George Tenet, the director of the CIA, said today that Iraq posed "no imminent threat" to America in the months leading up to the US-led invasion. This is what senior members of the Bush Administration said about the threat in the build up to war.

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." – President Bush, White House Rose Garden, October 2, 2002

"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq." – President Bush, weekly radio address, November 23, 2002.

"What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness." – Dick Cheney, Vice-President, national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, Tennessee, August 26, 2002.

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." – Donald Rumsfeld, Defence Secretary, on Capitol Hill, September 2002.

"Well, of course he is." – Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, when asked if Saddam was an imminent threat to US interests, January 26, 2003.

"Absolutely." – Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman, when asked to confirm that the US had gone to war "because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?", May 7, 2003.

"Another way to look at this is if Saddam Hussein holds a gun to your head even while he denies that he actually owns a gun, how safe should you feel?" – Ari Fleischer, October 9, 2002.

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