Report slams CIA for Iraq intelligence failures

Source

What you won't hear from the "liberal" media is how a large portion of this report is being withheld. Once again the administration is blacking out information and you can only guess what's in there.

Of course on the other hand Bush will have a hard time going after Kerry on his war vote considering that he's claiming to have been duped by the same CIA failures. That of course won't stop him from being a complete hypocrite.

Clinton and going back to every previous President can share the blame for the mess at the CIA and FBI. Bush, in his defense, was on vacation 42% of the time to be concerned with any changes or to even look at any reports on the condition and structure of those agencies.

According to Woodward, the media reports of smiling Iraqis leading inspectors around, opening up buildings and saying, "See, there's nothing here," infuriated Bush, who then would read intelligence reports showing the Iraqis were moving and concealing things.

He was told the "things" the Iraqis were moving and concealing were probably WMD. Finding that "less than convincing," Bush asked for a more detailed briefing by CIA Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin, which took place on Dec. 21 , 2002.

McLaughlin's version used communications intercepts, satellite photos, diagrams and other intelligence.

"Nice try," Bush said when the CIA official was finished. "I don't think this quite - it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from."

He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss, and said, "I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD, and this is the best we've got?"

"It's a slam-dunk case," Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air.

Bush pressed him again. "George, how confident are you?"

"Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," Tenet repeated.

Brand X
Did you say read? Everyone knows Bush can't read above the second grade level.

What do you think Cheney was doing on his visits to the CIA. Maybe he had a hand in duping the dope.

1. Malfunctions at the CIA must be corrected as rapidly and thoroughly as possible. We desperately need accurate intelligence regarding dangers.

2. There actually was some probability that Iraq had WMD or soon would. The CIA's errors made it appear higher than it really was, but that is not to say that the probability was zero. Hussein had had WMD in the past, he had been caught lying about them, he had used them on civilians, there had been incidents in which inspectors were not allowed to enter certain locations until the Iraqi officials said, "Okay, we're ready now." There actually was some probability that he had them, whether the CIA bungled their analysis or not. The magnitude of the threat from WMD in general is so great, and the consequences of their use so grave, that if the person we're invading is a brutal dictator who murders his own people anyway, we should err on the side of caution when it comes to invading to stop development of WMD. The use of even one single nuke or effective bioweapon in a western city, or any city, would be catastrophic. A million people could die in one single event. The probability that he had them or would eventually have them was great enough, and his reign of terror over his own country severe enough that I am not too broken up about removing him from power.

3. Hussein had, at times, demonstrated a strong desire to have these weapons. Clearly, he was pretty much amoral. Had he been cleared by inspectors, and had the spotlight been removed, there is every chance he would have begun secretly developing them again.

No, it had to be Libby, the root of all evil. :wink:

Brandon9000
Are you still insisting we were correct in our invasion of Iraq?

Did I write that in invisible ink or something? If you're unwilling to read my posts and address the points I make, please just leave them alone.

Your point is that you are trying to justify the invasion of Iraq with might have, could have and maybe. And of course the old chestnut Saddam was a bad guy who murdered his people. Know what, who the hell cares. sas faras I am concerned that isn't worth one American life.

You have failed to address my specific points because you cannot. If you attempted to address anything I said specifically, the weaknesses in your own arguments would rapidly become apparent. I am right, and you are merely running away from my argument.

Obviously, you must care since you have now responded twice.

What probability. The report dispels that probability. As for Saddam wanting WMD's what nation in the middle east does not. What specifically would you like me to address.

To specifically address your point, this is a real problem here.

You need MUCH MORE than probability before you decide to invade a country. Much more. These are people's lives we are talking about here.

I'm sure the response is 'we needed to act to protect American lives' but there was no real evidence that Sadaam was threatening America, in any way, at the time.

At the LEAST we could have given the UN weapons inspectors time to finish the job. The point has been brought up over and over that they weren't doing a good job; well, our guys DID do a good job, and look how many stockpiles of WMD THAT turned up for us.

Cycloptichorn

So does this mean the left will stop blaming Bush and start blaming the CIA? (HA! I make myself laugh sometimes!)

You have essentially ignored everything I said. The report indicates that the CIA's error's tended to turn non-evidence into apparent evidence, not that the probability Iraq still has WMD was zero. It was not zero. This is why:

Hussein had:

1. Created the weapons in the past.
2. Lied about the weapons.
3. Used the weapons on civilians.
4. Shown a clear intention to deceive inspectors by temporarily forbidding them to enter certain locations as they waited outside demanding to enter.

