OFKU0

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/07/09...e_report040709

Senate report slams CIA on Iraq intelligence
Last Updated Fri, 09 Jul 2004 21:57:21

WASHINGTON - Pre-war intelligence reports claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were wrong and overstated, according to a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report.

"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," said Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican committee chair.

Intelligence reports leading up to the war indicated that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, mobile weapons labs and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

"Today we know these assessments were wrong. And, as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," Roberts said.

Roberts said most of the key judgments in the October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD programs "were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting."

Senator John Rockefeller, the Democratic vice-chair on the committee, said mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq rank among "the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation."

"The administration at all levels used bad information to bolster its case for war," he said.

"We in Congress would not have authorized the war…if we knew what we know now," he said.

Roberts said he didn't know if he would have supported the war in light of the report. He said he still may have approved it based on humanitarian grounds with the goal of eliminating the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.

'Group think' intelligence failure

Roberts said intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not.

But Roberts said this "group think" extended to American allies and the United Nations members who also believed Saddam Hussein posed a threat.

"This was a global intelligence failure," he said.

The report also blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers and ignoring dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the state or defence departments.

The report also blames the CIA for not sharing information with other intelligence agencies and slammed the agency for not having any human intelligence in Iraq after 1998 and the exit of the UN inspectors.

The report criticized analysts for taking parts of questionable information and making overreaching conclusions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The report is the first of two parts of a study conducted by the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee.

It explores how the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. government intelligence agencies collected, interpreted and ultimately delivered assessments of how dangerous Iraq could be to the United States, given its alleged weapons of mass destruction and its alleged connections to extremist groups such as al-Qaeda.

So far, no weapons of mass destruction have been found despite intense coalition searches, and there is now widespread doubt about Iraq having connections to foreign militant groups before the 2003 war began.

Two more reports dealing with intelligence failures are also expected this summer:


The independent 9/11 Commission is scheduled to release its final report on the same day the Democratic convention opens this month in Boston.
A final report on the failure to find Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction will be made public in August or September.
Democrats on the committee had wanted the White House's use of the intelligence reports to be part of the study's formal mandate, but the Republicans, who control the committee, voted against that.

As a result, the second part of the Senate study, exploring the White House's actions, will likely be released after the November presidential election.

Although there was a unanimous vote on the report, there were disagreements mostly along partisan lines.

Rockefeller said there was a "real frustration" about what was left out of the report, "especially on the question of whether the administration pressured the intelligence community to reach predetermined, in my judgment, conclusions."

The Butler report on British pre-war intelligence is due out July 14.

Written by CBC News Online staff
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I would like to know from an American point of view what this means to the typical American. Is this report damaging to the Bush administration or will the CIA take the brunt? Since the CIA is under the wing of the government, will this report get legs and see the dismissal of varying personnel or have people made their minds up already and don't care anymore? Do you as Americans feel betrayed by the aforementioned or is this just big government doing what they do in the best interest of its citizens? Where do you stand?

__________________
" In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard.

phredgreen

the replies you are going to get are going to depend on each individual's political leanings.

to the right, they're going to say that the CIA misled bush and that declaring war under false pretenses is the fault of the CIA.

to the left, they're going to say that bush pressed the CIA for information, any information, even false information, to justify starting a war.

anything said beyond this will be expansion of those two ideals.

__________________
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
- Thomas Paine

Journeyman

Phredgreen's got me pegged. I feel that the administration didn't press for, but demanded something to justify going to war with Iraq after 9/11. The reason I believe this (well... because I'm to the left, that's one reason) is on account of the guy who's name I can't remember, who wrote a book I didn't read, concerning his time spent inside the administration and how Bush was looking to hit Iraq from day one, and even moreso after 9/11.

But I do have a question: If the CIA misled the administration about WMD, does this mean that Bush is going to admit (wrongly or correctly, you never know what's buried in there...) that there were no WMD in Iraq at the time of invasion?

Edit: Richard A. Clarke, who wrote Against All Enemies.

KMA-628

How about a different angle?

How come congress isn't being blamed as well? They accepted the facts just as the administration did. Plus, and correct me if I am wrong, doesn't Congress get intelligence reports as well? I realize that congress gets security briefings from the White House. But don't they get briefings and intelligence from other sources as well? Once again, I may be wrong, but I really don't think that the only source Congress had was the White House.

I accept the fact that the information wasn't as accurate as it should be. My problem is that there were a whole lot of other people, outside of this administration, that had access to either the same info or similar info and made the same conclusions.

Plus, hasn't this been a podium point for a lot longer than Bush has been in office?

I just think the the blame needs to be spread out a little more fairly.

__________________
Before you criticize someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry at you.......you're a mile away.......and they're barefoot.

tecoyah

How about yet another angle:

It makes no difference if he knew he was lying, or if he was wrong. He pushed for a war, we got a war, alot of people are dead, and now it seems we did all this under false pretences.
Bush is the president, and the Buck stops there. We will likely never actually know how we got bad info, but we did. The President of the United States is accountable for the error.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

phredgreen

that is the thirty-six thousand dollar question.

was the CIA's information flawed to begin with, or was the CIA hard pressed to find (or make up) information justifying the war by the administration, which takes us full circle to OFKU0's question. we're working in circles.

unfortunately, because we don't have access to much of the information that the 9/11 commission received, or even the super-secret information that dick cheney hinted that the administration didn't even disclose to the 9/11 commission, we as citizens may never know.

__________________
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
- Thomas Paine

MSD

This information will be used by the stubborn to furhter reinforce their current, closed-minded views of what happened, and nobody will change thier minds and start supporting or opposing Bush based on this.