In other words -- they knew they were lying.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Transcripts raise alarm across Nato Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into supporting the Iraq war.

A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts" - after the New York hotel where the US secretary of state was staying before making a crucial speech to the UN security council earlier this year - is described by an official of one Nato country as "extremely useful".