Writing in a commentary for The Washington Post last week, which was reprinted in newspapers around the country, including this one, Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the administration’s reading of the interim report of chief weapons inspector David Kay. Angered by what it viewed as the media’s skewed interpretation of the report – the press reported that Mr. Kay had not found much and certainly not the much touted weapons of mass destruction – the Bush administration pushed its own version of the report through its current favored spokesman, Secretary Powell.

According to Mr. Powell’s reading of the report, Mr. Kay’s team found “dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during inspections that began in 2002.” The smoking gun, according to the Bush administration, is that Saddam Hussein had “program activities” related to weapons of mass destruction and hid equipment. True, this was likely a violation of United Nations Resolution 1441, but that is not why the United States invaded Iraq. Secretary Powell and President Bush told the nation and the world that Saddam Hussein posed an “imminent threat” to his neighbors and others because he possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. References were made to “mushroom clouds” and weapons that could be launched in 15 minutes.

Now, after six months of looking, U.S. inspectors have come up with not real weapons capable of immediate use, but “WMD-related program activities.” No wonder many in Congress, especially Democrats, who voted for war are now feeling misled by the Bush administration.

Mr. Powell also writes that Mr. Kay’s team found “strains of organisms concealed in a scientist’s home … that could be used to produce biological agents. Kay and his team also discovered documents and equipment in scientists’ homes that would have been useful for resuming uranium enrichment efforts,” the secretary added.

The march on Baghdad, however, wasn’t predicated on what Mr. Hussein and his scientists “could” do, but on what they were likely to do, imminently. The United Nations Security Council, American television viewers and others were not told that there was evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein and his scientists had the capability to have a weapons program. They were told that Saddam Hussein possessed “some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

As evidence of Mr. Hussein’s brutality, Secretary Powell notes that he paid his respects last month to a mass grave in the northern city of Halabja where 5,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed by chemicals weapons unleashed by Mr. Hussein’s forces in March 1988. Given Mr. Powell’s outrage over this incident, it is interesting to note the reaction from Washington at the time of the gassing of thousands of women, children and men.

At first, the Reagan administration downplayed the incident, but when images of mothers holding their children curled up dead on the ground were shown on television, they condemned the attack, although first blaming it on Iran, which was then at war with Iraq. The United States supported Iraq in that battle. Shortly after the Halabja massacre, Sens. Claiborne Pell, Al Gore and Jesse Helms introduced legislation to impose sanctions on Iraq for its use of chemical weapons. The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 unanimously passed the Senate just one day after being introduced. President Reagan vetoed it and the United States continued to supply aid to Iraq.

Given the United States’ long and complicated relationship with Iraq, there is much room for confusion. But, in the runup to this year’s attacks on Baghdad, the Bush administration said there should be no confusion about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Now, months after the bombing stopped, doubts are building about such assertions.

If Secretary Powell’s lengthy newspaper column is the administration’s best response to the Iraq Survey Group’s interim report, the administration’s rationale for war is on ever more shaky ground.