National Intelligence estimate prepared for President Bush in late July; it casts doubt on the possibility of holding valid elections in Iraq by the target date of January 2005. It beggars belief that the President can go round the country claiming that American is winning the war of terrorism and bringing peace and security to Iraq when this document is lying on his desk.