Powell denies intelligence failure in Iraq but the evidence doesn't hold up

"While the matter is still under investigation, and further verification is foreseen, the IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse-engineering of rockets," an IAEA report submitted in January to the UN Security Council said. "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."

The claim about Iraq trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger first emerged in British intelligence documents last September. The documents have since turned out to be forgeries, according to the IAEA. The IAEA quickly realized that the documents handed over by the US were phony - one letter purportedly signed by a Nigerian minister who had been out of office for 10 years.

The CIA report contains more than three-dozen other instances of erroneous information, including the time frame for producing nuclear and biological weapons and alleged evidence of Iraq's ballistic missile programs.

The IAEA report also said: "To date, no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities has been detected."

The CIA report identifies dozens of specific locations where Iraq is alleged to have been developing its chemical and biological weapons program and goes even further in identifying the exact quantities of chemical and biological weapons, such as anthrax, VX, serin and mustard gas in Iraq's possession, but a search of these sites after the war has turned up nothing.

For example, in 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited 20 secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Saeed, a civil engineer, supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications. Saeed said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations - and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.

But the information never held up and turned out to be one of the single biggest intelligence failures of the Bush administration.

Judith Miller first brought the existence of Saeed to light in a New York Times story in December 2001 and again in the following January. The White House, in a public report on the imminent threat Iraq presented to U.S. security in September 2002, cited the information provided by Saeed, who told U.S. officials that chemical and biological weapons laboritories could be found in hospitals and presidential palaces. It turned out to be completely untrue.

The argument within the Pentagon and the Bush administration is that Iraq, a country the size of California, has done an outstanding job of hiding its weapons. The CIA in its report identified tons of chemical and biological weapons stockpiled throughout the country yet not even a speck of anthrax has been found; which doesn't make sense if Iraq did in fact have such a large quantity of chemical and biological weapons agents.

Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, said last week in his final report to the U.N. Security Council that during the relatively short time U.N. inspectors searched Iraq for WMD "the commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items - whether from pre 1991 or later".

"This does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist," Blix said. "They might - there remain long lists of items unaccounted for - but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for."