CIA was 'dead wrong' on Iraq

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

CIA was 'dead wrong' on Iraq
From correspondents in Washington
April 01, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse

Slammed ... Mr Bush responds to the report, accompanied by Senator Charles Robb / *******


US intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in their pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs and still know dangerously little about current nuclear and biological threats, a US presidential commission said.
After a year-long enquiry, the panel warned in a scathing report that the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 based on accusations that turned out to be false had done damage to US credibility that "will take years to undo."

"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commission said. "We simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12720330-2,00.html

[James]

Hmmm... President Truman had a sign on his desk that said "The Buck stops here." I guess GWB has one that says "No, It's not my fault." :roll:

[Sir Zach of R.]

I still think they're out there somewhere.

[Jedburgh]

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=42921

[Clearday-TRForce]

freedom, what is the meaning of freedom? free from what?

free? we have some opinions for "free" word.But does this word so different in different locations,geographic places?

free? free from what? such as; could u say something? US doesnt use "law" ways with UN. Does it mean "free"? free for what?

free? CIA has announced "it s a deadly mistake for nuclear bombs in Iraq"? so what happened next? many innocent people died. So do all souls now free? has reached to mainland near to GOD? so all free...

[obd]

OMFG!!! This is an outrage. First Bush pressures the CIA to come up with intelligence reports that favor his own F'ing agenda.......then when it proves wrong he just scapegoats them for "faulty intelligence".

From DAY F'ING ONE Bush has tried to turn the CIA into the propaganda mouthpiece of the administration and then scapegoat them when HIS bull**** agenda comes up short.

Bush has no idea what "the buck stops here" even means. He has no understanding of accountability other then the fact that it makes for a good soundbite on CNN........and he has consistently rewarded failure within his own neocon ranks and punished honesty and integrity outside it............

Bush is a moral coward of the highest order

[noFlooder]

What a suprise ... wait ... no its not.

[Bluezoo]

“Dead Wrong”? Not So Quick.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in Spanish Cuba, taking down over 250 sailors. In March, a naval court of inquiry began an investigation, and after 18 days of proceedings, including examining the wreck, hearing from specialists, and interviewing survivors and witnesses, court determined that the USS Maine had been sunk by a mine. All the experts agreed. The court also said it could not fix blame for the mine. One anonymous source blamed Spain. An ultimatum soon followed, and within weeks the two countries were at war. Main combat operations ended in three months, but an insurgency continued in the Philippines for four years, resulting in an additional 4,200 dead Americans. But the question remained: Did Spain blow up the Maine? In 1911 a War Department investigation posited that an internal explosion that set off the magazines caused the sinking. This raised a ruckus, and the Navy Department insisted that the cause was an external mine. A joint Army-Navy board eventually affirmed the original explanation, but since then the accident theory has gained acceptance. So does that discredit the entire war? When the issue resurfaced in 1911 the Washington Post opined, "Whatever may have been the cause of the wreck of the battleship Maine, whether an exterior or interior explosion, the people of the United States may reflect with a clean conscience that this was but one of the many causes of the Spanish American war. ...At any rate the war has been fought and is over."


I thought about this in relation to the release of the 600-page report from the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. There is a lot to learn from it. The commissioners employed a very straightforward methodology, comparing prewar intelligence reports and estimates with information obtained during and after the war, looking for gaps, as well as successes, and figuring out how we got it wrong or right. The latter half of the report discusses needed reforms in the intelligence community, and does so in a more sophisticated way than the higher profile 9/11 Commission Report. The continuing salience of the WMD issue requires renewed attention to strengthening intelligence capabilities. Not surprisingly, the report's first section ends with a discussion of the two most prominent WMD threats, Iran and North Korea. Of course, the analysis does not benefit from documents showing the true extent of their weapons programs — no "post conflict" with them yet. Moreover, the findings in those sections are classified. But it shows that the commissioners were seized of the issue and their focus was forward, not backward.

The report was wide ranging, looking at a variety of current and former WMD threats, including Libya and various terrorist groups. One intriguing intelligence failure cited in the report was misestimation of al Qaeda's WMD program — that is, it was taken too lightly. The report states that analysts failed to note how strongly bin Laden to acquire and use radiological weapons, and underestimated the scope of the active bioweapons program. Al Qaeda was more dangerous than we thought.

