Iraq war 'waged on false intelligence'

[Dreamer128]

· Committee lambasts CIA and Tenet
· President's role to be assessed later
· Senator: Bush team overplayed threat

The US launched a war on Iraq on the basis of false and overstated intelligence, according to a scathing US senate intelligence committee report released today.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chaired the bipartisan committee, said CIA assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.

"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.

The committee's vice chairman, Democratic senator Jay Rockefeller, went a step further today, telling reporters: "We in Congress would not have authorised that war, we would not have authorised that war with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now."

While the report is harshly critical of the CIA, it does not address the role played by the administration of the US president, George Bush.

Following pressure from Republicans on the committee, the report is being published in two phases, with the White House being spared the committee's scrutiny until phase two begins. The second part of the report may not be published until after the presidential election takes place in November.

Mr Roberts said: "The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterisation or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure. In the end, what the president and the Congress used to send the country to war was information that was provided by the intelligence community, and that information was flawed."

But Mr Rockefeller insisted: "The central issue of how intelligence on Iraq was, in this senator's opinion, exaggerated by the Bush administration officials, was relegated to that second phase, as yet unbegun, of the committee investigation, along with other issues."

He insisted that, in the run-up to war, the Bush administration had repeatedly characterised the threat from Iraq "in more ominous and threatening terms than any intelligence would have allowed".

The CIA insisted that 20% of the report should remain hidden from the public on national security grounds.

The report repeatedly condemns the departing CIA director, George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view, and casting aside dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the state or defence departments.

It blames Mr Tenet for not personally reviewing Mr Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. Mr Tenet has resigned, and leaves his post on Sunday.

"Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come," Mr Rockefeller said.

"Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, travelling with Mr Bush on a campaign trip today, said the committee's report essentially "agrees with what we have said, which is we need to take steps to continue strengthening and reforming our intelligence capabilities so we are prepared to meet the new threats that we face in this day and age."

Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons programme.

In fact, investigations after the invasion of the country unearthed no indication that Saddam had a nuclear weapons programme or biological weapons. Only small quantities of chemical weapons have ever been found.

Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.

"This 'group think' dynamic led intelligence community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD programme as well as ignore or minimise evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programmes," the report concluded.

Such assumptions had also led analysts to inflate snippets of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, the report said.

(Source: The Guardian)

[Gangrell]

No kidding.

Bush says that he went after Saddam because of 9/11, and a reason backing it up was that he may possibly have nuclear warheads to use against us. Well, it really does help if we attacked the right people that bombed us. False intelligence had very little to do with it, it came from Bush's mouth that it was the Muslims that attacked us.

I saw on 20/20 that something leaked out that Bush was already planning on taking over the oil fields before he was even elected into office, so he used the attack on WTC as an excuse to invade.

May he get a swift boot in the arse out of office in the next election.

[Davros]

If that is phase 1, it will be interesting to see what phase 2 digs up. Phase 1 says a whole lot of people in the government and the general populace were misinformed. I guess most of us had started to work that out by now, given the lack of credible finds thus far in Iraq.

[wellard]

This part of the report is stuff we have all guessed any road. That they allowed the report to be split into two gives the right wing war mongerers a get out clause by claiming that they where acting in good faith on poor intel.

"Following pressure from Republicans on the committee, the report is being published in two phases, with the White House being spared the committee's scrutiny until phase two begins. The second part of the report may not be published until after the presidential election takes place in November. "


If the second part of the report would come out before the elections I suspect Bush would be sunk without trace. I think however that the grease monkey Bush will spin his way out of this till after winning the election. If so that the report will conclude that he lied to the American (and world) public at the cost of so many of there brave sons and daughters, but what will he care? He will have secured himself his second term.

[Gangrell]

Originally posted by wellard: If the second part of the report would come out before the elections I suspect Bush would be sunk without trace. I think however that the grease monkey Bush will spin his way out of this till after winning the election. If so that the report will conclude that he lied to the American (and world) public at the cost of so many of there brave sons and daughters, but what will he care? He will have secured himself his second term.

He won't get back into office Wellard, too many people dislike him except Christians, besides, I suspect the only reason he got into office was because those Florida ballets were fixed four years ago.

I do hope, however, that if Kerry does get into office, he will have the good sense to get our soldiers out of the war and end it altogether. The sons and daughters of the states fight for their country, but Bush is sending them to fight for himself and his position.

