House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak

[minibush1]

House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01


Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.

Top members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which spent four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by the Bush administration to make its case for the war on Iraq, found "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, and said it had to rely on "past assessments" dating to when U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence," both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter."

"The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist," the two committee members said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director George J. Tenet. The Washington Post obtained a copy this weekend.

The letter constitutes a significant criticism of the U.S. intelligence community from a source that does not take such matters lightly. The committee, like all congressional panels, is controlled by Republicans, and its continue

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Bush War data was weak? Curiously, the US Congress . . . the one with the Constitutional responsibility to declare war . . . has just now discovered the case for war was weak. Amazing isn't it?

 

[syzygy]

this criticism is in part unfair. did the cia and others international agencies not make a substantial effort to penetrate ba'ath iraq ? the letter
says nothing about this. ba'ath iraq grew smarter through each failure. they closed their leaks, real and suspected. saddam's police state
apparatus became tighter with every major embarrassment.

between 1998 and 2003, i don't recall any major defectors who could have provided the intelligence community with more reliable evidence.
with the lack of concrete sources who were on the ground in iraq during this time, then room for speculation must grow because the urgency
to act against hussein could not weaken. the containment policy was turned into a failure.

saddam was living large without a u.n. inspection regime to at least harras him, neighbors who enjoyed bestowing profits into his till, and
friendly european and asian countries willing to water down the sanctions.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Here's the problem though . . . all of the speculation was skewed to match the agenda. Many of the Asian and European countries you criticize have decent leadership. Isn't it reasonable to conclude they viewed Iraq as just another autocratic regime (like the Saudi or Kuwaiti royals) sitting on a valuable natural resource? As opposed to the US position that Saddam was Hitler or Stalin reincarnate . . . poised to reign terror upon the world?

Next time you are lying in the grass looking up at the clouds . . . and see what looks like a mobile weapons lab . . . it's not . . . it's just a cloud. You see what you want to see. US intelligence painted a portrait of reality. Our best guess was "we don't know." Unfortunately, the policy perspective from the Bushies translated "we don't know" into "we know where the weapons are . . . they are in the region around Baghdad and Tikrit." Now that Bush no longer needs to sell a war, America (and the impotent Congress) are asking the hard questions that should have preceded the war. The kind of questions that UN inspectors (with the backing of US military muscle) might have answered.

The sanctions crippled Saddam's war machine but at the cost of crippling Iraq's infrastructure and hardship on the typical Iraqi. The sanctions were never an answer to Saddam. A radical revolution akin to the Ayatollah would have solved the Saddam problem . . . albeit while creating another. But we fiercely oppose self-determination for the Kurds and Shi'ites because a divided Iraq would make Iran the new Big Dog. Turkey would likely make a pre-emptive strike on the Kurds. And last but not least the US would lose control over the tremendous oil wealth in those respective regions. We cannot even argue this war was about freedom b/c our goal was not freedom as desired by Iraqis . . . it was freedom as prescribed by the Bush administration.

 

[syzygy]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
Here's the problem though . . . all of the speculation was skewed to match the agenda. Many of the Asian and European countries you criticize have decent leadership. Isn't it reasonable to conclude they viewed Iraq as just another autocratic regime (like the Saudi or Kuwaiti royals) sitting on a valuable natural resource? As opposed to the US position that Saddam was Hitler or Stalin reincarnate . . . poised to reign terror upon the world?

what agenda ? i don't accept - and good luck proving - this oil-first-last-and-inbetween-conspiratorial jive. your connecting invisible dots, or at least
dots that have strangely assumed the same faults you ascribe to the neocons. this backroom politiking is more apropo and very predictable with
police states like . . . um . .. saddam's ?

i suppose these asian and european countries have 'decent leadership' because they opposed bush - regardless of their actual virtues or there
absence thereof. since saddam worshipped and emulated stalin, murdered tens of thousands of his own people, instituted thought police that
clamped down on ideological deviations, i don't see how saddam would not take his place alongside these other monsters. the basic fact his
atrocities are not touched upon by the oppositionists is truly disgusting. indeed, the basic fact of saddam hussein's very nature, his atrocious
behavior, that of his sons, and the terroristic ba'ath state is never ever referred to. its just assumed . . . its assumed, ofcourse, for ulterior
de-emphasis.

