Politicians must not escape blame

The Financial Times described as "implausible" the investigation's decision to exonerate US President George W. Bush's administration from putting pressure on the intelligence agencies.

"Like all government organisations, the Central Intelligence Agency devotes its limited resources to meeting the demands of its political masters," the business daily said.

It added that it was the "politicians who must account for the death and destruction of the Iraq war -- and the consequences as they continue to unfold".

The Times was equally critical of the Senate's findings.

"The CIA should not take all the blame on Iraq and WMD," it said.

"Above all, the failure of politicians to ask sufficiently robust questions about the intelligence they received should not be forgotten."

A Senate investigation concluded on Friday that the US intelligence community "mischaracterised" Iraq's weapons of mass destruction through "a series of failures".

The inquiry found that the intelligence community's key judgments were either overstated or not backed up by intelligence reporting.

The Senate Intelligence Committee found no evidence, however, that the Bush administration pressured CIA analysts to modify their judgments of Iraq's WMD.

Britain's press meanwhile looked ahead to an inquiry into flawed British intelligence on Iraq set to report next Wednesday.