However, the Iraq chapter made the headlines. The WMD intelligence that supported the war rationale was "dead wrong." We now get to enjoy another round of the press and other critics flogging the administration. Progress in Iraq be damned, since a large-scale functional WMD program wasn't discovered the war was illegitimate. A Washington Post poll released March 15 showed 53 percent now believing the war was not worth fighting (down from 56 percent in December). Of course, like the war with Spain there were other reasons for the conflict, primarily three — human rights, international aggression, and Iraqi links to terrorism. In 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz said that the decision to emphasize WMDs over these other factors was a political call. The WMD issue allowed the U.N. to be invoked more easily. Of course, one could also have used enforcement of the Oil-for-Food provisions in UNSCR 1360 as a rational for intervention, and that would have been hailed a great victory since it turned out the corruption in that program was much greater than anticipated (it was suggested here in November 2001). But the intelligence community said they had the goods, and the WMD argument moved forward.

Ultimately the Iraq Survey Group did not find as much evidence of WMD programs as expected. But note — the same Post poll cited above found that 56 percent of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had WMDs before the war that have not been found. The Fall 2004 Duelfer report concluded that Saddam had intended to reconstitute his WMD program after sanctions were lifted, and desired to maintain the expertise necessary to do so. And it is still fair to ask, if Saddam was not trying to acquire WMDs, what was he doing? The Duelfer report notes the following changes in Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission (MIC), Saddam's secret organization in charge of WMD development, in the years leading up to the war:

Between 1996 and 2002, the overall MIC budget increased over forty-fold from ID 15.5 billion to ID 700 billion. By 2003 it had grown to ID 1 trillion. MIC's hard currency allocations in 2002 amounted to approximately $364 million. MIC sponsorship of technical research projects at Iraqi universities skyrocketed from about 40 projects in 1997 to 3,200 in 2002. MIC workforce expanded by fifty percent in three years, from 42,000 employees in 1999 to 63,000 in 2002.

So the MIC enjoyed a budget increase from fifteen billion to one trillion Dinars over seven years for nothing? MIC technical research projects increased 80-fold for no particular reason? Then there was the very well-chronicled systematic deception campaign that U.N. inspectors encountered every time they went into Iraq. In more than one case inspectors would pull up to a site and be halted; surveillance would pick up vehicles being loaded in the back and hurrying away; inspectors would then be allowed in. What was being carted away so quickly? If nothing was there, what was going on? One theory behind the deception campaign was that it was itself a deception — it was not so much that Saddam had something to hide, but rather he wanted to make us think he had something to hide in order to deter us from attacking him. That rationale was clearly too clever by half if true, at least judging by the results. (It is better to act like North Korea and say you have nuclear weapons whether you do or not.)

But I don't buy that explanation. The deception campaign was too systematic, too thorough, in ways that went well beyond what would be necessary simply to generate suspicion. This activity continued during and after the war when it would make no difference. One case in point — an exploitation team went to check out an apartment in an otherwise unexceptional residential area that was allegedly being used as a WMD site. They arrived to find the apartment stripped. The floor tiles were missing, the walls cleaned, the plumbing fixtures gone, the pipes under the floors ripped out. This was not the result of looting — the apartment had been sanitized, disinfected. How many such sites could there have been in Iraq? Were they all found and checked? Strains of biological organisms that could be weaponized were found in a scientist's home refrigerator — how much such dispersal took place? Not to mention allegations that critical nuclear and chemical program components were taken to Syria, Iran, or Russia.

There is no doubt that the intelligence system needs reform to help it fulfill its role in providing strategic information necessary to support high-level policymakers. That is the most significant aspect of the new report. Maybe the WMD war rationale will be like the sinking of the Maine, always open to debate. It would be easiest to agree with the Post that whatever the answer Americans "may reflect with a clean conscience that this was but one of the many causes" of the war in Iraq. And it is worth remembering Secretary Rumsfeld's aphorism, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

From:
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200504010813.asp

[Big D]

OMFG!!! This is an outrage. First Bush pressures the CIA to come up with intelligence reports that favor his own F'ing agenda.......then when it proves wrong he just scapegoats them for "faulty intelligence".

