"While there was an awful lot of pressure to try to support various positions, that's always the case," he said. "People are going to prod the intelligence community to try to make them more precise but also to convince them they're right."
But a review of their findings during the run-up to the war shows the analysts didn't change their position, Kerr said.
"They were pretty consistent over a considerable period of time," he said.
Their reports also note uncertainties and acknowledge gaps in US knowledge, Kerr said.
But many of those uncertainties, qualifications and caveats never reached the public's ears. Statements by Bush administration officials rarely expressed doubts about Iraq's weapons programs.
"When discussing Iraq's WMD, administration officials rarely included the caveats and qualifiers attached to the intelligence community's judgments," said Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, during a House debate last week. "For many Americans, the administration's certainty gave the impression that there was even stronger intelligence about Iraq's possession of and intention to use WMD."
Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that some uncertainties about Iraq's alleged weapons programs were glossed over in the run-up to the war.
"These are our best judgments," he said. "The public sometimes receives them as gospel, when in fact they're our best judgments. Our intelligence is good, but it's not infallible."
In recent weeks, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA's counterpart at the Pentagon, declassified part of a prewar report on Iraq's weapons. Its language suggests some uncertainties that Bush administration officials ignored in public statements:
"Although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses chemical warfare agent in chemical munitions, possibly including artillery rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs and ballistic missile warheads," the report says.
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