Spokesman Scott McClellan strongly denied that the intelligence had already been debunked at the time Bush made his statements.

McClellan said the report suggests Bush talked about intelligence that had already been debunked, which he says isn't true.

He said the president was repeating what the intelligence community believed to be true at the time.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.

''Natanz was constructed to house 50,000 centrifuges,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow. ''Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days.''

In fact, Iran will move forward to ''industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at Natanz, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday the country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. That announcement defies demands by the UN Security Council that Iran shut down its nuclear program this month.

The U.S. and other countries fear Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to make weapons, while Iran says it is intent on purely civilian purposes, to provide energy. Saeedi said 54,000 centrifuges will be able to enrich uranium to provide fuel for a 1,000-megawat nuclear power plant similar to the one Russia is finishing in southern Iran, AP reported.

''It was a deeply disappointing announcement,'' Rademaker said of Ahmadinejad's statement.

Weapons-Grade Uranium

Rademaker said the technology to enrich uranium to a low level could also be used to make weapons-grade uranium, saying that it would take a little over 13 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon with the 164 centrifuges currently in use. The process involves placing uranium hexafluoride gas in a series of rotating drums or cylinders known as centrifuges that run at high speeds to extract weapons grade uranium.

Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said.

''We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.

While the U.S. has concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Rademaker said ''there certainly has been no decision on the part of my government'' to use force if Iran refuses to obey the UN Security Council demand that it shuts down its nuclear program.

Rademaker is in Moscow for a meeting of his counterparts from the Group of Eight wealthy industrialized countries. Russia chairs the G-8 this year.

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

The harsh truth is that this president cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. While the president and his top Cabinet officials were fear-mongering with stark images of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities, the leading experts on nuclear weaponry at the Department of Energy (the agency in charge of the U.S. nuclear-weapons program) and the State Department thought the claim of a near-term Iraqi nuclear threat was absurd.

"The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons," said a dissenting analysis from an assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research (INR) in the now infamous 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was cobbled together for the White House before the war. "Iraq may be doing so but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."

The specter of the Iraqi nuclear threat was primarily based on an already-discredited claim that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. In fact, at the time, the INR wrote in the National Intelligence Estimate that it "accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose."

The other major evidence President Bush gave Americans for a revitalized Iraq nuclear program, of course, was his 2003 State of the Union claim -- later found to be based on forged documents -- that a deal had been made to obtain uranium from Niger. This deal was exposed within the administration as bogus before the president's speech in January by Ambassador Wilson, who traveled to Niger for the CIA. Wilson only went public with his criticisms in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times a half year later in response to what he charged were the administration's continued distortions of the evidence. In excerpts later made available to the public, it is clear that the Niger claim doesn't even appear as a key finding in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, while the INR dissent in that document dismisses it curtly: "[T]he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment highly dubious."

I queried Powell at a reception following a talk he gave in Los Angeles on Monday. Pointing out that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate showed that his State Department had gotten it right on the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat, I asked why did the president ignore that wisdom in his stated case for the invasion?

"The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote," Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush's State of the Union speech? "That was a big mistake," he said. "It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it."

When I pressed further as to why the president played up the Iraq nuclear threat, Powell said it wasn't the president: "That was all Cheney." A convenient response for a Bush family loyalist, perhaps, but it raises the question of how the president came to be a captive of his vice president's fantasies.

More important: Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?

In matters of national security, when a president leaks, he lies.

By selectively releasing classified information to suit his political purposes, as President Bush did in this case, he is denying that there was a valid basis for keeping the intelligence findings secret in the first place. "We ought to get to the bottom of it, so it can be evaluated by the American people," said Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I couldn't have put it any better.

The claim, repeated by top Administration officials for months, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Mr Bush spoke, US intelligence officials had evidence that it was not true.

A mission to Iraq - not made public until now - had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before Mr Bush's statement.

The interim report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, the White House and intelligence officials continued to claim that the trailers were weapons factories.

The authors of the reports were nine US and British civilian experts - scientists and engineers with extensive experience in making bioweapons - who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defence Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Six of the experts - who did not want to be named - described their findings to a reporter from The Washington Post . Their accounts were verified by current and former government officials close to the mission.

The contents of the final report remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. "There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another said they were referred to as "the biggest sand toilets in the world"

The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. On May 28, 2003, a day after the team's report was sent to Washington, the CIA released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts.

