PRESIDENT BUSH insisted yesterday that US forces would reveal that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction as he tried to douse growing doubts about the credibility of American intelligence.

George Soros, the influential multibillionaire philanthropist, launched a scathing attack on the Administration. He accused the White House of abusing its powers in response to the September 11 attacks and announced that he would be sharply increasing his work in the United States to redress the threat to civil liberties.

“Iraq had a weapons programme. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons programme,” Mr Bush said. “I am absolutely convinced, with time, we’ll find out that they did have a weapons programme.”

However, he stopped short of his previous assertions that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had posed an imminent threat. Nor did he say that the United States would uncover biological and chemical agents.

Instead, he sought to justify the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds, saying: “History in time will prove that the United States made the absolute right decision in freeing the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein.”

His comments came as the White House was forced on the back foot on several fronts, with the use of US intelligence to justify the war under growing scrutiny.

George Soros, the influential multibillionaire philanthropist, launched a scathing attack on the Administration. He accused the White House of abusing its powers in response to the September 11 attacks and announced that he would be sharply increasing his work in the United States to redress the threat to civil liberties.

“The current US Administration is abusing its power by trying to increase that power instead of using it to try to create a more peaceful and equitable world,” he said. His foundation would be reducing its activity in Russia to concentrate more on the improper extension of government powers in the US.

Democrats sharpened their accusations that the Bush Administration manipulated US intelligence ahead of the Iraq war. Carl Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who was briefed by the CIA before the war, said that the issue was now mired in doubt. “All I am confident of is this: there is significant evidence that the intelligence was shaded in order to support a policy.”

Mr Levin said that he had been satisfied by the CIA that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that US forces might yet uncover some evidence — “But that is a separate issue from whether or not the intelligence relating to those weapons was shaded to support a particular position. It was a certainty which was stated by the Administration, where the evidence is that there was not certainty.”

Mr Levin spoke as White House officials dodged reports that they had exaggerated the links between al-Qaeda and Saddam. Abu Zubeida, the network’s chief planner, told interrogators last year that Osama bin Laden had ruled out any collaboration with Saddam, The New York Times reported.

Last night, it emerged that the American units charged with tracking down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties. After nearly three months of fruitless searches, the teams are waiting for a fresh influx of Pentagon intelligence experts to take over. They will rely more on following leads from interviews and documents.

The President was warned of the scale of the trouble he would face if it emerged that the intelligence behind the war had been twisted. “This is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison,” John W. Dean, President Nixon’s White House lawyer, said. “To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked.” The White House actions could be “a high crime” under the Constitution’s impeachment clause.

Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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