WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a highly critical report issued Friday, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, told reporters that intelligence used to support the invasion of Iraq was based on assessments that were "unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence."

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"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," Roberts said.

"Today we know these assessments were wrong."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the leading Democrat on the panel, said that "bad information" was used to bolster the case for war.

"We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now," the West Virginia Democrat said.

"Leading up to September 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed."
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Rockefeller said that the "intelligence failures" will haunt America's national security "for generations to come."

"Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower," he said. "We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

» CNN.com - Report slams CIA for Iraq intelligence failures - Jul 9, 2004