US scales down: Arms to arms 145;program146;

Faced with the awkward possibility that no significant cache of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, the Bush administration is recasting its earlier predictions by insisting evidence will emerge that Saddam Hussein at least had a 8216;8216;program8217;8217; for such weapons. The US President used the term 8216;8216;program8217;8217; in three consecutive sentences on the issue on Monday.

8216;8216;Iraq had a weapons program,8217;8217; Bush told reporters. 8216;8216;Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced, with time, we8217;ll find out that they did have a weapons program.8217;8217;

And National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on NBC8217;s 8216;8216;Meet the Press8217;8217; on Sunday asserted such weapons will be found but it would take some time 8216;8216;to put together a full picture of his WMD programs8217;8217;. Even intelligence officials are talking more broadly of 8216;8216;programs8217;8217;.

Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, confirmed on Friday that a DIA report in September concluded that the agency 8216;8216;had no reliable information8217;8217; that Iraq had chemical weapons. He insisted, though, that 8216;8216;such a program existed 8230; such a program was active and such a program was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure.8217;8217;

Critics contend that the word 8216;8216;program8217;8217; is too imprecise to be meaningful. 8216;8216;It can mean anything,8217;8217; said Mel Goodman, a retired CIA analyst. 8216;8216;It can mean documents, anything; no matter how benign, they will find some purpose for it.8217;8217;

Rice, in denying that the administration had hyped intelligence to rally support for an invasion, also echoed another new administration theme: that what it had said was similar to what the two previous administrations had said, and that all three based their conclusions on what the CIA was telling them. 8216;8216;Successive CIA directors, successive administrations, have known that we had every reason to judge that he had WMDs,8217;8217; she said on Sunday.

Bush repeated that theme Monday when he said the intelligence had changed little throughout the 1990s. Yet W. Patrick Lang, former chief of West Asia intelligence at DIA, says he believes Saddam at some point during that decade may have temporarily put the weapons program on a shelf. 8216;8216;If sanctions were lifted, if he could get out from under the rock, he would probably want to reactivate it,8217;8217; he said.

Rice said one of the key documents Bush relied on in assessing conditions in Iraq was a classified report prepared by the intelligence community in October that concluded that Iraq 8216;8216;has weapons of mass destruction8217;8217;.

An unclassified CIA public 8216;8216;white paper8217;8217; derived from that report also concludes in its summary that Iraq 8216;8216;has chemical and biological weapons8217;8217; and 8216;8216;has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents8217;8217;.

But the section of the report that provides backup for these conclusions does not support them. In more equivocating language, it says Iraq 8216;8216;probably has concealed precursors, production equipment 8230; and other items necessary for continuing its chemical warfare effort8217;8217;.

The September DIA report says the intelligence is even murkier. 8216;8216;There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has 8212; or will 8212; establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities,8217;8217; according to six paragraphs that were declassified from the approximately 80-page report. LAT-WP