McCain picked for Iraq intelligence probe

4.30pm

WASHINGTON - President George W Bush is expected to name Arizona Republican senator John McCain to a bipartisan commission that will investigate flaws in US intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, Republican sources said today.

Bush is expected to announce the establishment of the commission on Friday with a timetable of reporting back next year, after the November election.

McCain is a maverick who opposed Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and is known for speaking his mind and taking on the administration.

He would lend a streak of independence to a commission that Democrats doubted would be independent since its nine members are being picked by Bush rather than by Congress.

Republican sources said McCain was offered the post by the White House on Thursday and accepted. He will not be in Washington for the announcement. Aides said he was in Germany attending a security conference.

Bush, initially cool to the idea, agreed to an independent investigation under pressure from Republicans, including McCain, and Democrats on Capitol Hill after David Kay, former chief US weapons hunter in Iraq, said he found no evidence of stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq and that prewar intelligence was almost all wrong.

Kay was at the White House on Thursday for talks with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice about Iraq. He had lunch with Bush on Monday.

Claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were the main reason cited by Bush for the war, in which more than 500 US troops have died.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq