For them, the landmark speech US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the UN Security Council on February 5 last year in an unsuccessful effort to win its support for the war has turned into a political millstone for Bush's re-election campaign.

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence .... The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world," Powell told the Council then.

As he presented slides, a supposed intercept of Iraqi military communication, and a vial meant to represent a biological weapon, he argued against the UN weapons inspections underway at the time and for the sort of action Bush had argued was needed to save the United Nation's credibility.

Now, amid a military occupation unable to restore order across Iraq and after the admission by David Kay, the top US weapons inspector sent to the country, that those "facts and conclusions" were wrong, the tone has changed.

"I don't know" if invading Iraq was the right thing to do in light of the subsequent lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction, Powell told the Washington Post this week.

Bush's Democrat opponents have seized on the issue as a central theme ahead of the November US elections, forcing the president to finally agree to an independent commission that will try to determine why the Iraq menace was exaggerated.

The White House is keen to have the probe focus on intelligence failures, but the Democrats see it as an opportunity to find out how much Bush and his team cherry-picked or misstated the information they were getting, according to US commentators.

Bush's closest ally in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has also had to accept a similar inquiry being set up, despite the recent Hutton Report that exonerated him of BBC claims -- later apologised for -- of "sexing up" Iraq intelligence.

Other allies in the occupation, notably Australia and Spain, have refused to expose themselves to such probes, however. Canberra said its case for war was mainly based on the US assessment.

As for France, Germany and Russia, the trio of nations that led the international opposition to the war, they have kept a discreet silence about the developments.

Several of their own intelligence services, too, believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, though not to the extent claimed by the United States, and not to the extent that war -- and not continued UN inspections -- was the only option.

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