Posted on Fri, Apr. 01, 2005 Intelligence on Iraq was ‘dead wrong' WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community was “dead wrong” about prewar Iraq's weapons programs and can't accurately gauge the future threat from potential adversaries, a presidential commission said Thursday. The panel, in a caustic report, called the exaggerated estimates of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs “one of the most public — and most damaging — intelligence failures in recent American history.” Even today, intelligence agencies have failed to adapt, and the United States knows “disturbingly little” about the nuclear weapons programs of countries such as Iran and North Korea, it said. The 600-page report recommends intelligence reforms going well beyond those Congress adopted last year. It recommends giving more power to the recently created director of national intelligence, consolidating the FBI's intelligence activities, and using more publicly available materials. President Bush reluctantly appointed the panel in February 2004 after the failure to find the chemical and biological weapons or the nuclear weapons program that the president and his aides said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hiding. The co-chairmen were former U.S. Sen. Charles Robb, a Democrat, and U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican. On Thursday, Bush praised the panel's “sharp critique” and said he had directed White House adviser Fran Townsend to find ways to carry out its suggestions. While it offered a blunt assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies, the panel didn't pass judgment on the administration policy-makers who used the faulty intelligence — sometimes after ignoring warnings from subordinates — to build their case for war. Nor is it certain that intelligence agencies will implement the changes the commission recommended to deal with future threats, the commissioners conceded. “Many insiders admitted to us that (the intelligence community) has an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations” for change, the report said. Silberman said the commission had no authority to consider how policy-makers used intelligence that was sent to them during the buildup to war. When pressed, he suggested that Bush was misled by a steady stream of information that exaggerated the threat. The intelligence agencies, the panel said, had little worthwhile information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, exaggerated what they did know, often disregarded contrary evidence, and neglected to tell policy-makers about the weakness of their case. — Warren P. Strobel and Ron Hutcheson Knight Ridder
Was Bush misled? No. I find it rather difficult to believe that the misrepresentations about WMD happened to coincide perfectly with his desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein. If anything, he may have done some creative interpretation of the facts and reached the conclusion that he did because he WANTED to believe it; but I think even that is being too generous. More likely, in my opinion, is that he knew that what he was saying was entirely false but lied about it anyway.
" Even today, intelligence agencies have failed to adapt, and the United States knows “disturbingly little” about the nuclear weapons programs of countries such as Iran and North Korea, it said." Not to jump on Clinton,but I have to ask wether or not he could have improved on American intelligence gathering during his 8 yrears? Wasn't Clinton curious about North Korea,Iran and the middle east as a whole?
Presidents are puppets and have little say in what goes on. Period. Do I think Bush was mislead? No. I think the propaganda that was fed to Americans leading up to the war, by the Bush administration, was known to be based on faulty and/or outdated intelligence information by many, including the president himself. But they presented us with whatever they could dig up, as faulty as it may have been, to justify the globalists' much needed war with Iraq.
"Then why does anyone want to become president just to be a puppet?" Power and Money, people who become presidents don't care that they are being used by people behind the scenes, because they have so much fame and fortune, that's what I believe. One of the only presidents to ever try to break that was JFK, and look what happened to him... Peace and Love, Dan
Getting back to Clinton. Did he make a mistake by cutting the U.S intelligence budget? I mean,this did reduce the number of spies that the U.S needed. Hasn't these cuts contributed to the intelligence failures we saw with middle eastern intelligence gathering?
No, because there were numerous reports from Agents within Al Queda and the Taliban warning of 9/11, but the government never acted upon these threats, it isn't a problem with the agents, its a problem with the government's motivation and agenda. Peace and Love, Dan
I think it's a bit unfair to say that people only become president for the money. People do it for the same reason that they get into politics: because they want to make a difference. They then find that, through a combination of the civil services and the public's fickle self-interest, they have no choice but to go along with how the system works or effectively make themselves unemployed. Back on topic, I'd say Bush allowed himself to be misled to an extent. If someone told him that Iraq was a threat, he probably wouldn't have gone out of his way to try and prove them wrong.
Yeah, right. The only people in politics who have ever truly wanted to make a difference have either been silenced, or they turn up dead under suspicious circumstances, as was the case with the late Paul Wellstone. To make it in politics, you have to play dirty. If you don't play dirty, you don't get anywhere. To say the goal of becoming president is to make a difference is a bit, well. . . naive. The only thing most politicians care about is being re-elected. So you're saying the government is corrupt because of the public? Hahah!! Actually, that's true because most people are ignorant to what is going on, so it just continues to get worse and worse.
It's EASY to mislead the ignorant. I mean NO disrespect to our "Commander In Chief". Yet, if he were to spend two hours with me, We may end up with world peace.
Remember that whole "yellowcake uranium" thing from Niger. Well, it turns out that everybody and their mother knew that memo was faked, badly, but Bush still used it as a rationale for war. This suggests that while alot of the intelligence was unreliable Bush never reported this to the American People, despite his knowledge of it(they do have fact-checkers at the CIA). So, bush was not misled, he was misleading.
