Australia's Daily Telegraph - Secure in conviction war's aims were true

Mr Varghese said if it turned out that there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, and in his view, that's still an "if", it's genuinely puzzling as to what happened.

A theory posited by former Clinton adviser and CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack in The Atlantic Monthly magazine is that Saddam Hussein may have scaled back his program sometime after 1994-1995 when defectors and discoveries had revealed the extent of Iraq's continued efforts to obtain WMD.

At that point, Mr Pollack argued, Saddam may have cut back his programs and even destroyed some weapons, retaining only a very limited research and development capacity while ensuring scientists were ready to resume work if sanctions were ever lifted.

Asked why Saddam didn't claim credit for destroying the weapons, he said it may have suited Saddam's purposes for his internal opponents, the Kurds and the Shias, to think he still had them, and externally it supported his image among Arab nations to be seen to thumb his nose at the US.

...As to whether he had any evidence that analysts had been pressured to present findings on Iraq in keeping with Government expectations, he said he had raised the issue with staff and had not received any sense that they felt under pressure to provide a particular line.