U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that nearly all of the intelligence provided by Iraqi defectors connected to the Iraqi National Congress was either exaggerated or made up. This according to a report by the Knight Ridder news agency.

The Iraqi National Congress had close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office but was largely not trusted by the CIA or State Department.

Defectors had told the United States that Saddam Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities, was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program and had trained Islamic warriors near Baghdad.

None of those allegations turned out to be true.

The U.S. now believes the INC coached the defectors as to what to say before they were interviewed by intelligence officers.

Meanwhile a new Washington Post/ABC poll has found that 54 percent of the country now believes President Bush either exaggerated or lied about pre-war intelligence. And for the first time the poll has found that less than half the country believes the war was worth fighting.