From DAY F'ING ONE Bush has tried to turn the CIA into the propaganda mouthpiece of the administration and then scapegoat them when HIS bull**** agenda comes up short.

Bush has no idea what "the buck stops here" even means. He has no understanding of accountability other then the fact that it makes for a good soundbite on CNN........and he has consistently rewarded failure within his own neocon ranks and punished honesty and integrity outside it............

Bush is a moral coward of the highest order

agree completely.

i also love the source of this garbage - "correspondents in washington."

Additionally, it was Tenet who advised Bush that going into Iraq would be a "slam dunk." Tenet did not speak for the rest of the CIA.

oh, what's even better is that dubya gave Tenet government's highest civilian award, presidential medal of freedom, while trying to put the blame on the rest of the agency.

what a peace of work. this bullsh** makes me want to vomit.

[Kilgor]

Do we really need to drag up the democratic party quotes on Iraqi WMD again ?

:roll:

[Belrick]

It always makes me sick when i read of ppl justifying the murdering of tens of thousands of civilians just so they can give themselves an imaginary concious.

What gave the killers the right to codemn woman and children to death so that there brand of democracy can be shoved down the survivors throats?

[priccobe]

OMFG!!! This is an outrage. First Bush pressures the CIA to come up with intelligence reports that favor his own F'ing agenda.......then when it proves wrong he just scapegoats them for "faulty intelligence".

From DAY F'ING ONE Bush has tried to turn the CIA into the propaganda mouthpiece of the administration and then scapegoat them when HIS bull**** agenda comes up short.

Bush has no idea what "the buck stops here" even means. He has no understanding of accountability other then the fact that it makes for a good soundbite on CNN........and he has consistently rewarded failure within his own neocon ranks and punished honesty and integrity outside it............

Bush is a moral coward of the highest order

agree completely.

i also love the source of this garbage - "correspondents in washington."

Additionally, it was Tenet who advised Bush that going into Iraq would be a "slam dunk." Tenet did not speak for the rest of the CIA.

oh, what's even better is that dubya gave Tenet government's highest civilian award, presidential medal of freedom, while trying to put the blame on the rest of the agency.

what a peace of work. this bullsh** makes me want to vomit.
Dude, are you being serious or are you THAT ignorant? Tenet was the head of the CIA, who the F*CK was speaking for? His wife?

[Big D]

Dude, are you being serious or are you THAT ignorant? Tenet was the head of the CIA, who the F*CK was speaking for? His wife?

Ok, granted, as a CIA director he technically speaks for the agency.
But did he really speak for ALL of them? In my opinion, he didn’t. Here’s why I think that.

In reference to Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. about the certainty of WMDs in Iraq, Ray Mcgovern states in his interview:


My first visual impression here, watching George Tenet, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency back there as a prop almost like a potted plant, as if to say that the Central Intelligence Agency stands behind, or in this case sits behind everything that Colin Powell says. That was a terrific blow to the morale of the Central Intelligence Agency analysts.

Furthermore, Mel Goodman makes the following comments in the Baltimore Sun article:


The current situation is the worst intelligence scandal in the nation's history. A specious national intelligence estimate in October 2002 and a CIA-drafted speech that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 made the national and international case for going to war.

The CIA director, Mr. Goss, has warned all hands that they must "support the administration and its policies," and appears to have begun a bureaucratic housecleaning to ensure such support. For the past five months, Mr. Goss and his predecessor have blocked the distribution of a sensitive agency accountability report recording CIA failures that may have contributed to the absence of strategic warning prior to 9/11.

Instead of negotiating the intelligence reform proposals of the Senate and House, it is time for the intelligence committees of the legislature to monitor the political behavior of the CIA director and to ensure that the agency provides objective and balanced intelligence assessments to policy-makers. It is quite possible that no restructuring or reorganization is necessary and that no additional funds are needed for the intelligence community. What is needed, however, is a return to the original mission of the CIA: telling truth to power.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-20.htm


So you had Tenet receive presidential medal of freedom, then resign quietly for “personal” reasons, while the rest of the CIA is getting shafted. I just don't think that's right.

