The CIA also exaggerated the Soviet nuclear threat during the Cold War

"We've discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas," Bush said. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

However, these claims have since been disputed. Moreover, the administration has never offered up any evidence to prove Iraq has ties with al-Qa'ida.

Bush also said last September in a speech that attempts by Iraq to acquire the tubes point to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. But experts contradicted Bush, saying that the evidence is ambiguous at best.

David Albright, a physicist who investigated Iraq's nuclear weapons program following the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection team, the Post reported, authored the report.

"By themselves, these attempted procurements are not evidence that Iraq is in possession of, or close to possessing, nuclear weapons," the report said, according to the Washington Post. "They do not provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational."

Melvin Goodman, a former senior CIA Soviet analyst, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in March 2001 that when the Soviet documents were declassified it would bolster criticism that intelligence assessments of the Soviet threat were deliberately inflated to justify increases in U.S. defense spending and nuclear forces.

"This is the first time that the CIA has gone on the record confirming the exaggeration of [Soviet] force modernization," Goodman, who teaches at the National War College in Washington, told the Inquirer.

In the case of Iraq, some argue that intelligence reports were inflated to justify a war.

"I am concerned about the politicization of intelligence," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who echoed complaints of other members that the administration has been selective in the intelligence it cites, overstating its case in many instances, told The Times.