June 27, 2006
Powell’s Chief of Staff and Others Confirm Bush’s Lies on Iraq Intel
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee had a hearing today on pre-war Iraq intelligence to examine how Bush took us to war over faulty information. Witnesses included several prominent officials, such as Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff.
The hearing confirmed previous suspicions that the Administration misrepresented and exaggerated intelligence to promote its agenda. BuzzFlash has extracted and highlighted especially relevant portions of testimony.
Lawrence Wilkerson Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
- “The Vice President was using portions of the intelligence documents in ways that the documents themselves did not seem to support, or at least not strongly. Others in the administration were participating in this distortion.”
- “The Secretary of State and I, and a host of others in the administration, knew that Iraq’s alleged attempt to acquire uranium from Niger, as that attempt was then reported, was highly improbable.”
- “Saddam Hussein was waiting for the international focus on his regime to relax, for sanctions to be lifted, and for key countries to resume normal trade relations with Iraq. At that time, Saddam intended to resume his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear capability, but that at present he had virtually nothing in the way of WMD.”
On Powell’s UN Speech:
- “(Information from Cheney to be used in speech) was not sourced like a normal intelligence community document. . . Checking each source, line by line, was simply impossible in the short time we had to prepare the presentation.”
- “Repeatedly, the OVP or NCS staff personnel tried to insert into the presentation the alleged meeting in Prague between al-Qaeda operative and 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence personnel. Repeatedly, Secretary Powell eliminated it based on the DCI’s refusal to corroborate it.”
- “It was a compilation of circumstantial evidence, and not a very convincing compilation at that.”
- “Word reached me that the multiple, independent sources we had been given for the existence of these labs were in fact only one source, that that one source was an informant called “Curveball,” and that there were very serious doubts as to this source’s reliability.”
Paul Pillar Former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia
- “The decision to go to war in Iraq exhibited serious problems in the intelligence policy relationship. Though not entirely unprecedented, these problems were so severe in the Iraq case that I would describe the relationship as broken.”
- “The Intelligence Community assessed that Iraq probably was several years away from development of a nuclear weapon—a judgment at variance with, for example, the publicly expressed view of the Vice President that Saddam Hussein was fairly close to getting such a weapon. The Estimate assessed that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction he did have against the United States or to give them to terrorists, except perhaps in the extreme case in which we tried to overthrow his regime, as with an invasion.”
- “On the issue of the Saddam regime’s relations with terrorist groups, the Intelligence Community, in the assessments it produced on this subject, never judged that there was anything close to an alliance with Al Qaeda.”
- “In post-Saddam Iraq, the Intelligence Community produced on its own initiative its assessment of the likely challenges there. It presented a picture of a political culture that would not provide fertile ground for democracy and foretold a long, difficult, and turbulent transition.”
- “Instead of intelligence being used to inform policy decisions, it was used primarily to justify a decision already made.”
- “The administration’s public case sometimes included the use of raw reporting without reference to—and in some cases in contradiction with—the intelligence community’s judgments about the reporting.”
Wayne White Former Deputy Director, Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
- “It is my belief that [the most senior officials involved] did intervene in the process of intelligence analysis in order to shape it to serve a regional agenda.”
- “My own formal February 2003 INR Analysis, “Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes,” warned that even a successful effort in Iraq, both militarily and politically, would not only fail to trigger a tsunami of democracy in the region, but potentially could endanger longstanding U.S. allies in the Middle East, like Jordan, not the region’s anti-U.S. autocrats.”
- “Even if democracy had taken hold in various Middle East states, the result would have been governments more anti-American, anti-Israeli, and militantly Islamic than those previously in power.”
- “The Administration consistently denies charges that forces allotted to the Iraqi campaign were insufficient. This is false.”
- “Simply getting the country back to where it was just before the war would prove, even now in certain sectors, a mission impossible. As a result, again, the supply of so-called “Pissed-Off” Iraqis would be that much more plentiful and continuous.”
Rod Barton Former Senior Advisor to the Iraq Survey Group
- “.. alleged bio-production trailers were not related to biology but were for hydrogen production for artillery balloons, and ... aluminium tubes allegedly imported by Iraq for uranium enrichment were for artillery rockets.”
An Oversight Hearing on Pre-War Intelligence Relating to Iraq (6/26/06 -- Senate Democratic Policy Committee)
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT