Quote :

"WASHINGTON - A Senate analysis of intelligence-gathering activities leading up to the invasion of Iraq is certain to rekindle an election-year debate on the justification of going to war. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said the report will confirm that “the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading.” The report to be released by the committee Friday focuses on two much-studied issues: the influence of the anti-Saddam exile group Iraqi National Congress in shaping U.S. intelligence estimates, and a comparison of prewar estimates and postwar findings about Iraq’s weapons programs and links to terrorism. But its release comes at a time when President Bush is speaking out on the importance of victory in Iraq to the war on terrorism, and Democrats are trying to recapture control of Congress by emphasizing the failings of the president’s Iraq policy. Republicans on the committee declined comment on the report Thursday, but they were expected to play down the role of the Iraqi National Congress and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, in shaping U.S. policy toward Saddam Hussein and the decision to go to war in March 2003. Partisan divisions slow release of report The intelligence committee issued a portion of its analysis, labeled Phase I, on prewar intelligence shortcomings in July 2004. But concluding work on Phase II of the study has been more problematic, because of partisan divisions over how senior policymakers used intelligence in arguing for the need to drive Saddam from power. Last November, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session to discuss the delay in coming out with the new data. The 400-page report to be released Friday covers only two of the five topics outlined under Phase II. Much of the information — on the intelligence supplied by the INC and Chalabi and the overestimation of Saddam’s WMD threat — has been documented in numerous studies. 'Deceptive strategy'? But Rockefeller said the report would show how the “administration pursued a deceptive strategy, abusing intelligence reporting that the intelligence community had already warned was uncorroborated, unreliable and in some critical circumstances fabricated.” Rockefeller said a third segment, on the prewar intelligence assessment of postwar Iraq, could be issued later this month. But there was no set date for issuing the last two parts of Phase II, including a look at the politically divisive issue of whether policymakers manipulated intelligence reports to set the stage for war. “We continue our work on the remaining part of our Phase II inquiry,” said Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed."

9/8/2006 10:15:28 AM

Quote :

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al Qaeda associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war. The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war. It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al Qaeda. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year. The long-awaited report, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, a member of the committee, is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al Qaeda. The report, two years in the making, comes out amid a series of Bush speeches stressing that pursuing the military effort in Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terrorism, and two months before that policy will be tested in midterm elections. The report deals with two aspects of prewar intelligence -- the role of the Iraqi National Congress and its exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and a comparison of prewar intelligence assessments and postwar findings on weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's links to terrorist groups. "

9/8/2006 12:53:08 PM

Quote :

"The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war."

Bipartisan.

Quote :

"It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.""

Indictment.

And Cherokee, please post a source. I'd hate to see this perfect example of Friday Surprise news get lost over the weekend because nobody trusts your sources...

9/8/2006 5:23:11 PM

WHO KNEW!

9/8/2006 5:36:50 PM

indict who??

9/8/2006 5:38:37 PM

That was a bipartisan indictment of the administrations statements.

wtf

9/8/2006 5:41:06 PM

oh....i thought you were going to indict someone....

9/8/2006 5:41:40 PM

Yep. I'm a federal judge...

9/8/2006 5:42:42 PM

man...thats crazy

9/8/2006 5:43:02 PM

dont yall liberals love this

i mean back in 1999 when i was in my like 90 percent republican hs i kept telling people i'm like DONT vote for bush, but nooooooooooooo

dumbasses had to vote him in office

now i have to be the sick fucker that gets enjoyment out of the us looking like a douche cause we have some idiot president in there

9/8/2006 5:47:24 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5328592.stm

so where are all the tww neocons now, who keep on insisting that saddam had links to alqaeda???

disgusting.

9/9/2006 9:57:56 AM

im sure itll just be glossed over like the other commission.

9/9/2006 10:04:02 AM

I've just started reading the actual report (as opposed to taking news articles at face value), and I'm struck by the title: "POSTWAR FINDINGS ABOUT IRAQ'S WMD PROGRAMS AND LINKS TO TERRORISM AND HOW THEY COMPARE WITH PREWAR ASSESSMENTS".

Translated: Hindsight being 20/20 and knowing what we know now, was what we knew then correct?

I'll keep reading.

----------

Quote :

"The purpose of this report is to examine prewar intelligence assessments to determine whether they were accurate, regardless of whether they were reasonable or substantiated by intelligence reporting available at the time."

[Edited on September 9, 2006 at 10:56 AM. Reason : add]

9/9/2006 10:42:07 AM

perhaps the goal is to help weed out faulty intelligence. if we consistantly rely on questionable intelligence that seems to substantiate our claims, we're no better off than we would be having no intelligence.

9/9/2006 11:00:33 AM

I agree wholeheartedly. I support an honest critique to determine lessons learned. However, you can't condemn actions based on information that wasn't available until after the fact. This document reaches conclusions using information that was not available until after Iraq was invaded.

9/9/2006 11:20:31 AM

9/9/2006 11:34:19 AM

Quote :

"However, you can't condemn actions based on information that wasn't available until after the fact."

something doesnt seem right with this statement concerning the iraq war

9/9/2006 11:55:37 AM

Bush created his own intelligence body in the white house (Office of Special Plans) to deliberately feed him the false intelligence he wanted to hear. The body completely ignored the superior and correct judgement of the traditional clandestine services, and they cherry picked the most scary evidence and presented it out of context.

For example, Chalabi gained his considerable foothold in our Iraq decision making through this group of cronies that Bush created. We all know what a liar he turned out to be, and the traditional services knew this while the white house ignored their warnings.

