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Banned
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Damning Senate Intel Report, Released After 3 Years Delay, Over Republican Objections
This was ready to be released to the public in July, 2004. Five republican senators still, in 2007, objected to letting us see it.
Does it seem to contain evidence that, coupled with every other disclosure, are new grounds for impeaching the president and the veep?
Do you agree that hell has a special place for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, to spend eternity in?
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all
Winds of War
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
Published: October 15, 2006
......Far more interesting is Isikoff and Corn's exploration of the mental world that the administration inhabits. They recount that in December 2001, Scooter Libby read aloud to a visiting journalist a famous passage from Winston Churchill's memoirs about being named prime minister: <b>''I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.'' Libby declared that these words could be applied to Cheney after Sept. 11. Hubris?</b> Megalomania may be more like it.....
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18854414/#story
NBC: CIA warned of risks of war in the Mideast
Pre-war reports say agency predicted dangers of toppling Saddam's regime
By Lisa Myers and Robert Windrem
NBC News Investigative Unit
Updated: 7:32 p.m. ET May 25, 2007
In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.
Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored.
In January 2003, two months before the invasion, the intelligence community's think tank — the National Intelligence Council — issued an assessment warning that after Saddam was toppled, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other and that rogue Saddam loyalists would wage guerilla warfare either by themselves or in alliance with terrorists.”
It also warned that “many angry young recruits” would fuel the rank of Islamic extremists and "Iraqi political culture is so embued with mores (opposed) to the democratic experience … that it may resist the most rigorous and prolonged democratic tutorials."
None of those warnings were reflected in the administration's predictions about the war.
In fact, Vice President Cheney stated the day before the war, “Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
A second assessment weeks before the invasion warned that the war also could be “exploited by terrorists and extremists outside Iraq.”
The same assessment added, “Iraqi patience with an extended U.S. presence after an overwhelming victory would be short,” and said “humanitarian conditions in many parts of Iraq would probably not understand that the Coalition wartime logistic pipeline would require time to reorient its mission to humanitarian aid.”
Both assessments were given to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees.
Even more warnings
And according to the Former CIA Director George Tenet’s new book, “At the Center of the Storm,” the reports to be released Friday were not the only ones out there.
One of Tenet’s clearest arguments regarding the administration's dismissal of all but the rosiest assessments of post-war Iraq comes in his description of a White House meeting in September 2002. There, a briefing book on the Iraq war was laid out for policy makers.
“Near the back of the book, Tab 'P', was a paper the CIA analysts had prepared three weeks earlier,” Tenet writes. “Dated August 13, 2002, it was titled, ‘The Perfect Storm: Planning for the Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq.’ It provided worse case scenarios:
“The United States will face negative consequences with Iraq, the region and beyond which would include:
* Anarchy and the territorial breakup of Iraq;
* Region-threatening instability in key Arab states;
* A surge of global terrorism against US interests fueled by (militant) Islamism;
* Major oil supply disruptions and severe strains in the Atlantic Alliance.”
“These should have been very sobering reports,” says Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst at the Brookings Institution. “The administration should have taken them very serious in preparing plans for a difficult post-Saddam period. And yet the administration did not do so.”
William Harlow, part of Tenet’s senior intelligence staff and co-author with Tenet on his book, added: “Although the intelligence got the WMD case in Iraq wrong, it got the dangers of a post-invasion Iraq quite right. They raised serious questions about what would face U.S. troops in a post invasion Iraq. The intelligence laid out a number of issues of concern. It’s unclear if administration officials paid any attention to those concerns.”
It is likely that Democrats and Republicans on the Hill will question how the administration could have predicted a short, easy war given these warnings and why it has taken more four years for them to surface.
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The report includes: http://intelligence.senate.gov/prewar.pdf
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The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Qa'ida probably would see an opportunity to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks during and after a US-Iraq war. (page 7)
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The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that the United States' defeat and occupation of Iraq probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups. (page 9)
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The Intelligence Community assessed prior to the war that Iranian leaders would try to influence the shape of post-Saddam Iraq to preserve Iranian security and demonstrate that Iran is an important regional actor. (page 9)
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The report also concludes that the Intelligence Community knew, prior to the war, that substantial humanitarian assistance would be needed and that occupation of Iraq would not lessen the desire of neighboring states to pursue development of WMD capabilities.
The Committee bases its conclusions on two attached formerly "Secret" January 2003 intelligence assessments, "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq," both prepared "under the auspices of" national intelligence officer Paul R. Pillar. The second assessment includes a list of "do's" and "don't's" including a warning not to "create any appearance of occupying Iraq."
The two assessments are accompanied by distribution lists that the reports were distributed to government officials Stephen Hadley, I. Lewis Libby, Eric S. Edelman, George J. Tenet, Robert S. Mueller, Michael V. Hayden, Gen. Richard B. Meyers, Gen. Peter Pace, Douglas J. Feith, Paul D. Wolfowitz, John R. Bolton and Richard L. Armitage - and others.
In her attached statement, Sen. Diane Feinstein remarks:
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I am troubled that even after analysis was removed from the report in an effort to forge unamimous support, a significant portion of the Committee's members did not support the report.
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Quote:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...1_intel26.html
Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 12:00 AM
Intelligence analysts foresaw terror activity
By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community accurately predicted months before the Iraq war that al-Qaida would link up with elements from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government and militant Islamists to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. forces, according to a report released Friday by a Senate committee.
Two national intelligence assessments sent to the White House and other senior policymakers in January 2003 also predicted al-Qaida "would try to take advantage of U.S. attention on postwar Iraq to re-establish its presence in Afghanistan," the report said.
