Washington ? The Bush administration’s inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — after public statements declaring an imminent threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — has begun to harm the credibility abroad of the United States and of American intelligence, according to foreign policy experts in both parties.

In last year’s State of the Union address, President Bush used stark imagery to make the case that military action was necessary. Among other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough anthrax to “kill several million people,” enough botulinum toxin to “subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure.”

Now, as the president prepares for this State of the Union address Tuesday, those frightening images of death and destruction have been replaced by a new reality: Few of the many claims made by the administration have been confirmed after months of searching by weapons inspectors.

Within the United States, Bush does not appear to have suffered much political damage from the failure to find weapons, with polls showing high ratings for his handling of the war and little concern that he misrepresented the threat.

But a range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the war, said the long-term consequences of the administration’s rhetoric could be severe overseas — especially because the war was waged without the backing of the United Nations and was opposed by large majorities.

“The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious,” said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between the administration’s rhetoric and the postwar findings threatened Bush’s doctrine of “preemption,” which envisions attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat.

Already, in the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, China has rejected U.S. intelligence that North Korea has a secret program to enrich uranium for use in weapons. China is a key player in resolving the North Korean standoff, but its refusal to embrace the U.S. intelligence has disappointed U.S. officials.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the same problem could occur if the United States presses for action against alleged weapons programs in Iran and Syria. The solution, he said, is to let international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency take the lead in making the case, as has happened thus far in Iran, and also to be willing to share more intelligence with other countries.

The inability to find suspected weapons “has to make it more difficult on some future occasion if the United States argues the intelligence warrants something controversial, like a preventive attack,” Haass said. “The result is we’ve made the bar higher for ourselves, and we have to expect greater skepticism in the future.”