Throughout the rest of 2003 the trailers were referred to as "mobile biological laboratories" in Administration speeches and press statements. In June, the then secretary of state Colin Powell said the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare.

In September, Vice-President Dick Cheney said the trailers could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.

The technical team's preliminary report was transmitted on May 27, just before its members returned home. The final report remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.

The team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work simply vanished. "I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated," one member said. "It never happened. I just had to live with it."

The Post said the group's unanimous findings had been sent to the Pentagon in a field report, two days before the president's statement.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the account "reckless reporting" and said Bush made his statement based on the intelligence assessment of the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), an arm of the Pentagon.

Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons were found.

A US intelligence official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, confirmed the existence of the field report cited by the Post, but said it was a preliminary finding that had to be evaluated.

"You don't change a report that has been coordinated in the (intelligence) community based on a field report," the official said. "It's a preliminary report. No matter how strongly the individual may feel about the subject matter."

McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.

When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report.

"This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologise for it and make a correction on the air," he said.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were classified and shelved, the Post reported. It added that for nearly a year after that, the Bush administration continued to publicly assert that the trailers were biological weapons factories.

The authors of the reports - nine US and British civilian experts - were sent to Baghdad by the DIA, the newspaper said.

A DIA spokesman told the paper that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The team's work remains classified. But the newspaper said interviews revealed that the team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons.

"There was no connection to anything biological," one expert who studied the trailers was quoted as saying.

On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

Two days earlier, on May 27, 2003, the
Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday, a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team faxed its preliminary report on the mobile labs. This report concluded the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, the Post said.

McClellan said Bush made his statement based on the combined conclusions of the
CIA and DIA that were given to him in a May 28 white paper.

That white paper reflected the intelligence community's position at the time that the mobile units were biological weapons laboratories.

The dissenting May 27 view did not appear to have made it to the White House, and in fact, the intelligence community for months stuck to its analysis that the units were weapons labs.

Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons were found. In May 2003, U.S. officials were urgently seeking evidence to support prewar intelligence claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

A U.S. intelligence official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the field report was a preliminary finding that had to be evaluated.

"You don't change a report that has been coordinated in the (intelligence) community based on a field report," the official said. "It's a preliminary report. No matter how strongly the individual may feel about the subject matter."

McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.

ABC ISSUES "CLARIFICATION"

McClellan criticized ABC News' "Good Morning America" for its version of the report on Wednesday morning.

The network responded later by posting a "clarification" on its Web site acknowledging that anchor Charles Gibson misstated the gist of the Post story by saying that when Bush spoke, he knew what he was saying was not true.

"I hope they will go and publicly apologize on the air about the statements that were made, because I think it is important given that they had made those statements in front of all their viewers," he said.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were classified and shelved, the Post reported. It added that for nearly a year after that, the Bush administration continued to publicly assert that the trailers were biological weapons factories.

The authors of the reports -- nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- were sent to Baghdad by the DIA, the newspaper said.

A DIA spokesman told the paper that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The team's work remains classified. But the newspaper said interviews revealed that the team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons.

But then why bother sending experts?

The authors of the reports -- nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- were sent to Baghdad by the DIA, the newspaper said.

A DIA spokesman told the paper that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The team's work remains classified. But the newspaper said interviews revealed that the team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons.

I wonder who were the key members of the 'Iraqi Survey Group' responsible for the finished product?

McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.

When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report.

"This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air," he said.

Feeble pleas for help. McClellan demands the media 'correct' their report, like the ISG 'corrected' that of the field experts.

Their house of cards is falling.

Both hit pieces completely miss the boat on two fronts.

a) Charlie Sheen never claimed to know who was behind the attack, he simply raised unanswered questions brought about as a result of researching the official version of events and discovering that it was an impossibility.

b) Neither piece addresses one single shred of evidence that Charlie Sheen raised in either his first or second interview on The Alex Jones Show, even after Charlie Sheen issued an invitation that the establishment media challenge him on the facts.

Kermode (pictured) resorts to eye-rolling psychological gymnastics in an attempt to avoid talking about a topic of which he obviously has very limited knowledge.

"The real reason people believe in such wild conspiracies is simple - it's more reassuring. In the case of 9/11, there is something perversely comforting about the idea that, behind all the chaos, the American government was always in control, carefully orchestrating the events of that terrible day."

Let's flip this around.

