President Bush is not known for his eloquence, but that does not excuse the general failure of his rhetoric to support the invasion of Iraq.

He continually harped on the idea that Saddam had a significant unconventional weapons program and now, after the curtain has risen from Iraq and very little evidence can be found to support that, there has been significant erosion of support for this important battle in the war on terror.

His alarmist attitude is understandable after the events of Sept. 11, but they are not excusable for the leader of the free world. Further, it is detrimental when the intelligence agencies that should be busy protecting the United States from terror are distracted by a mission to produce evidence that confirms Bush’s false vision.

Bush and company made a strong argument about the threat of unconventional weapons in Iraq and their potential use on the United States. While Saddam’s lack of cooperation with the United Nations inspectors suggested he was hiding something, it didn’t amount to irrefutable proof that he possessed illegal weapons. In fact, Saddam had reason to keep U.N. sanctions on Iraq other than to hide weapons.

In a presentation in the Sun Room more than a year ago, Rehan Mullick, who was in Iraq overseeing the implementation of the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, clearly showed by examining the granting and distribution of aid that Saddam was stockpiling supplies for himself while starving the country.

Ironically, the U.N. sanctions were working to strengthen Saddam’s grip on the country, not weaken it.

While Saddam did have motivation other than hiding unconventional weapons to hinder inspections, this also does not prove that he didn’t have them. All of his weapons that he possessed at the start of the 1991 war were never accounted for by U.N. inspections.

Obviously, it is extremely unlikely that Saddam, a pathological dictator, would take it upon himself to destroy illegal weapons after the U.N. inspectors left, although it might be possible that he used some on the former inhabitants of Iraq’s many mass graves.

These facts do not lead to a clear conclusion but rather a clear question: Where are those weapons that are unaccounted for, and has Saddam been able to produce or distribute any unconventional weapons since the U.N. inspectors left Iraq?

Given the events of Sept. 11, would one want that question answered by the less than credible United Nations, the United States and allied forces, or simply by waiting out the next 50 years to see if an unconventional bomb is detonated in New York City? At least Bush came to the correct conclusion on this most important of matters.

However, because of his poor decision in stressing the presence of unconventional weapons in Iraq, the business of answering the question has turned into the business of proving Bush right. This became apparent with the CIA release of a summary concluding that the army found a mobile bioweapons lab.

In this release, the CIA shows how an informant gave information on a mobile bioweapons lab and then differentiated between photos of the lab and false ones. It then explains how the mobile lab consists of three trailers, each performing a specific function for the production of weapons grade anthrax.

Interestingly, the fact that only two of the three trailers were found on the site seems an afterthought in the report.

The CIA then concludes the trailers were part of a mobile bioweapons lab because a ‘fermenter’ was cleaned with a caustic cleaning agent (indicative of trying to destroy evidence of bioweapons), and was connected to an air compressor (indicating they were trying to hide the gases released by growth). Unfortunately, this conclusion appears to be wishful thinking when it is subjected to more detailed scrutiny.

First, the two trailers do not contain any items that would clearly differentiate a British system that is used for producing hydrogen for artillery weather balloons in the field and a system for growing weapons-grade anthrax.

The third trailer, which is proposed to contain an autoclave (equivalent to a pressure cooker used to sterilize media for pure cultures) and a spray dryer (used to make the weapons grade anthrax spores), would have clearly indicated a bioweapons lab.

Again, when all the facts are examined, we are led to a question, not a conclusion. It is conceivable that trailers could have been used for either function, but the CIA’s conclusion seems more an attempt to support Bush’s rhetoric than a confirmation of Saddam’s unconventional weapons capabilities. One would think the CIA would be more concerned with finding terrorists than affecting public opinion given the failure of Sept. 11.

The worst part is Bush could have easily avoided the dilemma by focusing on what we know and not imperfect intelligence reports. The threat of weapons of mass destruction was not that Saddam definitely had them but that he would have been willing to use them on the United States in a terrorist attack.

It doesn’t matter if we found one warhead or a thousand. What mattered was overthrowing a dictator who had the outspoken will to strike at the United States.

In a brief to the Chair of Armed Services Committee, Gen. Wesley Clark, when commenting on Saddam’s actions in 1994, said, “It was a signaled warning that Saddam Hussein is not only malevolent and violent but he is also to some large degree unpredictable at least to U.S.”

Saddam was a ticking time bomb akin to al-Qaida who didn’t even need unconventional weapons to kill 3,000 innocent civilians. It doesn’t matter how much time was left on the clock when we overthrew him.