Senator Robert Byrd, one of the most outspoken critics of US policy in Iraq, rejected as inadequate closed door intelligence reviews currently underway in the Senate and House of Representatives.

"Congress must face this question squarely," Byrd said on the floor of the Senate.

"Congress should begin an immediate investigation into the intelligence that was presented to the American people about the pre-war estimates of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and the way in which that intelligence might have been misused.

"Although some timorous steps have been taken in the past few days to begin a review of this intelligence ... the proposed measures fall short of what the situation requires," said Byrd.

"For the first time, the United States has gone to war because of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a threat to our nation," the West Virginia Democrat said.

"Congress should not be content to use standard operating procedures to look into this extraordinary matter," he said.

"We should accept no substitute for a full, bipartisan investigation by Congress into the issues of our pre-war intelligence on the threat from Iraq and its use, said Byrd, who has served in Congress for half a century and is the Senate's most senior member.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees last week began closed door reviews into the fate of alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and whether intelligence information about them had been manipulated to justify the war against the government of Saddam Hussein.

Byrd, who called for public hearings, also accused the White House of "revising history" as it seeks to explain the failure of US troops in Iraq to uncover weapons of mass destruction.

"We have heard a lot about revisionist history from the White House of late in answer to those who question whether there was a real threat from Iraq. But it is the president who appears to me to be intent on revising history," he said.

"Seven weeks after declaring victory in the war against Iraq, we have seen nary a shred of evidence to support his claims of grave dangers, chemical weapons, links to al-Qaeda or nuclear weapons," Byrd said.

The conservative southern Democrat has become an unlikely hero of anti-war and anti-occupation forces who have e-mailed copies of his florid tirades decrying the US-led war and its postwar management of Iraq around the globe.

"Congress has the obligation to investigate the use of intelligence information by the administration in the open," Byrd said. "We must not go down the road of coverup. That is the road to ruin."

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