Therefore, there was some realistic probability that he was merely being deceptive about either still existing weapons or still existing development programs. The fact that Hussein had not merely wanted the weapons, but built them and so on makes me suspicious that had the spotlight eventually left him, he would have resumed his development programs. It is clear that at some point he had WMD and WMD programs. The only issue up for discussion is how recently.

We blame both of them. There's enough blame to go around in this situation that everyone can get a piece, even me.

Cycloptichorn

You couldn't be more mistaken. A literal interpretation of your statement indicates that we need 100% certainty to invade, which is absurd.

You completely fail to appreciate the era in which you are living. In the past, when a threat to the US would likely come from an armada of ships, which upon reaching our shores would threaten us with gunpowder, your statement would be closer to correct. In the present era, in which even one single WMD smuggled into the country could kill a million people all at once, we must act on a lower probability than 1 (100%). Two or three WMD events in the US, and we might become an extremely distressed 3rd world country for the forseeable future.

Brandon



And this you believe gives enough justification to invade another nation.

Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapons, they lied about and deceived the UN should we invade Iran?

North Korea had a secret nuclear weapons program, lied about it, has nuclear weapons and systems to deliver them. They also have a leader who is as despicable as Saddam. Should we invade North Korea?

Wrongly blame the CIA
July 8, 2004

IT IS VERY much in the national interest to review and correct intelligence errors made before the Sept. 11 attacks and before the war in Iraq. But evaluations of what has gone wrong in the gathering, analysis, and use of intelligence must be kept uncontaminated by partisan politics.

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This is a hard thing to do in the heat of a presidential campaign. Nevertheless, the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States did make an admirable effort to avoid the partisan blame game. Unfortunately, early accounts of a forthcoming Senate Select Committee report on prewar intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction suggest an inclination to absolve President Bush and Vice President Cheney of any responsibility for mistaken assumptions about those weapons, shifting a preponderance of the blame onto the CIA and its outgoing director, George Tenet.

This is the effect of a disclosure in the committee's report that some relatives of Iraqi scientists told agency officers they thought Saddam Hussein's WMD programs had been discontinued. As reported by The New York Times, the CIA's failure to tell Bush and Cheney what those relatives of Iraqi scientists had said makes it appear that the agency deceived the president and vice president into taking the nation to war on a false premise.

There are many grounds for criticizing things that were done or left undone during Tenet's seven-year tenure at the CIA. But a voluminous public record of the back and forth between Tenet and the Bush administration's policy makers indicates that CIA analysts were often skeptical of assumptions about Saddam's WMDs that Bush, Cheney, and other consumers of intelligence wanted to propound as the primary justification for the war that removed Saddam from power. Tenet persuaded Bush to delete from a speech he gave in Cincinnati a false claim about an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from the African nation of Niger.

If the Senate Select Committee chaired by Kansas Republican Pat Roberts makes it appear that Tenet's CIA misled Bush and Cheney by withholding uncorroborated statements that analysts had reason to be dubious about, the committee will be turning on its head the relationship between the White House and the CIA. Intelligence professionals justifiably resent the constant pressure put on CIA analysts, especially from Cheney and top civilians in the Defense Department, to come up with the intelligence product those policy makers desired.

Tenet's major mistake was to trade pliancy for access to Bush and budget largesse. But it was Bush, Cheney, and the Defense Department civilians who politicized intelligence analysis to suit their policy needs. It would only compound that original error if the Roberts committee politicized its analysis of what went wrong.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

I believe that the 4 points above constituted a very serious danger to us, and that this, together with the fact that Hussein is not the choice of his people, but merely ruling them by brute force, gave us enough justification to invade.

Possibly, but there are some complicating factors. First of all, Iran is sort of halfway a democracy, which means that the people sort of halfway chose the government. This means we need a larger amount of justification to invade. Furthermore, I have heard that a large fraction of the ordinary citizens of Iran like us, which is a resource we ought not to throw away lightly. Furthermore, we haven't been trying to get them to disarm as long as we played that game with Hussein, and I am not sure they are very close right now to having nuclear or biological weapons. It might be in our interest to try to negotiate with them for awhile more. Another factor is the extent to which we might expect them to use any WMD they developed to help terrorists destroy America, and I don't know much about that. This is kind of a complicated one, and I would have to research it further.


We waited too long and now it's too late. They have nukes. If we invade, they could kill a million people - perhaps our troops, or perhaps the South Koreans - within the first hour or so. We invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from achieving this sort of near invulnerability.