President Bush himself now says that so-called weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq. But he’s not yet willing to concede that perhaps Saddam Hussein was telling the truth when he said he had none. Rather, the president suggests that Hussein destroyed or removed the weapons before or during the war. But the source for that information is an unnamed Iraqi scientist who is being kept from the press.

That is suspicious. So is White House spokesman Ari Fleischer’s statement that locating weapons will require cooperation from those who were involved in their production, “not on finding something by bumping into it.” That choice of words was clearly intended to give the impression that American forces are blindly stumbling around Iraq looking for needles in a haystack the size of California.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As the Associated Press explained, “Troops on the ground have searched more than 80 sites that prewar U.S. intelligence judged the likeliest hiding places for chemical and biological weapons as well as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. After a recent strategy shift, teams are now setting aside the search list and deciding where to go more on the basis of new information from Iraqis.”

In other words, U.S. forces are looking for weapons using the latest information gathered by the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus ever assembled. And all they have come up with are pesticides, food-testing trucks, and lots of American cash.

Backpedaling is also seen from President’s Bush’s chief ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. His government was quoted the other day claiming that it was never said that Hussein had unconventional weapons in a ready-to-use state, only that he had the means of making such weapons. That is a bald-faced lie. When Blair spoke to Parliament many months ago to unveil his supposed “smoking gun” dossier on Hussein’s misbehavior, he asserted that the terrible weapons could be ready to use on 45 minutes’ notice.

Do Bush and Blair really think no one will remember what they said only a short time ago? Fortunately, the “memory hole” of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four hasn’t come to the United States yet.

No one can predict what will be found in Iraq tomorrow, so speculation is pointless. But we do know some things. We know that Hussein’s forces did not use chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in the recent war, just as they did not use them in the 1991 war. We also know that, to date, no such weapons or weapons factories have been found. The idea that during the American buildup to the war, Hussein had the weapons destroyed or moved to Syria strains credulity. Does the administration expect us to believe that this could go on without the knowledge of the vaunted American intelligence community? If so, the American taxpayers, who have sunk trillions of dollars into that complex of organizations, have been taken for a ride.

It is an understatement to say that much of the world is on the edge of its seat waiting for the United States to come up with something. Even former American military brass say finding nothing will be a major embarrassment for the Bush administration. It will certainly make the put-downs of Hans Blix and his UN inspectors look silly. Imagine if the U.S. forces do no better than the people often portrayed as bumbling Inspector Clouseaus.

Bush and his team, however, seem to know how to hedge a bet. At some point during the war, they artfully changed the focus from finding unconventional weapons to liberating the Iraqis. I say “artfully” because they could never have built popular support in America for the war had the only rationale been ending Hussein’s brutal regime. But once having won the support, the administration subtly shifted the rationale to that mission.

Americans, of course, feel good in the role of liberator, even if the government has no constitutional authority to play it. So if no weapons are found, they may not notice. They’ll be too busy watching Bush campaign commercials showing that falling statue of Saddam Hussein.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine and author of “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East since World War II and the Folly of Intervention.”