http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020902418.html

Quote :

"The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade. "Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq." "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote."

"Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq" by Paul R. Pillar (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006)
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html

Must be "out of the loop."

2/15/2006 12:16:35 PM

And disgruntled.

And clearly just wants to sell this new "Foreign Affairs" book of his.

2/15/2006 12:21:54 PM

im surprised this took as long as it did to make it to tww

2/15/2006 12:22:41 PM

Who cares, my petroleum company stocks are tearin' it up!

2/15/2006 12:26:08 PM

^^ somehow, I never saw it till today.

Quote :

"And clearly just wants to sell this new "Foreign Affairs" book of his."

hehe

I think he actually DOES have a book out. omg he's just money grubbing!!!11

2/15/2006 1:13:07 PM

Robert Baer makes similar claims in his book See No Evil. Pretty interesting read, I suggest it to anyone interested in CIA operations over the last 20 years or so.

2/15/2006 2:30:04 PM

^i was just about to say the same thing

the book was confusing at points b/c there just SO many names

but it was an excellent read

also interesting for anyone who think abramoff/bush is the first time there has been a lobbying problem or that it is only a republican problem

2/15/2006 2:32:18 PM

Why are all these folks at the CIA weak on national security and why do they hate freedom?

2/15/2006 4:50:49 PM

But look at the beautiful democracy growing out of the pile of strategic-level intelligence manure.

2/15/2006 11:02:11 PM