Next time you are lying in the grass looking up at the clouds . . . and see what looks like a mobile weapons lab . . . it's not . . . it's just a
cloud. You see what you want to see. US intelligence painted a portrait of reality. Our best guess was "we don't know." Unfortunately, the
policy perspective from the Bushies translated "we don't know" into "we know where the weapons are . . . they are in the region around Baghdad
and Tikrit." Now that Bush no longer needs to sell a war, America (and the impotent Congress) are asking the hard questions that should have
preceded the war. The kind of questions that UN inspectors (with the backing of US military muscle) might have answered.

i think the congressional letter was unfair because nary a comment was proffered for the efforts made by the intelligence communities. there
was much criticism and the failures proved to be easy prey for those who did not take the same time to appreciate the difficulty with procuring
more verifiable information from inside of the re-fortified bowels of the ba'ath regime.

your 'clouds' criticism is airless and de-contextualized. the congressional letter never questioned the president's sincerity. bush planted his
analysis in the continuum of saddam's known predilections. bush did not assume that after 1998 saddam had turned into a saint. he could
not be trusted to tell the truth, despite the fact that he may have been telling the truth. a perfect aesopian moment. learn from this kiddies, learn.

The sanctions crippled Saddam's war machine but at the cost of crippling Iraq's infrastructure and hardship on the typical Iraqi. The sanctions were never an answer to Saddam. A radical revolution akin to the Ayatollah would have solved the Saddam problem . . . albeit while creating another. But we fiercely oppose self-determination for the Kurds and Shi'ites because a divided Iraq would make Iran the new Big Dog. Turkey would likely make a pre-emptive strike on the Kurds. And last but not least the US would lose control over the tremendous oil wealth in those respective regions. We cannot even argue this war was about freedom b/c our goal was not freedom as desired by Iraqis . . . it was freedom as prescribed by the Bush administration.

aah, so now we're peddling some of our own hoary mths, eh ? still haven't learned that there was more than enough money in saddam's coffers
to 'alleviate the suffering' of the iraqi people. the truth of the matter is the iraqi people were suffering from saddam, and their suffering could only
be alleviated by his extermination, a very fine point totally ignored by the u.n. sanction/inspection regimes.

don't you remember the 600 million dollars stumbled upon by american troops in some baghdad house at the start of the war ?
or the billion pilfered by saddam and sons on the eve of the war from the central bank ?
and what of the literally billions earned in illegal trade between turkey, jordan, and syria ? what do your intelligence sources say happened to this money ?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Hitler = Bad

Saddam = Bad

Therefore Hitler = Saddam.


Logically unsound.

I can claim Bush = Bad

Therefore Bush = Hitler = Saddam

OMG! Bush is really Saddam? Must be!

Can play this game all night and day. It still doesnt work.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

This administration and its duplicitous supporters are still in denial.

Rice claimed on FOXNews (where else) the administration received new intelligence before the war that bolstered the WMD claims. Yahoo But even Wolfie and Rummy have come clean since then to say we received NO vital new information (before the war) about WMD and that the urgency for war was based on the "collective" activities/intelligence on Saddam's regime going back to the 1980s.

Of course the week before last, Cheney gave the wonderfully honest "we don't know" as an answer for connections between Saddam and 9/11. Which Bush followed promptly with "we know of no connections between Saddam and 9/11."

You want to blame the intelligence community b/c they failed to find evidence to support the war but who do you blame for the failure to find WMD after the war. As much as Bushies want to scurry away from WMD, Bush's speech at the UN in 2002 was overwelmingly skewed towards the threat posed by Saddam's WMD weapons program . . . and the weapons themselves. The robust support for 1441 did not evolve from a passionate plea to stop despots, autocrats, or human rights violations. 1441 was about WMD. The Congressional resolution which "allegedly" gave Bush permission to invade Iraq was not based on the plight of the Iraqi people.