Please let me know if i'm wrong or missing something. Just don't yell at me, it makes me sad. :(

[priccobe]

Dude, are you being serious or are you THAT ignorant? Tenet was the head of the CIA, who the F*CK was speaking for? His wife?

Ok, granted, as a CIA director he technically speaks for the agency.
But did he really speak for ALL of them? In my opinion, he didn’t. Here’s why I think that.

In reference to Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. about the certainty of WMDs in Iraq, Ray Mcgovern states in his interview:


My first visual impression here, watching George Tenet, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency back there as a prop almost like a potted plant, as if to say that the Central Intelligence Agency stands behind, or in this case sits behind everything that Colin Powell says. That was a terrific blow to the morale of the Central Intelligence Agency analysts.

Furthermore, Mel Goodman makes the following comments in the Baltimore Sun article:


The current situation is the worst intelligence scandal in the nation's history. A specious national intelligence estimate in October 2002 and a CIA-drafted speech that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 made the national and international case for going to war.

The CIA director, Mr. Goss, has warned all hands that they must "support the administration and its policies," and appears to have begun a bureaucratic housecleaning to ensure such support. For the past five months, Mr. Goss and his predecessor have blocked the distribution of a sensitive agency accountability report recording CIA failures that may have contributed to the absence of strategic warning prior to 9/11.

Instead of negotiating the intelligence reform proposals of the Senate and House, it is time for the intelligence committees of the legislature to monitor the political behavior of the CIA director and to ensure that the agency provides objective and balanced intelligence assessments to policy-makers. It is quite possible that no restructuring or reorganization is necessary and that no additional funds are needed for the intelligence community. What is needed, however, is a return to the original mission of the CIA: telling truth to power.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-20.htm


So you had Tenet receive presidential medal of freedom, then resign quietly for “personal” reasons, while the rest of the CIA is getting shafted. I just don't think that's right.

Please let me know if i'm wrong or missing something. Just don't yell at me, it makes me sad. :(
Sorry, your avatar was scaring me!

[pathfinder82]

The CIA was not dead wrong, they simply took the fall for a ****ty administration. There were plenty of people high in the food chain who were screaming at the top of their lungs.

[BarkingSquirrel]

"Hey guys, look we f**ked up. Sorry."

"Unpossible, it's Bush's fault! He's eeeeeeeeeeeevil."

"What? Are you retarded?"

"Well, it is Wednesday."

"......"

[Miles.]

Everytime something like this gets posted, they come out of the woodwork. It's always the usual suspects saying the same ****: Bush ****ed up. Bush lied. Oh, woe is the USA.

It's easier to just demonize than to actually discuss what the problems are, but Bush is always the boogeyman.

I dont see any where in this report where the CIA is Bush's tool, CIA fell on the sword for Bush, Bush screwed the CIA...there's nothing in this report about that.


Bush is a moral coward of the highest order

Get real, my friend. Your useless blithering is a World's Fair of cowardice. Piss in the toilet, not on my computer screen or my flag.

[CMNot]

CIA was 'dead wrong' on Iraq

No ****.

[Miles.]

CIA was 'dead wrong' on Iraq

No ****.

See what I mean? They crawl out of some hole to say "Bush Lied! CIA is Bush's propaganda mouthpiece!"

Crawl back in, please.

[CMNot]

Which hole did I crawl out of and when did I say "BushLied! CIA is Bush's propaganda mouthpiece!"?

[pistol]

CIA was 'dead wrong' on Iraq

No ****.

See what I mean? They crawl out of some hole to say "Bush Lied! CIA is Bush's propaganda mouthpiece!"

Crawl back in, please.

As I understand it, the report did not investigate whether or not there was pressure from the administration to produce intelligence reports that reached desired conclusions. It also did not investigate how the false intelligence was used to promote the case for war. In short, it was nothing we didn't know already.

[Miles.]

Which hole did I crawl out of and when did I say "BushLied! CIA is Bush's propaganda mouthpiece!"?

Oh, excuse me, you didnt say that. Others did, and I projected that onto you. My apologies.

[Kilgor]

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." --Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." --Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton, signed by: -- Democratic Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others, Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." -- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999