What a difference a few days make.

JOHN HOWARD, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: (26 January 2004) Look, we made our decision based on the intelligence that was available at the time. That intelligence was comprehensive. I have no regrets about our decision, no regrets at all.

(3 February 2004) In the fullness of time it might be demonstrated that the advice was inaccurate.

This was John Howard's first ever concession that Australian intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could have been faulty, or worse.

ALLAN BEHM, DEFENCE ANALYST: When you're confronted by a fact that you can't walk away from, you simply have to accept it and admit it and I think the Prime Minister now knows that not only was the intelligence faulty but it was actually wrong.

John Howard's about turn came as US Secretary of State Colin Powell made another startling admission. He told 'Washington Post' that he might not have recommended the invasion of Iraq had he known there were no weapons stockpiles. In his words: “ the absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get.”

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We certainly would have gone to war if the inspectors came back and said there were breaches...

And the debate rages on. Tony Blair has called for an independent inquiry, following President Bush's similar announcement in the US.

GEORGE BUSH, AMERICAN PRESIDENT: And so I'm putting together an independent, bipartisan commission to analyse where we stand.

After months of maintaining that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction would be found, President Bush had to contend with the words of David Kay, the very man sent to find Iraq's hidden arsenal.

DAVID KAY: It turns out we were all wrong probably, in my judgment.

George Bush and Tony Blair are troubled, their intelligence agencies under the spotlight for their decision to go to war with Iraq. Australia went to war on the strength of that same intelligence, but there's no indication yet of a full and independent inquiry here.

JOHN HOWARD, (3 February 2004): The great bulk of the intelligence that we relied upon we made our own assessment of it, was, of course, from British and American sources.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: Well I frankly think that our political leaders owe all of us an apology.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson is an American career diplomat who exposed as a fake the claim that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger in West Africa. He paid a personal price for blowing the whistle. His wife's name was leaked to a journalist, exposing her as a CIA spy. Ambassador Wilson spoke to Dateline yesterday.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: If in fact the Australians are comfortable with subcontracting their intelligence needs to an American supplier, that's a decision they make. But again, ultimately a policy maker makes a decision based on the intellegence that he or she is provided and clearly Mr Howard made his decision to throw his lot in with the American President and Prime Minister Blair. It does seem to me that all our political leaders should be held accountable. That's what democracy is all about.

Ambassador Wilson knows about accountability. The bogus Niger claim, which he exposed, had found its way into the US President's State of the Union address, the most important presidential speech to the nation.

GEORGE BUSH, (January 2003): The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: I knew that to be a misstatement of material fact.

In February 2002, under instruction from Dick Cheney, the CIA had asked Ambassador Wilson to check whether Niger had, as was suspected, been supplying Saddam with uranium.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: I spent eight days there, talked to people that I had known, some of them for 25 years, and I reported back to my government that there was nothing to that allegation. When I returned here, I reported the same day I arrived to somebody at the CIA, actually they came here to the house and I reported to them. And I would add that mine was not the only report, mine was one of three reports in US Government files all to the same effect.

With Australia locked in an ever closer relationship with the Bush Administration, the bogus claim was repeated in the Australian parliament by John Howard.

JOHN HOWARD, (4 February 2003): Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons. Uranium has been sought from Africa.

Wilson's story and the way intelligence was subverted is not just an issue in Washington and London, it raises questions about Australia's handling of the same material.

ALLAN BEHM: The decision by the Australian Government to join the coalition of the willing was not, in my opinion at least, really based on intelligence at all. I think the intelligence was simply the argument that was put together to justify a decision, which was taken for political reasons. And so I think what Mr Howard was responding to was the very serious wish on the part of this government, to support the United States in its moment of need, as declared by the United States. So to that extent, we were essentially following the lead of the Bush Administration.

So how did the allegation make it all the way into the President's State of the Union address?

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: I believe that somewhere within the US Government, somebody with authority to make these decisions decided they would put this information in the President's State of the Union address because it was information that bolstered a political decision that had already been made to go to war with Iraq.

And how did John Howard come to repeat the same false claim? Allan Behm is a defence analyst and a former senior adviser in the Prime Minister's department.

ALLAN BEHM: That so-called fact would have been included in one of the American assessments and the Prime Minister would have had some inclination, or some inkling at least, as to what President Bush was going to say. So I think for reasons of consistency within the coalition, the Prime Minister chose to take the same line as was taken by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. My guess would have been that in the State Department at least, some questions would have been asked about that but whether those questions were passed through either to the White House or to the Australian Government, it begins to seem unlikely.

The inquiries in Britain and the US will principally focus on the role of intelligence agencies, but Joe Wilson says they will miss the point if they fail to scrutinise policy makers.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: It seems to me that the policy makers, certainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, are looking to assess the role of the intelligence, the quality of the intelligence, rather than the decisions that were made by the policy makers.

ALLAN BEHM: Fundamental reasons adduced by the Bush Administration, the Blair Government and the Howard Government for taking the enormous step of launching war on Iraq, was based on false premises.

Unlike the US and Britain, there's little heat in the issue in Australia despite our role in invading Iraq.

JOHN HOWARD, (26 January 2004): I remain confident that the right decision was taken. I do not regret it, I do not retreat from it and I never will.

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON: There are now 500 Americans dead, 14,000 plus Americans injured, many of them in ways that will preclude their living a normal life in the future. There are countless Iraqis dead and if this adventure in Iraq goes very badly, history will blame us forever.