Blair is defiant to the end. But is the end in sight?

Tony Blair insists the weapons will be found. Never mind that the Foreign Secretary seems ready to admit they never existed. Never mind that bereaved parents say their sons were betrayed. Never mind that President Bush made false claims. Andy McSmith opens a seven-page report on how the absence of WMD is destroying the case for war

Every year brings new political expressions or phrases into the language, some of which stay around. "Weapons of mass destruction" was adopted in America after the 1991 Gulf War as a handy collective noun describing what Saddam Hussein was suspected of having and the international community thought he should not have. Ten years on, the words have become so familiar that they turn up on advertising hoardings.

A home-grown phrase which caught on very quickly is "sexed up" - something which the BBC alleged was done to intelligence material. A newer phrase used by the political class, which has not yet seeped into common use, is "tipping point". This is the moment at which there is a sudden and decisive change in the political atmosphere. For instance, Saddam Hussein's "tipping point", when he went from being the West's potential bulwark against Iran and Syria to being the main enemy in the region, was the day he invaded Kuwait.

When Tony Blair and other members of the Cabinet gathered last week for a political meeting, with no civil servants present, they were compelled to ponder whether the Labour Government had hit a "tipping point".

They were shown polling evidence that public trust both in Mr Blair personally and his government has dipped dangerously low. The Conservatives have seen similar evidence in the polls, which is why Iain Duncan Smith ritually ends every exchange he has with Tony Blair in the Commons with the same accusation: "Nobody believes a word you say any more." The biggest single reason that the public is losing its faith in Mr Blair, according to the research, is the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Last week one very well-placed source told The Independent on Sunday: "We may have reached a tipping point on the weapons of mass destruction story. Up to now, the question has been 'where are the weapons?' Now it could turn into a question of 'why don't we admit that the weapons aren't there?' The longer it goes on, the harder it will be to say 'sorry but we honestly believed at the time that Iraq had these weapons'."

It was against that background that the BBC's political editor Andrew Marr was spotted on Wednesday afternoon, looking for Jack Straw's Commons office, in the warren of little rooms off a corridor behind the Speaker's chair. That evening, Mr Marr reported on all the main news bulletins that "very senior sources" had virtually ruled out the possibility of finding weapons in Iraq. The Foreign Office has neither confirmed nor denied that Mr Marr's "very senior source" could have been the Foreign Secretary in person.

Actually, the wily Mr Straw, who has been in politics longer than almost anyone else in Cabinet, had already indicated that he does not want to mortgage his political future on the receding possibility that weapons will turn up in Iraq. His argument is that war was justified, with or without the weapons, because of the contempt that Saddam Hussein showed for the authority of the United Nations.

In his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee earlier this month, Mr Straw said: "I very much hope that, of course, we find further corroborative evidence about Saddam's chemical and biological capabilities and his nuclear plans, but whether or not we do, the decision to take military action was justified on the date 18 March."

However, if we rewind to September 2002, when the British Government first started making the case for going to war with Iraq - while saying war could still be avoided - then there was no hint of doubt that Saddam was sitting on a fearsome arsenal.

On 24 September, the Government published its dossier "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction", which it still holds up as an authoritative and accurate summary of the available intelligence. The Government's position then was "we judge that Iraq has continued to produce chemical and biological agents, [has] military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, [and] command and control arrangements in place to use chemical and biological weapons, [and has] sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

"Some of these weapons", the dossier went on to say, "are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them." A foreword personally signed by the Prime Minister added: "I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current, that he has made progress on WMD, and that he has to be stopped."

Mr Blair was even more graphic when he addressed the Commons. He warned: "His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. Saddam has continued to produce them. He has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes."

Neither did Mr Straw leave any room for doubt that Iraq had the weapons. He said: "What distinguishes Iraq from other proliferators is the nature of its intent. It is not just the fact that it has weapons of mass destruction, but that it has much greater intent to use them."

But does Mr Blair still believe Iraq has those weapons, despite the manifest failure to find them? The language he used when he appeared before the Commons Liaison Committee last week, a day ahead of Donald Rumsfeld's portentous statement that the US had no new intelligence evidence against Iraq, suggested that someone had advised the Prime Minister to cover himself for the possibility that actual weapons will never be found. Instead of weapons, the Prime Minister referred several times to weapons "programmes", as when he told MPs: "I have absolutely no doubt that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programmes."

