IRAQ: Top officials in the Bush administration have rejected accusations that they exaggerated threats posed by Iraq's weapons, calling the charges "outrageous" and the results of "revisionist history".
Appearing on morning news programmes yesterday, the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, and the National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, said there was broad consensus in the intelligence community that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and they believed that intelligence was sound.
"We have no doubt whatsoever that over the last several years, they have retained such weapons or retained the capability to start up production of such weapons," Mr Powell said on CNN. "We also know they are masters of deceit and masters of hiding these things and so a little patience is required."
He said it "really somewhat outrageous on the part of some critics to say that this was all bogus".
Critics asking whether the administration used faulty or manipulated intelligence as grounds for war point to a Defence Intelligence Agency report from September 2002, disclosed last week, which said the agency did not have enough "reliable information" on Iraq's alleged chemical weapons.
Mr Powell and Ms Rice said that quote was taken out of context.
According to Saturday's Washington Post, the report said that "although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical agent in chemical munitions" and "probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and VX", a deadly nerve agent.
Ms Rice said on ABC that a national intelligence estimate in October, which the DIA signed, said Iraq probably had as much as 100 to 500 tonnes of chemical agents. "There's a very large body of evidence here that connects together to paint a picture of a very dangerous regime with very dangerous weapons that had deceived the world for 12 years, that had allowed international sanctions to stay on, rather than come clean about what it was doing," she said.
Meanwhile, Mr Alastair Campbell, the British Prime Minister's director of communications and strategy, has promised the British secret service that Downing Street would take more care in presenting intelligence material to the public after a damaging row over a dossier on Iraq's weapons.
A Downing Street spokesman said the document failed to make clear the source of some of the information which was used to back the government's case for war.
The spokesman denied that Mr Campbell had apologised for embarrassing the security service by "sexing up" the February dossier, but the admission that he had written to Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of the MI6, will fuel the case of Mr Tony Blair's opponents who say the Iraq war was illegal and unjustified.
"He assured the heads of \ agencies that far greater care would be taken on work that could impact on their own reputation or work," the Downing Street spokesman said.
Sparks first flew when it was discovered that chunks of the report - Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation - had come from a student's 2002 thesis, which itself leaned heavily on documents more than a decade old.
It has returned to haunt Mr Blair as pressure mounts for him to show evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which he said justified war. Weeks after war ended, none has yet been found.
The Observer yesterday reported that Britain's intelligence services were reviewing whether two mobile laboratories found in Iraq were designed to make agents for biological weapons.