At issue is the claim that Iraq was trying to procure nuclear material from Africa -- a now debunked allegation which found its way into US President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech last January.

White House officials over the past several days have distanced themselves from the intelligence, saying its inclusion in the speech -- the most important address delivered by the president each year -- was a mistake.

But Michigan Senator Carl Levin and Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy at a press briefing Wednesday, said similar claims were made nine days before the speech -- in a January 20, 2003, report to congress on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"In that report, which preceded the State of the Union address by nine days, and which President Bush signed, the president said that Iraq had failed to explain attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it," Kennedy said.

"We now know that this statement was based on false intelligence and that a similar statement had been deleted from a previous statement by the president," said Kennedy, adding that he and Levin have wrote to the White House Wednesday seeking an explanation for the error.

"Our letter asks the president to explain how this information found its way into his report to Congress and then in his State of the Union address. It happened twice within nine days when it shouldn't have happened at all," he said.

"This is not just a dispute about a certain number of words," Kennedy continued. "It's a dispute about politicizing intelligence and falsifying facts to justify resort to war," the Massachusetts senator said.

"The buck does not stop with the CIA director, George Tenet, and it does not stop with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley," said Kennedy referring to other senior administration officials who in recent days have taken the blame for the inclusion of the bad intelligence into Bush's speech.

"The buck stops with the president," said Kennedy.

WAR.WIRE