When asked directly by the Tory MP Edward Leigh whether he was still claiming that Saddam Hussein had had the capacity to unleash weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair replied: "I believed the intelligence we had on that back in September."

A great deal could be read into that choice of the past tense, except that other remarks the Prime Minister made during the same session suggest that he is still convinced that Saddam's weaponry is out there, somewhere. "For me, the jury is not out," he asserted. Later he added: "The reason why I believe that the intelligence we put before people last September is correct is that the alternative thesis is that, having spent years obstructing the inspectors, having finally in December 1998 driven them out of the country because they could not do their work any more, he then voluntarily decided to destroy all his programmes but not tell anyone about it. That strikes me as inherently implausible."

One of the Prime Minister's political advisers, talking privately, was more explicit. The Independent on Sunday was told: "I can't understand why people who opposed the war are making so much out of weapons of mass destruction, because when they turn up, you'll have nothing left to say."

It is likely that behind Downing Street's closed doors, Mr Blair is hearing conflicting voices. Some are telling him to prepare for the awful possibility that no weapons will ever be found; others are urging him to hang on and hope for the best. What a relief it would be if the survey team in Iraq suddenly found a stockpile of anthrax or a recently abandoned chemical weapons factory; but as the weeks drag by, even the ever-optimistic Prime Minister must be beginning to think that it is not going to happen.

Knives out for CIA chief after admission on Niger

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

George Tenet, the director of the CIA, is known as a man with a laid-back demeanour and a habit of idly bouncing a basketball as he wanders the corridors of the agency's headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

But this weekend, with the row about false intelligence over Iraq's alleged efforts to buy uranium from Niger raging around him, the 50-year-old is unlikely to feel so relaxed.Indeed, having been publicly chastised by George Bush, he must be wondering how much longer he will hold the title of director of central intelligence.

Mr Tenet found himself at the centre of the growing row after Mr Bush and his senior officials claimed the CIA had approved the President's State of the Union address last January, 16 words of which repeated the claim that Iraq had "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". He said this had been discovered by the British Government. That claim - based on documents provided by the Italian intelligence services - was false and the documents were later found to be fake.

Even as Mr Bush's speech was being prepared, the US intelligence community had largely dismissed the Niger claim. The CIA had requested that the British Government drop it from its dossier of evidence published in September 2002 and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, chose not to mention it when he addressed the UN a week later.

But speaking to reporters in Africa this week, Mr Bush said his speech "was cleared by the intelligence services". His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the CIA had "cleared the speech in its entirety".

She added: "If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone, without question.''

Late on Friday, Mr Tenet issued an extraordinary statement in which he said he was "responsible for the approval process in [his] agency". It seems clear that Mr Tenet, who is said to have a close relationship with Mr Bush, briefing him on intelligence matters every morning, is being lined up as a scapegoat.

There were many who felt he was lucky to keep his job after critics rounded on the CIA for not having prevented the terror attacks of 11 September. Now the knives are out for him again. Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA."

The son of Greek immigrants, who grew up in a blue-collar neighbourhood in New York, Mr Tenet is not going without a fight. In his statement he said that "for perspective, a little history is in order" and went on to outline how the agency had repeatedly warned that intelligence for the Niger claim was "fragmentary". As a result of this, the claim was not included in an unclassified CIA White Paper published last October.

He added: "For the same reason the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and [Mr Powell's] UN presentation. The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words made it into the State of the Union speech."

Quite how the claim entered the speech remains unclear. Reports yesterday suggested the decision was taken after a conversation between Robert Joseph, a nuclear proliferation expert at the national security council, and Alan Foley, a CIA official with similar expertise. Exactly what the two men said to each other is unknown. Some unnamed administration officials said Mr Joseph had pressured the CIA man to authorise the claim, while others said he had done no such thing.

Washington is gripped by the claims and counter-claims, by the administration's attempt to shift the blame and by the whispers from anonymous sources making their way into the newspapers.

Whether the public is well-served by this is another matter. The lacklustre Democrats have finally woken from their political slumber and are demanding a full, open inquiry into the claims made to the American people in the preparation for war. Perhaps only then will it become clear just who wrote those 16 all important words and who placed them in the mouth of the President.