CHICAGO - Several aspiring Democratic presidential hopefuls criticized the Bush administration's failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Sunday during a political forum in Chicago. "We knew there weren't any weapons of mass destruction," said Dennis Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, describing the war as a "fraud." "Lying to the American people is a weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Bush."

Former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, an opponent of the war, noted that U.S. forces had been in control of Iraq for over 50 days and hadn't turned up any evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

"We're finding out that the administration wasn't truthful with us," he told a largely black and Latino audience during a political forum that brought together seven of the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls. The only woman in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2004 race called the Bush administration's pre-emptive strike on Iraq "a war of choice and not necessity," that "put young American men and women in harm's way for no good reason."

The Bush administration, Carol Moseley Braun continued, had manipulated public concern about terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks to advance "an extreme political agenda," which had eroded civil liberties.

The Reverend Al Sharpton also weighed in on the subject of Iraq during a forum hosted by the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

"Mr Bush led us in (to the war) saying there were weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find," Sharpton said, suggesting that former president Bill Clinton "would have been impeached," for allegedly misleading the U.S. public the way that president Bush had done. The fiery New York-based civil rights activist also questioned how American taxpayers could afford billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq "when we don't have money for the 50 states we already occupy."

The heavy-hitters among Democratic White House hopefuls, steered clear of the politically tricky question of Iraq, which has come to be seen as a litmus test of patriotism.

Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts senator John Kerry, and the senator for Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, instead chose to assail the president on his record on the economy, education, health care, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Senator Joe Lieberman came closest in challenging the president on what many pundits see as his strongest suits: national defense, and homeland security.

The 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee -- he shared a ticket with Al Gore -- Lieberman berated the administration for being slow to act after the September 11 attacks and then for letting U.S. intelligence agencies off the hook for intelligence gaffes.