Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review".4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weaponsThe US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programmeThe head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address.

Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working togetherPersistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. 1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks 1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. "When I heard we might get another six months I wanted to cry.". They're taking a pop in broad daylight." One of the military policemen from her squad had cracked up and been sent home this week after a skirmish with Iraqi attackers, she said. We're sitting here like targets and the Iraqis are getting bolder.

"I've been in the army eight years and I can't do it any more, not after this. Her colleague, a 26-year-old reservist from Houston who was studying to become a police officer, said she planned to quit the army as soon as she got home. They're real tough and they're holding us together."She spoke on the condition that she remain anonymous after her commander ordered troops not to give media interviews. But we're lucky in our squad because we drew down some cops from New York The sergeant is from the Bronx. "I finish and go straight to sleep then wake up an hour before duty, shower and start again I don't think I can take an extra six months I was looking forward to going home in October. "They understand the pressure on their troops.""We're working 14 hours a day guarding and on patrol," a 21-year-old female reservist from Oklahoma said.

"Commanders turn a blind eye to soldiers who consort with prostitutes," a tank soldier said. "They come in here and ask if I want to buy small guns a few times a week but we don't need any, we have a Kalashnikov."The 11pm curfew means prostitutes and the brothels conduct their business early in the day. "We don't want our women to do these things," he said, adding that soldiers also try to sell handguns to make money. She charges $50 for a night, including a room in a hotel in nearby Saddoon Street.A receptionist at the hotel, where rooms are $30 for a twin, said there was no prostitution before the invasion. Rana, a 21-year-old Iraqi woman from Saddam's home town of Tikrit, said she had been working as a prostitute for a month near the army barracks in Abu Nawaz Street, central Baghdad Most of her clients are US soldiers. A spokesman said any soldier who fell pregnant would almost certainly be dishonourably discharged from the army and might even face a court martial, unless she was pregnant by her husband.Prostitutes have now appeared. It takes at least two months to receive a reply to a letter.Perhaps not surprisingly, anecdotal evidence points to a growing number of breaches of military discipline.