posted July 09, 2004 12:56 PM            

Report Says Key Assertions Leading to War Were Wrong
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 9, 2004

Filed at 11:21 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons -- were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to ``group think'' assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, concluded a bipartisan report. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community -- which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that 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.

``This was a global intelligence failure.''

The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said: ``Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come. 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.''

The report repeatedly blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view and elbowing out dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the State or Defense departments. It faulted Tenet for not personally reviewing Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush on a campaign trip Friday, 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.''

Tenet has resigned and leaves office Sunday.

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 program. Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons, and only small amounts of chemical weapons have 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 program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs,'' the report concluded.

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

For example, speculation that the presence of one specialized truck could mean an effort to transfer chemical weapons was puffed up into a conclusion that Iraq was actively making chemical weapons, the report said.

Analysts also concluded that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program based mainly on the since-discredited claims of one Iraqi defector code-named ``Curve Ball,'' it said. American agents did not have direct access to Curve Ball or his debriefers, but the source's information was expanded into the conclusion that Iraq had an advanced and active biological weapons program, the report said.

--------------------------------------------
So much for being a "War President",hey Mr. Bush?

I believe that in my heart that most of the people of the United States only lust for Power,Greed,Prestige and now Violence and Control of all things and have no true care or love for anybody in this world other then themselves and will DO EVERYTHING in they're POWER to establish it, no matter what it takes to do so! And to do by ALL means to keep what they will and have wrongfully taken from whoever that someone else will,could and has been, even if it means to kill someone else by they're hand or by someone elses from near or afar!

God, help us all!

posted July 09, 2004 01:11 PM            

Senate Report Blasts Iraq Intel Failures

Friday, July 09, 2004

By Liza Porteus

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community overstated the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States and used less-than-100 percent credible information to justify the war in Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee found in a scathing report issued Friday.

Panel Chairman Pat Roberts (search), R-Kan., and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller (search), D-W.Va., released the 400-page report to the public around 10:30 a.m. EDT.

"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked, probably would have a nuclear weapon this decade," Roberts said during the press conference. "Well, today we know these assessments were wrong."

The committee released its conclusions but not its recommendations and the entire report is not declassified. The committee is still working with the CIA to declassify as much as possible; about 80 pages remain secret.

The report says U.S. intelligence analysts remained objective, but got careless, which may have led them to overestimate the threat Iraq posed to the United States, officials said. It also says U.S. officials relied too much on intelligence information from Iraqi dissidents and exiles who may have had their own agenda and didn't penetrate Saddam's inner circle effectively enough.

"The fact is, the administration, at all levels and to some extent, us [Congress], used bad information to bolster its case for war," Rockefeller said. "And we in Congress would not have authorized that war — we would not have authorized that war with 75 votes — if we knew what we know now."

"Leading up to September 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we were even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed," Rockefeller continued.

But the committee concluded that intelligence analysts were not pressured to change or tailor their views to support arguments for the invasion of Iraq.

"I think it's important to know that the intelligence they gave was under their judgment — the right perception," Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., told FOX News on Friday.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan 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."

No Evidence of 'Political Pressure'

The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or misinterpretation "was the result or politics or pressure," Roberts said. "In the end, what the president and the Congress used to send the country to war was info that was provided by the intelligence community and that information was flawed."

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told FOX News that intelligence officers are trained to be "above political pressure" anyway.

"They're trained as part of their tradition to state the facts, to bring the evidence, to bring the truth to the president who's the ultimate user of intelligence," Shelby said. "Whatever environment you might be in, if it's one where there might be hostilities, it's up to the intelligence community to still stay with the facts and nothing else."

"There are still some questions about whether there was proper use of intelligence that was available in the runup to the war … even if there wasn't pressure," Corzine added.

Outgoing CIA Director George Tenet (search) has always maintained that, "no one told us what to say or how to say it."

But in a sign that Democrats are at odds with Republicans over just how strong a role the White House may have played in allegedly "shaping" the intelligence, Rockefeller said the report simply doesn't recognize the "intense pressure" the intelligence community felt from the administration to support White House policies when "the most senior officials in the Bush administration" had already stated their conclusions.

"It was clear to us in this room … that they had made up their mind to go to war," Rockefeller said, adding that he regretted his vote authorizing the war.

National security analyst Edward Turzanski said "there's some frustration" from Democrats because they didn't think the intelligence was honestly compiled and will argue that the administration "cherry picked" information that supported its policies.

The report is "full of ineptitude" and failures on the part of the CIA, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, a member of the intelligence committee and ranking Democrat on Senate Armed Services Committee, told FOX News this week.

Levin said some information may have been misconstrued regarding aluminum tubes thought to be used in making nuclear weapons in Iraq, as well as alleged mobile biological weapons labs (search).

The CIA field officers who found the aluminum tubes (search) in question said they were for uranium enrichment but later it was discovered they weren't the right size and instead were used for regular rockets.

But "perhaps the major issue that's going to arise is one that's still very much in the news … collaboration between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," Levin said.

The independent commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, recently concluded that there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks but didn't rule out a general Iraq-Al Qaeda connection.

Some observers said the report doesn't exactly bode well for Bush but won't serve as his death knell, either.

"I don't think it gives him any political cover at all …this report didn't even profess to have looked at the White House end of the situation," former CIA Director Stanfield Turner told FOX News, adding that other upcoming reports probe the White House's influences on intelligence even more.

Riding the 'Assumption Train'

Among the report's conclusions are that the intelligence community suffered from "collective group think" which led analysts, collectors and managers to presume that Iraq had an active and growing weapons of mass destruction program.

"This group think caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence such as the procurement of dual use technology" to mean Iraq had an active weapons program, Roberts said. "It is clear that this group think also extended to our allies" and other nations, "all of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein did have active WMD program."

"This was a global intelligence failure," Roberts added.

The report also concluded that in "a few significant instances," analysis included in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate — which concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — suffered from a "layering affect." Threat assessments were based on previous judgments that may have disregarded uncertainties, which led to the presence of an "intelligence assumption train," the report found.

It also said intelligence managers failed to effectively encourage analysts to challenge assumptions, consider alternative arguments, characterize intelligence reporting and counsel analysts who may have lost their objectivity. There were also significant shortcomings on "almost every aspect on the intelligence community in human intelligence collection efforts against the Iraqi WMD target," Roberts said.

"Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of U.N. inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD targets," Roberts added.

What sensitive information the CIA could get from human sources on the group wasn't shared, either, the committee said.

"Most, if not all, of the problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management and cannot be solved by simply adding funding and personnel," Roberts said.

CIA and other officials have repeatedly said they didn't have enough human intelligence sources on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan before the wars in those countries. Tenet has maintained that in the past two years, those resources have been dramatically boosted.

"In this case, we missed big time on 9/11 and we missed big time in Iraq and the CIA structurally, institutionally, has to take a lot of blame for that," former FBI special agent and Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating told FOX News.

Friday's Senate report was just one of a myriad of investigations under way into the intelligence community's performance surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Tenet, who is officially leaving the agency on Sunday, has been director of central intelligence for nine years. Poised to take over as acting director is his deputy, John McLaughlin, 61.

posted July 09, 2004 11:35 PM              

The intelligence failures noted in today's report add to the compelling need for Congress to undertake an unbiased and nonpartisan effort to strengthen our first line of defense. Time is not on our side.

The writer is a Democratic senator from Illinois and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

2004 The Washington Post Company

posted July 10, 2004 06:03 PM              

It was a rhetorical question the senator could not answer. Judgment on the role of Mr Feith and Mr Chalabi was put off until phase two of the investigation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1258055,00.html