United States President George Bush said tonight he was “determined to figure out why” stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction had not been found in Iraq, as he announced a commission of inquiry.

CIA director George Tenet said today Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed “no imminent threat” in the months leading up the invasion.

The weapons inspector given the task of finding Saddam Hussein’s much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction tonight declared that he had found none.

SINCE time immemorial, the doubters have always demanded signs and portents, like stars falling from heaven, to bolster their faith and as a litmus test of the good authority of the one expected to perform miracles. And so it has proved with Iraq.