British officials say Saddam was duped over WMD

London, Dec. 24: Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been hoodwinked by lower-ranking officers into believing that his forces were equipped with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), British officials claimed.

The theory is the result of an attempt to find what one official source called a "logical reason" why no chemical and biological weapons had been found in Iraq, the "Guardian" reported on Wednesday.

According to the theory doing the rounds in Whitehall, the Iraqi officers did not want to tell their superiors that the weapons were either destroyed or no longer usable, the report said.

The trouble for Britain was, the theory goes, that MI6’s informants were the senior officials close to Saddam — with the result that British intelligence was also hoodwinked, it said.

The hypothesis is open to the interpretation that the government is searching for an excuse, however an implausible one, for failure to discover any WMDs in Iraq.

"A delicious irony if true" is how it was described by Gary Samore of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Samore said British officials were "trying to figure out why Saddam behaved in such an irrational fashion". He said it was possible that Britain or the US had captured documents written by Iraqi officers, and sent to Saddam, making exaggerated claims about Iraq’s WMD programme. (PTI)