'Pentagon exaggerated risk posed by Iraq'

In a statement, Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a months-long probe conducted by his staff of prewar intelligence showed that the US Defence Department tailored its analysis to the George W. Bush administration's liking, after "assessments of the intelligence community did not make a sufficiently compelling case" for invasion.

Levin, who began his inquiry in June 2003, concluded that defence officials had found only "a relatively weak" relationship between Saddam and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, rather than the substantial one that the Bush administration cited as a justification for invading Iraq.