[Grojlach]

Okay, so he was preaching to the choir, but here's Bush's initial response to the report's conclusions nonetheless.

Bush defends stance on WMDs

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush has defended his decision to go to war following the release of a report criticizing the intelligence used to justify invading Iraq.

A U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Friday blasted the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as overstated and unsupported. (Full story)

Bush said the United States was "right to go into Iraq. America is safer today because we did," he told a cheering crowd of supporters in Pennsylvania.

"We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them."

The report by the Senate panel faulted intelligence analysts for having a "collective presumption" that Iraq already had weapons of mass destruction.

That presumption, the report said, clouded analysts' interpretation of data.

"The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of political pressure," Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts said.

The 18-member panel approved the 500-plus-page report unanimously.

He said Bush and Congress sent the country to war based on "flawed" information "provided by the intelligence community."

Vice chairman Sen. John Rockefeller said the Senate "would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now."

But Bush told the Republican rally that he was not alone in perceiving Iraq as a threat.

"My administration looked at the intelligence, and we saw a threat. Members of Congress looked at the intelligence, and they saw a threat.

The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it saw a threat. The previous administration and Congress looked at the intelligence -- and made regime change in Iraq the policy of our country," the president said.

When Saddam Hussein refused to heed U.N. resolutions, the United States had no choice but to make good on its promise of action, Bush said.

Bush: I will defend America
"We had a choice to make: Either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend America. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."

"Because we acted, its dictator is now in a prison cell, and will receive the justice he denied so many for so long," Bush added.

Although he approved the report, Rockefeller said it "fails to fully explain" the pressures on the intelligence community "when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly."

"It was clear to all of us in this room who were watching that -- and to any others -- that they had made up their mind that they were going to go to war," he said.

Critics of the war had been concerned about visits to the CIA by Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials, but the report says it found no evidence that "policymakers" asked inappropriate questions of the analysts or tried to pressure them into changing their views.

Conservatives on the panel successfully blocked Democratic efforts to finish the second part of the report -- how the administration used the information from the intelligence community -- until after the November elections.

At times, the Senate report appears to contradict other reports, stating flatly that the intelligence analysts were "accurate and not affected by a lack of relevant source or operational detail" in making a connection between Iraq and terrorism.

It did, however, say that contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in the 1990s "did not add up to an established formal relationship."

The report also criticizes both the CIA and the Defense Human Intelligence Service's handling of an informer code-named "Curveball," noting that the DHIS "demonstrated serious lapses in handling such an important source."

Report says analysts exaggerated
Over and over, the report noted that the analysts exaggerated what they knew and left out, glossed over or simply dismissed dissenting views.

Regarding Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations -- in which he presented the U.S. case for war -- the report said that "much of the information" included in the speech from the CIA "was overstated, misleading or incorrect."

Adding to the problems, the report said, was further analysis based on the initial flawed analysis, creating what it called "a layering effect" and what Roberts called "the intelligence assumption train."

The report does not, however, speculate about why the intelligence community might have chosen to ignore reports that, for example, Iraq's military capability had "steadily degraded after 1990" or that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

CNN's David Ensor contributed to this report.

Source: CNN

[ 07-10-2004, 07:11 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Khazadman Risen]

If there are problems with our intelligence agencies it's because the dems have been trying their best to destroy them for the last few decades.

[Gab]

Originally posted by Khazadman Risen: If there are problems with our intelligence agencies it's because the dems have been trying their best to destroy them for the last few decades.

You always try to blame the Democrats and the left for everything! What proof do you have of this anyway? Why not blame or accuse Bush of being a warmonger and foolishly believing the flawed intilligence or even just plain lying to go to war?

[Oblivion437]

Try this on for size.

I find it hilarious however that they purely invent the connections to Bush. The CIA has been lying to Presidents since it was formed, and they never had a watchdog to sort out the bullshit.

So I ask you: How do we know Bush and his staff weren't duped by a CIA eager to go to war, for whatever reason? It certainly is a likely scenario, supported by the operating history of the CIA.

[ 07-10-2004, 04:59 PM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]

[wellard]

Originally posted by Khazadman Risen: If there are problems with our intelligence agencies it's because the dems have been trying their best to destroy them for the last few decades.

Well this is the get out of trouble path I suspected GW Bush supporters would take. I actually thank Khazadman Risen for at least addressing this topic. So many of the regular Republican brigade are MIA.