The real reason people believe whatever the government says is simple - it's more reassuring. In the case of 9/11, there is something comforting about the idea that, behind all the chaos, Muslims from other countries that our government can find and destroy were carefully orchestrating the events of that terrible day.

Which is more frightening? The enemy that you can see or an unknown enemy lurking in the darkness?

Which is more frightening? A rag tag group of Muslims from a far away land? Or a huge, hulking, powerful military-industrial complex with the world's most potent army behind it?

He laughs at 'conspiracy theorists' for associating the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate with fact of any kind, blissfully unaware that Senate Hearings took place and Bill Clinton later apologized for that fact that the CIA did create MK Ultra, a project designed to create a Manchurian Candidate.

He turns to United 93 film maker Paul Greengrass, now the apparent authority on anything Flight 93, who confidently informs Kermode that, "The stuff about the plane being shot down is simply not true."

Perhaps Paul can explain to us how a plane that is supposedly intact before it hits the ground after the "let's roll" scenario causes debris to be spread over an 8 mile radius?

Kermode then mixes in Elvis and faked moon landings to try and frame the entire debate in a context of frivolousness and incredulity.

"I had to abandon my adolescent fantasies. Others should do the same. It is chaos, rather than conspiracy, which really rules the world, " concludes Kermode, a pretty broad statement considering he has just claimed to put his finger on how the planet operates without citing a single slither of proof.

When Charlie Sheen sent his email statement to the London Guardian in response to their shoddy hit-piece on his recent questions about the official 9/11 story, we expected the prestigious newspaper to follow-up by taking his challenge to cover the facts.

We should have known better than to think the mainstream media (MSM) would take up such a challenge. The Guardian's response was to mock his serious comments and take more jabs at Sheen's character and oeuvre.

Although Sheen has helped to bring questions about 9/11 to a larger audience than ever, the mainstream media seems to be willfully pushing the news about a growing 9/11 Truth Movement to the back of the arts & entertainment sections. As ever, recent reports about the 9/11 Truth Movement in the Guardian's sister publication, the London Observer are little more than skewed comedy routines on those wacky conspiracy-types.

So while the MSM continues the strategy of deny and conquer, the blogosphere has championed the story of the Sheen's questions (as well as the growing number of other high profile skeptics), the MSM backlash, and the growing 9/11 Truth Movement.

Sites like Bravocharlie911.com and others have sprung up to spread the word and remind people that despite the MSM's attempt to convince us that we are alone in our "speculations" the numbers of people that are unconvinced by the government's official story of what happened on 9/11 is growing exponentially every day. For a site in existence for only a few weeks to have received thousands of votes on their polls questioning if 9/11 was an inside job is no small thing.

Charlie Sheen and his brave step into the spotlight for 9/11 Truth has opened the floodgates for people everywhere who have questions about 9/11 but up until this point have been too afraid to voice them. He has done what no one has until now, he has begun to make it acceptable to offer dissent about the official line and as more like him begin to publicly ask questions we will overwhelm the whitewash and the people who perpetrated it.

One such individual who viewed Charlie Sheen's courageousness as an inspiration was Winnipeg Free Press columnist Dallas Hansen from whom we received the following e mail.

"As a regular op-ed columnist for the *Winnipeg Free Press* since October, 2004, I have had only two submissions refused by my editor, both of which concerned the Bush administration and information first discovered on your websites."

In one of the columns, entitled Sept. 11 is my generation's Nov. 22, Hansen addressed points that Sheen had actually raised as evidence for his doubts on 9/11, something which every MSM hit piece has thus far failed to do.

Appearing Wednesday on the Alex Jones show, Hansen (pictured) made it clear that his column was just editorializing on the cultural phenomenon of a major Hollywood actor discussing a major modern day event. Yet his editor was vehement in stating that the column would not run under any circumstances, despite the fact that, as we saw in the case of CNN's Showbiz Tonight, interest in the subject is at an all time high and it boost viewership and readership figures.

This mirrors other examples where higher powers have acted to squash any coverage of this issue despite its rampant popularity.

Alex Jones' appearance on Fox News and Ed Asner's appearance on CNN to discuss Charlie Sheen's position on 9/11 were both cancelled at the last minute after pressure from above.

The lapdog establishment press have failed to address Charlie Sheen's challenge across the board. They have continued to idly gossip about Sheen's private life, his immature behavior from 20 years ago, and performed catch-all meandering mental somersaults in order to avoid the one thing they fear.

Having a real debate on 9/11 in which the evidence is laid out in the open.