US credibility eroded by false intelligence
'Questionable US and British intelligence assertions about purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have undercut the Bush administration's credibility in building a case before the UN Security Council, according to analysts and some diplomats. The most serious blunder, put forth by British intelligence and cited by President Bush in his State of the Union address, involved an assertion that Niger, the West African country, had sold tons of uranium to Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, as well as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, acknowledged late last week that the documents were forged, six days after top UN nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said his team had found the documents to lack authenticity.

'Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the FBI on Friday to investigate whether the US government had been involved in the creation of the Niger documents to build support for administration policies. An investigation, Rockefeller said in a letter to the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, should ''at a minimum help to allay any concerns.'' Powell has denied any US involvement. But other US charges -- on Iraq's use of aluminum tubes for a nuclear program, drones that might be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons, mobile biological labs, and chemical bunkers -- have come under sharp attack among UN officials or diplomats. In addition, Bush's report of a poison plant in northeast Iraq was found by numerous reporters visiting the site to have been a dilapidated collection of buildings. At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any US claim regarding Iraq.'

US credibility eroded by false intelligence
'Questionable US and British intelligence assertions about purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have undercut the Bush administration's credibility in building a case before the UN Security Council, according to analysts and some diplomats. The most serious blunder, put forth by British intelligence and cited by President Bush in his State of the Union address, involved an assertion that Niger, the West African country, had sold tons of uranium to Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, as well as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, acknowledged late last week that the documents were forged, six days after top UN nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said his team had found the documents to lack authenticity.

'Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the FBI on Friday to investigate whether the US government had been involved in the creation of the Niger documents to build support for administration policies. An investigation, Rockefeller said in a letter to the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, should ''at a minimum help to allay any concerns.'' Powell has denied any US involvement. But other US charges -- on Iraq's use of aluminum tubes for a nuclear program, drones that might be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons, mobile biological labs, and chemical bunkers -- have come under sharp attack among UN officials or diplomats. In addition, Bush's report of a poison plant in northeast Iraq was found by numerous reporters visiting the site to have been a dilapidated collection of buildings. At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any US claim regarding Iraq.'