The White House has declassified portions of an October 2002 intelligence report to demonstrate that President George W Bush had ample reason to believe Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program.
But the material also reflects divisions and uncertainties among intelligence agencies as to Saddam Hussein's activities.
The State Department, for instance, expressed deep skepticism over claims that Saddam was shopping for uranium ore in Africa to use in making atomic bombs an allegation that wound up in Mr Bush's State of the Union address but which administration officials have since repudiated.
"Claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are ... highly dubious," said a State Department addendum included among the declassified material.
The administration released the documents a sanitized version of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president on Friday as it sought to shield Bush from rising criticism that he misled the public in making his case for war with Iraq.
White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan said the documents show "the clear and compelling case we had for confronting the threat that Saddam Hussein posed."
Mr McClellan and other administration officials emphasized the report's assertion of "compelling evidence" that Iraq was seeking to rebuild its nuclear-weapons program.
But Mr Daryl Kimball, executive director of the anti-nuclear Arms Control Association, suggested the release of the declassified documents showed the exact opposite. "It further undermines the White House case that the Iraqi nuclear program was active and that it posed an immediate threat," he said.
Mr Kimball said the State Department's reservations included both in the footnote and on the front page of the excerpts released by the White House were particularly damaging to the administration's case. "Those are fighting words," he said.