It's a bunch of horse shit to claim that we couldn't have known, beforehand. Bush never wanted to know, that's why he created the Office of Special Plans. It also gave him plausible deniability in the eyes of his dick-sucking fans who don't give a shit about the truth. If he relied on the experts who had been working Iraq before he even came into office, he would have heard very different conclusions about Iraq.

I suppose you could say it was impossible for Bush to know the reality, though, if you view it as impossible for Bush to be anything other than a lying sack of shit.

[Edited on September 9, 2006 at 12:23 PM. Reason : dfg]

9/9/2006 12:22:51 PM

hmmm...maybe we should take another look at those Downing Street Documents...

9/9/2006 1:14:34 PM

Quote :

"something doesnt seem right with this statement concerning the iraq war"

You can condemn the interpretation of available information, but you can not use information that was not available (e.g. Iraqi government documents, debriefs of Hussein and other Iraqi and al-Qaida officials).

If you read the report, you would find that al-Qaida was, in fact, present in Iraq prior to Iraqi Freedom:

- Ansar al-Islam was located in northern Iraq and there is evidence that they were attempting to manufacture chemical weapons (cyanide salts were found at one of the Ansar al-Islam controlled villages).

- al-Qaida was actively pursuing a relationship with Iraq, which included meetings between bin Ladin and Iraqi Intelligence that Hussein was aware of.

- al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad prior to the start of fighting in Iraq.

The mistake lies in over estimating the abilities of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Because Saddam's intelligence service was so pervasive, it was assumed to be impossible for al-Qaida to operate in Iraq for any significant amount of time without the countenance of the government. It turns out, using postwar intelligence, that while al-Qaida did seek support from Iraq, Iraq never obliged; Saddam was too wary of Islamic extremism. Also, Saddam was concerned that the presence of al-Qaida in Iraq would be used as grounds for an invasion (prior to Powell's speech at the UN). Iraqi Intelligence was aware of al-Zarqawi's presence in Iraq, but were unable to locate and arrest him. Saddam "considered al-Zarqawi an outlaw."

-----

The Office of Special Plans was actually created by Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. However, Bush would not have been unaware of its existance and Chalabi was certainly acting in his own interests.

Unlike you, I do not view the Office of Special Plans as a product of Bush specifically, but rather a symptom of bloated government in which various bureaucracies compete against each other for their own benefit. The various departments of government view power as a zero-sum game where the hegemony of one department comes at the detriment of others. Hence, the incredible number of regulations, committees, and special offices--self-promotion in an attempt to make themselves indispensable. Witness the unwillingness of different branches of government to work with each other (e.g. the intelligence community). Meanwhile, the interests of the United States have become, at best, secondary. At worst, completely irrelevant. Bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Woo-hoo.

-----

Quote :

"if you view it as impossible for Bush to be anything other than a lying sack of shit."

This is the kind of thing that repulses me from the Democrats. Absolute vilification regardless of the circumstances is just as useless as absolute adulation regardless of the circumstances.

[Edited on September 9, 2006 at 1:59 PM. Reason : ]

9/9/2006 1:56:10 PM

Quote :

"This is the kind of thing that repulses me from the Democrats. Absolute vilification regardless of the circumstances is just as useless as absolute adulation regardless of the circumstances. "

WTF, the Republicans do the same exact thing.

That's the thing that should repulse you about American politics.

[Edited on September 9, 2006 at 3:15 PM. Reason : ]

9/9/2006 3:15:31 PM

It does bother me just as much when it's Republicans. I said Democrat because they're the ones (or, at least the left is) currently referring to Bush as a lying sack of shit.

9/9/2006 3:31:54 PM

well honestly i dont blame them...i was told iraq had weapons of mass destruction

9/9/2006 3:51:10 PM

well....like i have always said....dems will never be taken seriuosly as long as they refuse to admit there is a difference between a lie and a mistake...

9/9/2006 4:32:43 PM

9/9/2006 5:04:01 PM

^^ hahahahahahahahaha

9/9/2006 5:06:33 PM

i know...its hilarious....do you think they will ever admit it??

9/9/2006 5:14:49 PM

9/9/2006 5:37:01 PM

^bwa-hah! ftw

9/9/2006 6:05:13 PM

Quote :

"- Ansar al-Islam was located in northern Iraq and there is evidence that they were attempting to manufacture chemical weapons (cyanide salts were found at one of the Ansar al-Islam controlled villages)."

Oh, so the Kurds were harboring Al Qaeda. It hardly seems logical to pin that on Saddam Hussein since his regime had next to zero control over the region.

Still, it seems that at minimum this report fully supports the notion that we went to Iraq based on dubious intelligence at best. You'd think the administration would at least require multiple or at least strong confirmations that the intelligence was accurate before launching into an invasion with a planned occupation...

[Edited on September 9, 2006 at 7:03 PM. Reason : ...]

9/9/2006 6:48:15 PM

multiple sources??

you mean like the CIA...MI5....russia...those kindsa sources??

9/9/2006 7:38:20 PM

Lay it out.

What did each of those say?

9/9/2006 8:14:39 PM

Quote :

"Oh, so the Kurds were harboring Al Qaeda. It hardly seems logical to pin that on Saddam Hussein since his regime had next to zero control over the region."

Actually, the Kurds were actively engaged against Ansar al-Islam. One of the other pieces was that Ansar al-Islam only seemed to attack Kurdish targets and not Iraqi-proper targets.

Overall, the intelligence regarding al-Qaida in Iraq was reasonable. WMD evidence was pretty fucking flimsy, given how much it relied on the Iraqi National Congress and their obvious self-interest in the US entering Iraq.

9/9/2006 9:53:59 PM