The White House released satellite photographs that Bush said demonstrate that "Iraq is rebuilding sites that have been part of [Saddam's] nuclear program in the past." (Surveillance photos)

Powell also had told the United Nations that "numerous intelligence reports over the past decade from sources inside Iraq" indicated "a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud-variant ballistic missiles."

None has been found.

U.S. allegations that Iraq was trying to develop a nuclear weapon have also not been verified.

Much discussed were some high-strength aluminum tubes Iraq tried to import. The CIA argued they were for centrifuges essential to a nuclear weapons program. Experts from the State and Energy departments said they were for conventional artillery rockets, Thielmann said.

No centrifuges have been reported found.

In his State of the Union address, Bush said that Britain had learned that Saddam "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The claim rested significantly on a letter or letters between officials in Iraq and Niger that were obtained by European intelligence agencies. The communications are now accepted as forged.

But on Iraq's suspected nuclear-weapons development, which for him and other analysts was the most alarming program, "we've clearly uncovered nothing" so far, he said.

The U.S. military has captured two Iraqi mobile laboratories apparently designed for biological arms, although no traces of germ weapons were found.

[...]

Still, along with the missing chemical and biological weapons stocks, several key statements by Bush and his aides have yet to pan out or have been proved false:

In the president's State of the Union address Jan. 28, he cited a British intelligence report that Iraq sought to import "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa.

Intelligence officials said his statement was based on documents forged by a diplomat in Rome from the African nation of Niger, who made them using a fax machine. The diplomat sold the forgeries to Italian intelligence officials, who dutifully passed them on to the United States and Britain, officials said.

Bush, Powell and others spoke of Iraq's attempt to import aluminum tubes, which they said could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Powell, in a presentation Feb. 5 to the U.N. Security Council, acknowledged there was a debate over the tubes' intended use, but said the majority of U.S. analysts believed they were meant for a nuclear weapons program.

Mohamed El Baradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Security Council a month later that extensive investigation "failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81-millimeter tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets."

DAVID ALBRIGHT: The example of where the aluminum tubes that were posited as only usable in the gas centrifuge program -- I actually learned about that case almost two years ago. There was a very intense debate about the use of the tubes, but it wasn't by any means certain what the actual use was, but when Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice went out on TV, they sided clearly with the side that said these tubes are only for centrifuges and moreover, it shows that Iraq is close to nuclear weapons and we have to act now.

RICHARD PERLE: Some of us happen to think that the evidence was pretty impressive that these were intended for nuclear purposes.

DAVID ALBRIGHT: But many didn't think that. Some of our best centrifuge experts in this country didn't think that evidence was impressive.

RICHARD PERLE: And other experts thought it was.

DAVID ALBRIGHT: Well, then that division should have been presented; that's all I would say.

RICHARD PERLE: I think it was.

Do you argue that Iraq did not have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon sometime in the next 5 years?

If not, do you argue that Sadaam in possession of a nuke is not a serious threat to the US?