As British and US teams continue their as yet fruitless searches for proof of Iraq's firepower, US President George W. Bush continues to maintain there were weapons of mass destruction.

But some former officials, experts and lawmakers believe the failure to find them could damage the administration.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a national security adviser in the Carter administration, said the public had a right to ask whether US intelligence agencies were misinformed or had been pressured into making exaggerated claims and "whether the top policy-makers knew that they were vastly exaggerating the facts."

"What is clear is that the assertions by our top policy-makers, from the president down, to the effect that Iraq was a powerful threat armed with extremely dangerous weapons, was not accurate," Brzezinski said. "American global credibility has been badly hurt."

Similar sentiments were expressed by others who fear that the United States may not be believed in future.

"If you have a doctrine of pre-emption, which says you can go into a place based on imminent threat, and if the president is serious about that...then you really have to be sure that your intelligence is very, very good," Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday. "And your intelligence has to stand on its own."

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday the American people need to know how the intelligence was handled regarding Iraq before they can be asked to trust other intelligence as a basis for future military action. "The stakes here are huge," Levin said. "It's not just looking backward. It's looking forward to Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and other issues we are going to face."

Such comments from Democrats often are connected with demands for an investigation of how intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq. Republicans counter that no evidence of wrongdoing exists and there is no need yet for an inquiry that goes much beyond routine overview.

Bush has tried to rebut the criticisms by stressing that the main outcome of the war, removal of Saddam from the presidency, was a good thing. "The credibility of this country is based upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful, and the world is now more peaceful after our decision," the president said on Monday.

Leslie Gelb, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who previously served in top Pentagon and State Department posts in the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, said he was among those who believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them. But, Gelb said in an interview, it was clear the intelligence backing that up did not amount to a smoking gun.

Sometimes, intelligence agencies can succumb to pressure; it happened during the Cold War, Gelb said. The CIA sometimes exaggerated former Soviet Union military power under political pressure; political leaders sometimes turned carefully worded intelligence statements into "political swords."

In the case of Iraq, Gelb said, "the exaggeration was of greater importance" -- it was used for going to war. "There is a difference between what they did in the past and saying they have a nuclear program and are ready to use it," Gelb said.

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former National Security Council and State Department official, said the Bush administration had "taken a blow" in that people were trying to discredit the military outcome of the war as well as the administration.

"They are trying to paint the administration as a rogue state, in effect," said Sonnenfeldt. "It's an awkward situation for the administration," he added.

(China Daily June 13, 2003)