An Israeli view of WMD in Iraq...

Virtually every intelligence service said there were WMD and Saddam himself told King Abdullah of Jordon that he has WMD.

And here is what he said about other intelligence services, including those of Israel: "When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction." Indeed, many top intelligence and army officials in Israel still insist: "We said this at the time and we were not mistaken. The Americans are the ones who are making the mistake now."

Here is an interesting version that does not worry the public in Israel, in the absence of a public debate over the war in Iraq. These senior officials, who are intimately familiar with Israeli intelligence material, still believe that Iraq really did have weapons of mass destruction. Not nuclear weapons, of course. Israel never made this claim. The Americans indeed erred in inflating the insubstantial information on nuclear plans. But there were chemical and biological weapons. And if the Americans have decided otherwise, especially for political reasons, they are now making a second error on top of the first error.

Some of these officials have shared their views with their American contacts. "Why didn't we find the weaponry?" the Americans asked. The Israelis told them politely: because most of it was transferred to Syria before the war. Such suspicions have been openly published. All the intelligence services in the West are familiar with photographs of trucks sneaking across the border at night, accompanied by senior Iraqi officers. The problem is that the moment Israel turns an accusatory finger toward Syria, it is immediately suspected of ulterior, political motives. "They can think whatever they want," an Israeli officer says. "Perhaps it is impossible to change their opinion, but it is also impossible to change the truth. Material was transferred to Syria in the dark of the night, on the very eve of the war. Therefore, the Americans did not find it." And this, as suggested above, is the more polite explanation.

The other explanation is expressed in more intimate circles in order to avoid irritating the American friend. But in the course of two weeks, I heard it from three different Israelis who were in positions that had access to intelligence during the war. Some of them are still serving in such positions. "They simply don't know how to search properly," said one. "Do you know how they searched? The forces were sent to a certain location and went into the field without a serious intelligence escort. If there was nothing found under the rock at this location, they simply went home, without bothering to turn over the adjacent rock," another said.