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 and other statements by senior administration officials before and since that speech.

White House officials over the past several days have distanced themselves from the intelligence, and say 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 about Iraq's alleged nuclear program were made nine days before the speech -- in a January 20, 2003 formal request to congress by the president seeking authorization to go to war against Iraq.

"When he makes the statements for the reason of sending American troops into war, we want to know what the basis (is)," Kennedy said. "And the American people ought to know that as well."

The report by the president to US lawmakers was required under the war resolution voted by the US Congress, authorizing the United States to take military action against Iraq.

"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 Kennedym 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.

Levin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Service Committee and one of the leading critics on US pre-war and post-war policy toward Iraq, said the most recent revelation of how flawed intelligence on Iraq was used by the Bush administration was yet another blow to the president's credibility.

"What's really important here to emphasize is that this is not only a formal report to the Congress ... but it is a formal document which, the president says, was prepared by his administration," said Levin

"So now questions pile on questions, and now the issue that has to be addressed -- and we're asking the president to address it -- is how did this statement get into the formal report to the Congress and didn't the CIA catch this one?" he said.

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