FOXNews Fair and Balanced

The resolution gives Bush the power to use American military force to enforce existing United Nations Security Council mandates that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein dispose of his weapons of mass destruction.

The president has repeatedly stressed, however, that no final decision on whether to launch a military strike against Iraq has been made.

We've addressed this lie ad nauseum.

Colin Powell still claims they've found a mobile weapons lab even though no other administration official will stand up to the claim anymore. Powell's credibility rests on this lie but he should cut his losses like the rest of the Bushies that have backed away from their more "adventurous" pre-war exhortations.

Iraqi Nuke in a Year

Much like the Brits . . . the Aussie press deals much better with the obvious.

"In the assessments on the US, it was being made very clear to government all the things which were driving the US on Iraq. WMD wasn't the most important issue. In fact, it was seen as a secondary issue," Mr Wilkie said yesterday.

"It was also about the credibility of the US military. The US sees its military and threat of force as one of its most important foreign policy tools. They had threatened to use force and would lose credibility if they didn't," Mr Wilkie said.

Mr Wilkie's revelations came as a British newspaper reported that the mobile laboratories found in Iraq and said to be built to make chemical and biological weapons had been supplied by Britain in the late 1980s to produce hydrogen for military balloons.

Also in Britain, the Prime Minister Tony Blair's spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, wrote to the head of MI6 and promised to take more care in presenting intelligence material to the public after a damaging row over a dossier on Iraq's weapons.

 

[Gaard]

Rice this morning when asked about the faulty info gives the same generic reply we've seen on the news and this board..."Well everbody else thought they had WMD, too."

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: Gaard
Rice this morning when asked about the faulty info gives the same generic reply we've seen on the news and this board..."Well everbody else thought they had WMD, too."

but thinking they had is not the same as knowing they had, a big big difference

 

[konichiwa]

Not to mention while everyone else was thinking they had WMD, we went to war.

 

[Gaard]

Originally posted by: Czar

Originally posted by: Gaard
Rice this morning when asked about the faulty info gives the same generic reply we've seen on the news and this board..."Well everbody else thought they had WMD, too."

but thinking they had is not the same as knowing they had, a big big difference

I agree 100%. I wish one of these interviewers, when confronted with this reply, would respond with "Yes, but everybody else didn't use this info to wage war."

 

[naddicott]

Before the war started, I joked that it was ultimately about Bush Jr. getting personal revenge on Saddam Hussein because Hussein tried to have Bush Sr. assasinated. As the other rationales for war continue to break down under close inspection, I wonder if that may actually have been the case. Personal hatred can be a strong motivating factor, perhaps not the best way to determine U.S. international policies, but a strong factor regardless.

Congress, by not independently evaluating the case for war befirehand with a more critical eye, was derelict in its duty, IMO, and deserves a large share of the blame for this whole debacle. If all they wanted to do was give Bush a more credible threat to help the inspection process, they should have made it very clear to Bush in private that they were not approving a pre-emptive strike without some evidence of imminent danger to American national security.

 

[syzygy]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
You want to blame the intelligence community b/c they failed to find evidence to support the war but who do you blame for the failure to find WMD after the war. As much as Bushies want to scurry away from WMD, Bush's speech at the UN in 2002 was overwelmingly skewed towards the threat posed by Saddam's WMD weapons program . . . and the weapons themselves. The robust support for 1441 did not evolve from a passionate plea to stop despots, autocrats, or human rights violations. 1441 was about WMD. The Congressional resolution which "allegedly" gave Bush permission to invade Iraq was not based on the plight of the Iraqi people.

the congressional letter blamed the intelligence community, not me. i defended them for reasons i elucidate above. you regurgigate points i already
addressed. bush and company made a sound decision given saddam's known record, which in part entailed saddam could not be trusted to tell the
truth and should be expected to resort to his past evasiveness to maintain his wmd program. the underlying justification for 1441 was that saddam
had never been honest and truthful and he was going to be given one last chance to 'fess up. it was only a partial justification, the rest being naive.