The British government’s second Iraq dossier opens with:

“This report draws upon a number of sources, including intelligence material…”

We then learned that:

“The dossier was published last February to coincide with Mr Blair’s war summit with President George Bush in Washington. A week later it was revealed to be a mish-mash of intelligence reports, student work and publicly available briefings by Jane’s Intelligence Review.”

Britain’s first Iraq dossier was published in September 2002. (Available as a PDF file here.)

We were told:

“The document published today is based, in large part, on the work of the Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC). […] Its work, like the material it analyses, is largely secret. It is unprecedented for the
Government to publish this kind of document. But in light of the debate about Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), I wanted to share with the British public the reasons why I believe this issue to be a current and serious threat to the UK national interest.”

And now we learn that:

“The document, released last September, shows at least six separate items on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction were lifted from reports up to 21 months old. […] The dossier appears to have drawn heavily from three sources in the public domain. They are a briefing paper by William Cohen, US Defence Secretary in the Clinton administration, from January 2001; the appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by George Tenet, the CIA director, the following month; an unclassified CIA report to Congress covering the period 1 July to 31 December 2000; and a report on Iraq by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) published in London in September.“

Exactly why is it that some wonder why many are saying Bush & Blair lied in order to justify a war in Iraq?

PS: In his presentation to the UN Security Council, Colin Powell stated about the Iraq dossier num?ro deux:

“I would call my colleagues’ attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed… which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.“