THE US: In making the case to the world for war against Iraq, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN Security Council on February 5th, 2003: "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid evidence." Conor O'Clery reports from New York
One of the most dramatic moments of his presentation came when he said that four sources had given the US information about the existence of at least seven, and possibly 18, mobile labs for making biological weapons.
A close reading of the devastating 500-page report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday, which discounted much of the CIA's pre-war intelligence, shows that Mr Powell was not only deceiving the world concerning Iraq's bio-war programme - he himself had been duped into believing the claim was credible.
In fact, all four sources he cited for the mobile laboratories claim - which Vice President Dick Cheney was still making until a few months ago - were bogus, the committee found, in particular the main informer, known as "Curveball", believed to be a close relative of Ahmed Chalabi, the now-discredited Iraqi informant for other misinformation.
Behind the scenes, as Mr Powell challenged CIA assertions, the spy agency was suppressing doubts in the intelligence community that would have weakened the US case, their report discloses.
A key US intelligence official told the Senate committee that when he read a transcript of Mr Powell's presentation prior to February 4th, he raised concerns about the mobile lab claims.
He got an e-mail reply from the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraq task force effectively telling him that the Bush administration was only going through the motions.
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about," he wrote.
The official who raised the concerns was the only intelligence agent to have interviewed Curveball, and on that one occasion he judged the Iraqi, who had been "terribly hung over", to be suspect.
The second source for the claim was deemed to be a "fabricator" inside the intelligence community; the third said the information needed more checking; and the fourth could not confirm what Curveball claimed.
Such revelations show a deeply cynical attitude within the CIA towards the information it was providing to the Bush administration to justify war to the American people and to the world.
They shed new light on the exchange in the Oval Office on December 21st, 2002, when CIA deputy director John McLaughlin made a presentation of the agency's charges against Saddam Hussein.
The President was sceptical. "Nice try," he said, as recorded in Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, but not enough to give confidence to "Joe Public".
Mr Bush then asked CIA director George Tenet: "Is this the best we've got?"
Mr Tenet replied, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk."
The Senate Intelligence Committee finds that the unconvincing case made by Mr McLauglin had been spelt out in the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), prepared by October 2nd, 2002, to make the case for war to Congress and others, but that the unclassified version, which was later made public, contained unqualified assertions that Iraq had unconventional weapons.
Both versions were available to Mr Bush, who made several categorical statements that Iraq had WMD, and also raised the terrifying prospect of a nuclear attack. On October 7th, 2002, Mr Bush had warned in Cincinnati, "We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
The intelligence committee report says the nuclear claims in the NIE were wrong and that the conclusion that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the intelligence community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.
It says that even after finding that the Africa claims were based on forged documents the CIA continued to promote assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa and did nothing to stop the President using the discredited uranium claim in his State of the Union address.
The Senate committee concludes that "the judgment in the National Intelligence Estimate, that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear programme, was not supported by the intelligence".
The CIA was also incorrect in making the claim, repeated by Mr Powell to the United Nations, that high-strength aluminium tubes Iraq was trying to buy were intended for a nuclear programme, the committee states.