WASHINGTON, October 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Iraq had possessed no weapons of mass destruction before the US-British invasion of the oil-rich country, a new official report by American inspectors has concluded.

The report came as a decisive evidence discrediting US President George W. Bush’s justification for attacking the country, which has the world’s second largest oil reserves.

“In terms of getting rid of weapons, by the end of 1991 they had gotten rid of just about everything,” read the report, drafted by top US weapons inspector in Iraq Charles Duelfer and carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP) Wednesday, October 6.

In a report of more than 1,000 pages, Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, concluded that Saddam destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had “progressively decayed.”

Although Duelfer, in testimony before a Senate panel Wednesday said that Saddam would have sought to rebuild his arsenal, he found the ousted Iraqi leader to be not representing any immediate danger.

If there was any risk posed by Saddam it was years in the future, far from the immediate danger US officials insisted Saddam posed in building their case for the invasion, he added.

Duelfer said that after 15 months of searching he did not expect to find “militarily significant” weapons stocks in Iraq.

The inspector said that some small finds had been made of chemical and nerve agents dating from before 1991.

“Despite these reports and finds, I still do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq,” Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The report said the Baghdad regime's main fear was neighboring Iran, but that it “had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions.”

The report is, once and for all, sweeping aside American President’s chief justification for launching the invasion of Iraq -- that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The report is “a 180-degree difference from what the (Bush) administration was saying before the war,” Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the committee that heard Duelfer's testimony.

“What you're telling us is that in addition to having no WMD stocks before the war ... Saddam chose not to have those weapons,” Levin said.

“The fundamental conclusion of the ISG effort means that the administration's two major arguments for going to war against Iraq were incorrect,” Levin said.

Senator John Kerry, the Democratic contender for the White House, has called the invasion, “the wrong war at the wrong time” because it diverted attention from the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Kerry campaign strategist Mike McCurry said the Duelfer report presents “a very significant commentary on the mistaken case for war presented by this administration.”

“It is very troubling they could have been so wrong when it comes to something as fundamental as taking the country to war,” he added.

However, without mentioning the report, Bush Wednesday reacted to the report with defiance.

“After September 11, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light,” Bush told an election rally at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Bush said: “There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after September 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”

Still, Bush has now had several rebukes this week of his Iraq war justification and strategy, which is a key issue in the November 2 presidential election.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday, October 4, he had seen no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda.

Paul Bremer, the former US civilian administrator in Iraq, admitted for the first time that there were not enough US troops to secure the country when he arrived in May 2003.

The 9/11 Commission report into the deadly attacks on Washington and New York in 2001 has already concluded that Iraq had no part in the strikes on New York and Washington.

The ISG's verdict has been widely anticipated since the former head of the group, David Kay, resigned in January, and following the leaking of a draft copy of the report last month.

Commenting on Duelfer’s report, Blix said Wednesday he hoped British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bush would now admit that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

“Had we had a few months more [of inspections before the war], we would have been able to tell both the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction [at] all the sites that they had given to us,” he said, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.