Bush misused Iraq intelligence - US Senate report

[Joeychgo]

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush and his top policymakers exaggerated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made their case for war, a Senate committee reported on Thursday.

The Senate intelligence committee said in a study that major Bush administration statements that Iraq had a partnership with al Qaeda and provided it with weapons training were unsupported by intelligence, and sometimes contradicted it.

It also said statements on Iraq's weapons before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion were substantiated in most cases by available U.S. intelligence, but that they failed to reflect internal debate over those findings.

The long-delayed Senate study supported previous reports and findings that the administration's main case for war -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction -- was inaccurate and deeply flawed.

"The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (Sept. 11, 2001) attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein," intelligence committee Chairman John Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report.

"Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false pretenses."

The report also cited at least one statement -- by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that the Iraqi government operated underground weapons of mass destruction facilities -- that was not backed up by intelligence information.

REPUBLICAN DISSENT

The committee voted 10-5 to approve the report, with two Republican lawmakers supporting it. Sen. Christopher Bond and three other Republican panel members denounced the study in an attached dissent as a "partisan exercise."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino cited Republican objections to the report, but said the issue of inaccurate intelligence had been previously aired.

"We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it," Perino said.

U.S. public opinion, supportive of the war at the start, has soured on the war in the last few years, contributing to a dive in Bush's popularity.

The conflict is likely to be a key issue in the November presidential election between Republican John McCain, who supports the war, and Democrat Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the start and says he would aim to pull U.S. troops out within 16 months of taking office in January 2009.

Rockefeller has previously announced his support for Obama.

A second report by the committee faulted the administration's handling of December 2001 Rome meetings between defense officials and Iranian informants, which dealt with the Iranian issue and not Iraq.

It said Department of Defense officials collected potentially useful intelligence information at the meeting that they failed to share with other intelligence agencies.

Rockefeller said the committee's report on the defense department "paints a disturbing picture of Pentagon policy officials" who gathered intelligence on their own and kept others in the dark.

He said the department "demonstrated a fundamental disdain for the intelligence community's role in vetting sensitive sources."

http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN05318923

 

[fossten]

From HotAir.com:

Senate committee highlights “untrue” statements later proved correct

posted at 12:30 pm on June 5, 2008

by Ed Morrissey

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released a report accusing George Bush and Dick Cheney of knowingly using untrue statements to foster support for the war in Iraq. The chair of the committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) admitted that everyone operated from the same “flawed” intelligence, but accused the administration of outright deception. Oddly enough, at least one of the supposed deceptions have proven true, while another continues to get support from the intelligence agency that supplied it:

Among the reports conclusions:

Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership “were not substantiated by the intelligence.”

The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabiliies [sic].

Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq’s weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.
Cheney’s claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.

The last claim comes from Czech intelligence, which they have repeatedly defended. The 9/11 Commission reported concluded that it was unlikely, given the pattern of use from Atta’s cell phone, but (a) no one can put Atta in the US outside of that data, and (b) it ignores the possibility that Atta loaned his phone to an associate while he traveled abroad. With the Czechs standing behind that intelligence before and during the war, it’s nothing more than a political cheap shot to call it a “deception”.

The first claim is even more laughable. Less than three months ago, the Pentagon released a report on the captured documents from the Saddam Hussein regime’s intelligence service, the IIS, which detailed support for two separate al-Qaeda terrorist partners. The Iraqis provided financial backing for the Army of Mohammed, a Bahraini terrorist organization that explicitly planned to target American assets in the region and around the world. The IIS and the Saddam regime in its own documents noted the necessity of keeping those arrangements quiet so as not to trigger another American invasion. The IIS also provided support for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which incorporated itself into the AQ network when Osama bin Laden made its leader his right-hand man: Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Quite obviously, the Saddam regime saw opportunities to wage war against us and Israel by proxy using the network of radical Islamist terrorists for their own ends. The captured intelligence revealed this. How could the entire Senate Intelligence Committee miss those rather large data points?
If this is the kind of scholarship that went into this report, then we can guess how well the other conclusions of “deception” play out in it. Then again, it’s the kind of cheap shot one can expect from a man who says that military pilots know nothing of war and suffering.

 

[fossten]

Hiatt on Rockefeller Report: Partisan nonsense, and dangerous

posted at 9:00 am on June 9, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

Fred Hiatt perused the report issued by Jay Rockefeller and the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee accusing George Bush and Dick Cheney of deception and misdirection leading up to the war on Iraq, and finds something missing: evidence. Not only does Rockefeller fail to substantiate his accusations, the report itself contradicts his public conclusions. It also sets a bar so high for action on intelligence that its absorption could paralyze the US in confronting threats until far too late.

So what did the SIC find about Bush’s statements on contemporaneous intel?

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”
On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”
On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda “were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,” and statements regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” The report is left to complain about “implications” and statements that “left the impression” that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

After the war, as we noted on several occasions, captured Iraqi documents confirmed two explicit connections between AQ and Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s IIS provided funds to two AQ terrorist groups. The Army of Mohammed, based in Bahrain, told the IIS that they wanted to attack American assets throughout the region, and the IIS supplied them with funds while attempting to cover their tracks, knowing what exposure would mean after 9/11. The IIS also supplied funds for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s organization which provided AQ with most of its leadership.

The New York Sun reminds everyone that in January 2003, the State department also had intelligence of ties between AQ and Saddam Hussein, and it came from the same group that dissented on the status of the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program:

His words demolish a talking point for Democrats who still say Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq until the coalition of the willing invaded. Mr. Ford wrote that the former emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi “has had a good relationship with Iraqi intelligence officials.” He added that intelligence on Qaeda “revealed the presence of safe house facilities in the city as well as the clear intent to remain in Baghdad. Also, foreign NGO workers outside of Iraq who are believed to provide support to al-Qaeda have also expressed their intent to set up shop in Baghdad.”

Hiatt also takes a look at the dissenting report from the Republicans, who — surprise! — didn’t get a chance to participate in the main report’s writing. Kit Bond (R-MO) reminded Rockefeller that he called Iraq an “imminent threat” in October 2002, not Bush, and that Rockefeller himself said, “To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can.” And Rockefeller saw the same intelligence that Bush did.

What Rockefeller does in this report is to walk back the threshold, saying now that we should have waited for more evidence. That may or may not be true; after 9/11, which was the specific frame of reference Rockefeller himself used in his “imminent threat” speech, waiting for more evidence could mean waiting until an attack occurs, especially in an era of asymmetric warfare. That would at least be an honest debate, but Rockefeller eschews that for unsupported accusations of dishonesty in what turns out to be a dishonest report. He certainly felt in 2002 that Bush used the right threshold after seeing the same intel that Bush had. If we have to wait for Perry Mason-like evidence, it ensures that the US will never take action on its intelligence until it is far, far too late. (via the Anchoress)