"The quality of that intelligence has been known ... from the very beginning," Jay Rockefeller, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. "It was all discredited, early and often."

Rockefeller expressed surprise that the White House took so long to distance itself from the flawed intelligence, although he was pleased President George W. Bush had finall done so.

The revelation speaks to other potential intelligence lapses, Rockefeller said, but problems with the particular information on Iraq-Niger ties "rates high because it was so patently false," said Rockefeller.

"It had been so patently a forgery. It was debunked everywhere."

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said the quality of US intelligence has been called into question by the White House revision of its stance.

"There were many of us that voted for use of force based on what we learned in intelligence and other areas," she said. "The fact that the yellow cake uranium from Niger was a forgery demonstrates a real problem with bogus intelligence."

The Washington Post reported that the Bush administration has backed away from assertions that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein tried to purchase uranium from Africa to kickstart Iraq's idled nuclear weapons program.

Bush included the allegation in his State of the Union speech in January, but the White House said Monday it regretted having done so.

Republican leaders accused Democrats of exploiting a relatively minor issue however.

"It's very easy to pick one little flaw here, one little flaw there. The overall reason we went into Iraq is ... morally sound," House of Representatives Republican Leader Tom DeLay said.

The issue of whether "somebody forged or made a mistake on whether Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear material from Niger or wherever," does not negate the justness of the US-led invasion, DeLay said.

"The overall reason that we went into Iraq is sound," said Delay. "The American people understand that and they support it."

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