Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made the case to the world that pre-war Iraq had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said on Monday he now thought WMDs will probably never be found. He told lawmakers, “I think it’s unlikely that we will find any stockpiles,”

Powell was responding to questions about the intelligence behind his Feb. 5, 2003, U.N. Security Council speech laying out U.S. arguments for the invasion of Iraq that began six weeks later. Powell’s latest comments appear to be his most explicit to date suggesting that the central argument for President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was false. On Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Powell said he had seen “nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9-11 attacks. Asked how he believes Sen. John Kerry would respond to a terrorist attack, Powell said, “I can’t tell you how he might respond to it. As commander in chief, I think he’d respond to it in a robust way.” NBC’s Tim Russert, using language similar to a question President Bush had posed about Kerry regarding the former Iraqi leader, asked Powell if he “knew today that Saddam did not have these weapons of mass destruction, would you still advocate an invasion?”

Powell did not answer directly, but said, “I would have to look at the total picture, and we’d have to sit down and talk about his intention to have such weapons.”