Topic awaiting preservation: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq (Page 1 of 1)

Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq
Jul 9, 10:48 AM (ET)

By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence agencies fell victim to false "group think" when assessing Iraq's weapons capabilities and ended up giving the Bush administration overstated or incorrect conclusions before the 2003 invasion, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report says.

Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community which cannot be fixed with more money alone, concluded a bipartisan report released Friday.

The report repeatedly blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view and elbowing out dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the State or Defense Departments. It faulted Tenet for not personally reviewing Bush's 2003 State of the Union address which contained since-discredited references to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

Tenet has resigned and leaves office this week.

Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons program. Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons and only small amounts of chemical weapons have been found.

Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.

"This 'group think' dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs," the report concluded.

Such assumptions also led analysts to inflate snippets of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, the report said.

For example, speculation that the presence of one specialized truck could mean an effort to transfer chemical weapons was puffed up into a conclusion that Iraq was actively making chemical weapons, the report said.

Analysts also concluded that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program based mainly on the since-discredited claims of one Iraqi defector code-named "Curve Ball," it said. American agents did not have direct access to Curve Ball or his debriefers, but the source's information was expanded into the conclusion that Iraq had an advanced and active biological weapons program, the report said.

Hmm... wonder who is going to take the fall for Bush next week...

Does anyone care? Not really...


(Oh, and I'm not saying they shouldn't, just these reports seem to come once a week, and yet nobody seems to get angry or care....)



-Chesta

Not to be a dick, but it's definately a problem if no one cares about this kind of stuff. There may not be a frothing discussion going on about it in this thread, but that doesn't mean it isn't important, or that no one is talking about it.

Spin spin spin... It doesn't really matter what the CIA said or didn't say about 'terrorist activities' or 'weapons capabilities'... all the powers-that-be were really focussed on was 'dwindling oil supplies'.

Going in to this war was an inhumane act driven by ecconomic desire... I'm sorry but in my book, that puts Mr Hitler on the short-list of a nobel peace prize. It's little more than barbaric and I'm ashamed that my government not only condones the act but goes as far as to supply cannon-fodder.

But I'm just getting angry now...

Devilishly good fun!