Six weeks after the fall of Saddam, there's still no sign of those weapons of mass destruction. Nick Morrison asks if we were conned into going to war - and what that means for Tony Blair.

WITH the most formidable military power the world has ever seen massing on his borders, Saddam Hussein decides to destroy the one chance he has of injecting a little fear into the enemy's ranks. After more than ten years of obstruction and denials, the dictator voluntarily does away with the very reason he has been targeted - but doesn't feel moved to tell anybody about it.

At least, that's what it seems US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would have us believe, when he acknowledged last week for the first time that Iraq may have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the US launched its offensive.

It was these weapons of mass destruction - a phase previously unknown but now so familiar - which provided the justification for ousting Saddam. His possession of these WMDs posed a "clear and imminent" threat to Saddam's own people, his neighbours, and, heaven knows, the West. The threat was so pressing, there was no time to let the UN weapons inspectors finish their search.

But several weeks on, the WMDs have been obstinately refusing to appear. Some documents have turned up, and two trailers which could have been used to produce biological weapons. That's 'could have been'. So far, it doesn't exactly amount to a hill of beans.

Tony Blair said yesterday that he was "100 per cent" behind the Government's claims over Saddam's weapons programme, but the pressure is mounting. Former Cabinet minister Clare Short accused the Prime Minister of "duping" the public and misleading MPs, and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has called for an independent inquiry into why we went to war.

Rumblings of disquiet among backbench Labour MPs have turned into open questioning. Redcar MP Vera Baird said backbenchers had put their trust in the Prime Minister, and it may now be hard to find support for other controversial plans, including reforms of schools and hospitals.

Perhaps most damagingly of all, relatives of some of the British servicemen killed in the Gulf have added their voices to the clamour. Ann Nichol, of Gateshead, whose son died in a helicopter crash, said if no WMDs were uncovered the war had been based on lies and Mr Blair should resign.

In a poll published yesterday, 51 per cent of respondents said they believed Iraq had WMDs. A majority, but well down on the 71 per cent who felt that way in February. Revealingly, a substantial 44 per cent felt the claims were made simply to justify the war.

But in some ways, it is hard to argue that we were conned into supporting the war, according to Pat Chilton, former professor of international relations at Sunderland University and now at the University of East Anglia. For nobody could really have believed the claim - produced in an intelligence dossier and reiterated by Mr Blair yesterday - that Saddam could have delivered his WMDs in just 45 minutes.

"Nobody suspected he had anything which could be produced, launched and on its way to this country in 45 minutes. Anybody with any knowledge at all would have known enough not to be conned by that," Prof Chilton says.

"Where he may be able to support the 45 minute claim, is that we know there was enough stuff about to go and put a chemical in a position where it would damage people in a short space of time. That is what we all know about Saddam: it isn't rocket science.

"But what Saddam didn't have, and was trying to get, was the rocket science. Making the weapons is the easy part, it is delivering them which he found difficult. So while it may be literally true, we all know that when Tony Blair said 45 minutes, that was baloney."

While uncovering the chemicals themselves is undoubtedly hard, work on developing rockets, which turn them into a real threat, can be detected through aerial reconnaissance, she says. Thus, there was perhaps not the pressing urgency to topple Saddam as President Bush and Mr Blair made out.

But while the Americans seem relaxed with the possibility that WMDs may not be discovered, for Mr Blair that is a pressing issue. The British public needed a great deal of convincing that the war was necessary, and if Mr Blair's main argument was found to be based on, at best, a misconception, then his most valuable asset - trust - will be badly damaged.

"It does not matter politically for the Americans, but Tony Blair was chancing his arm. He has got a lot of political enemies inside the Labour Party, and this is giving them a lot of strength," says Prof Chilton. "Even then, if things were going well he would have no need to worry, but put that together with problems in other areas and it could spell trouble.

"It is not often that politicians get the blame for wars that have been fought for the wrong reasons, it is usually if the war has been lost. But if these weapons don't show up, that is going to pull much harder on people's sense of trust here than it will in America."

Of course, all is not lost, and there is still time for these WMDs to be found. Indeed, given their preponderance in just about every country in the world, chances are that somebody, somewhere, will stumble across a barrel of unpleasant smelling material. It may not be quite a WMD, any more than a machine gun, but it may help to restore our faith in Mr Blair.

What they told us

Tony Blair said:

"Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked.

"He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."

House of Commons, April 10, 2002

"(Saddam's) weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing.

"The intelligence picture is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.

"It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes."

House of Commons, September 24, 2002

"The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.

"Prior to the inspectors coming back in he was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of the weapons."

House of Commons, February 25, 2003

"Iraq continues to deny that it has any WMDs, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them. We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years - contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence - Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is patently absurd."

House of Commons, March 18, 2003

They said:

"Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

President George W Bush, State of the Union address, January 29, 2003

"(Saddam) claims to have no chemical or biological weapons, yet we know he continues to hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighbourhoods."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, March 12, 2003

"It is also possible that (the Iraqis) decided they would destroy (their WMDs) prior to a conflict."

Mr Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003

"For bureaucra tic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, July issue of Vanity Fair