The long-awaited section of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Phase II report, which covers prewar intelligence assessments of what Iraq would be like after the invasion, also said Iran would seek to influence a postwar Iraq. The assessments also said "elements" within the Iranian government might aggressively use Shiite and Kurdish contacts "to sow dissent against the U.S. presence and complicate the formation of a new, pro-U.S. Iraqi government."
Committee members voted 10-5 to release the documents, with Republican members Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine joining majority Democrats in approving the decision.
<h3>Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the panel, and three other Republican members said the assessments were "not a crystal ball" and "lacked detail or specificity that would have guided military planners."</h3>
As reported Sunday by The Washington Post, and published in The Seattle Times, the two assessments by the National Intelligence Council were titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq." They predicted that establishing a stable democratic government would be a long, difficult and turbulent process.
They also suggested competition among Iraq's three major groups — Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds — would "encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq." Because of the divided Iraqi society, the assessments said, there was "a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so."
Nevertheless, President Bush, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top aides decided not to deploy the major occupation force military planners had recommended, planned to reduce U.S. troops rapidly after the invasion and believed ousting Saddam would ignite a democratic revolution across the Middle East.
The administration also instituted a massive purge of members of Saddam's Baath party and disbanded the Iraqi army — moves that helped spark the Sunni Muslim insurgency — even though the intelligence reports had recommended against doing so.
When asked Thursday about the impending report, Bush said: "Going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn't happen. I weighed the risks and rewards," and decided removing Saddam was worth the price.
According to the Senate report, the assessments also forecast that the threat of terrorism after the invasion of Iraq "would decline slowly over the subsequent three to five years" but in the interim, the "lines between al-Qaida and other terrorist groups around the world 'could become blurred.' " A U.S. occupation of Iraq "probably would boost proponents of political Islam," the assessments predicted.
In the economic field, analysts predicted that "cuts in electricity or looting of distribution networks would have a cascading disastrous impact" and that large amounts of outside assistance would be needed to provide basic services.
The assessments, much like officials in the Bush administration, inaccurately predicted that Iraq's oil revenues would make postwar reconstruction easier. Analysts did not foresee that sabotage, theft and continued fighting would leave Iraq with oil production at less than the prewar 2.4 million barrels.
McClatchy Newspapers and the Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
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Is it just me??? Or does it seem to you, too (air defense on the morning of 9/11 comes immediately, to my mind....) that these "thugs" couldn't get their military strategy/leadership/decision making, "right", if our soldiers' lives depended on it:
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http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/...x?speechid=193
Transcript of Secretary Rumsfeld at Town hall Meeting at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Nellis Air Force Base, Wednesday, <b>February 20, 2002</b>
....Rumsfeld:
....The dilemma that the country is facing right now, Afghanistan, is what should they do about their security situation. <b>They have got Taliban and al Qaeda milling around, that have blended into the countryside, into the villages, across the borders and are ready to come back in in the event they feel they have the opportunity.</b> We have a brand-new government that's an interim government for six months that is trying to find its way and create the kind of structures so that it can allow a secure environment for humanitarian assistance to come in -- food assistance, medical assistance and the like....
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Quote:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...nscriptid=3249
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld <b>August 25, 2003</b>
Secretary Rumsfeld Media Availability at Lackland Air Force Base
.....Rumsfeld: Yes?
Q: Senator Kerry this morning was talking about what he described as "the lack of candor" and "a lack of planning," in the post-war in particular, that is now jeopardizing life, and he went on to say in his speech, which you undoubtedly heard part of, "I want the burden taken off the soldiers as soon as possible." Did the administration plan properly for post-war, and are you playing catch-up now? And how bad is the situation there? Because it does seem to be deteriorating.
Rumsfeld: First, out of respect for him, I didn't hear him. I don't know what he actually said, and I don't know the context of your comments. So I'd rather set aside any reference to him, since I can't comment on anything he said.
With respect to the planning that took place, it began well before there was a decision to go to war. It was extensive. Like any planning, once you hit reality, the plan needs to be adjusted and modified. That's the way life is.
I'm sure any of you who sit down and make a family budget plan, once you -- that budget plan hits reality and what happens the first month of the budget, you begin making adjustments and calling audibles. And that's what happens with a war plan, for example. And the question is, did you have enough flexibility in your planning? And was it broad enough that you are able to cope with some or all or most of the kinds of things you meet?
We spent a good deal of time planning for things, in some instances, that, thank the good Lord, didn't happen. We spent time worrying about what happened in the Gulf War -- massive oil well fires. There were only a couple of handfuls of those, and thank goodness, because it protected the oil wealth of the Iraqi people, which they're going to need to recover.
We had plans for large numbers of internally displaced people, and because the war was so fast, it didn't happen.
We had humanitarian crisis plans -- how we could bring food right along, and water, as we came in. So there was extensive planning.
Now it may be that not everyone in the world is aware of all of that, but General Jay Garner is a -- was a very skilled person. He was the person in charge of that, and he did an outstanding job.
Now was -- did we -- <h3>was it possible to anticipate that the battles would take place south of Baghdad and that then there would be a collapse up north, and there would be very little killing and capturing of those folks, because they blended into the countryside and they're still fighting their war?</h3> It's not a war of big elements, it's not major combat operations, but the war is still going on in the sense that there are those people on the ground who were not killed or captured, who did not surrender; who are still attempting, through low-intensity conflict, to damage the coalition's efforts. Is that going to take some time? Sure it is. Is it hard work? You bet. Are people going to be injured in the process? I regret to say that that's what's happening.,,,
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Last edited by host; 05-26-2007 at 07:56 AM..
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