Message Board

Is the US acting as a sole superpower by snubbing UN? Post your views

Washington: As the controversy over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction rages, the White House has said President George W Bush and his National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice did not "entirely read" the most authoritative pre-war assessment of intelligence, including State Department's claim that report on Baghdad's programme was "highly dubious".

In an unusual step, the White House has released intelligence documents intended to prove that Bush did not exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq before the war.

The excerpts from a classified October 2002 intelligence document indicated that the six American intelligence agencies believed that there was "compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons programme".

The document also pointed out the dissent expressed by the State Department's intelligence arm, which had said that evidence did not "add up to a compelling case" that Iraq was making a comprehensive effort to get nuclear weapons and that Bush's claim that Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger was "highly dubious".

The claim has been discredited by the UN as being based on forgeries and the White House has admitted it was a mistake to include the claim in Bush's state of the Union address. The head if the Central Investigative Agency (CIA) has taken the blame.

A senior White House administration officer, who briefed reporters on the report's release, also pointed out that neither Bush nor national security advisor Condoleeza Rice read the National Intelligence estimate, the classified 90-page summary, in its entirety.

PTI