Posted on 05/30/2003 4:28:19 PM PDT by Pokey78
A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war. The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, say that they have close contacts with senior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was “cooked” to persuade Congress to authorise the war. The manipulation of intelligence has, they say, produced “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions”. They write in the letter to Mr Bush: “While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes, never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorise launching a war. “You may not realise the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin — cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done in Iraq.” The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity group is headed by Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years. He said that people in the agency were totally demoralised, particularly over what they claim is the reliance by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, and his Pentagon-based intelligence staff on the testimony of Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi emigré. “The contribution of reporting from emigrés has been highly touted for months by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (Paul Wolfowitz, Mr Rumsfeld’s deputy), who seem unaware of Machiavelli’s warning that of all intelligence sources, exiles are the least reliable,” the letter says. Mr Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress and was the favourite among Washington’s hawks to lead a postwar Iraqi authority. The failure of coalition troops to uncover Iraq’s banned weapons is causing increased tensions between Capitol Hill and the White House. The House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees are to investigate in hearings this summer the claims of weapons stockpiles and the intelligence that led to them. The former CIA officials were supported by a current official in the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency, who told The New York Times yesterday: “The American people were manipulated.” Pentagon officials said that the claims of intelligence manipulation were nothing more than a campaign of sour grapes led by present and former CIA officials over their perceived marginalisation in the run-up to the war. In an attempt to unearth incriminating intelligence on Saddam Hussein, Mr Rumsfeld created last year the Office of Special Plans, an intelligence unit inside the Pentagon. This became a direct rival not only of the CIA, but of the Pentagon’s own Defence Intelligence Agency. Mr Rumsfeld denied that the war in Iraq was waged under a false pretext and expressed fresh confidence that weapons of mass destruction would be found there. He said that before the war the United States had good intelligence about Iraqi weapons. The Bush Administration faced further pressure yesterday when it emerged that a Texas-based energy company with close links to the White House has been awarded nearly $500 million (£300 million) in Iraq-related projects in the past two years and is set to earn billions more. Halliburton, which was headed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, for five years until 2000, could potentially earn a “limitless” amount because of its open-ended logistics contract with the US Army, Henry Waxman, a prominent White House critic, said. The senior Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Government Reform Committee said yesterday: “It is simply remarkable that a single company could earn so much money from the war in Iraq.” As the army’s sole provider of troop-support services, the company had received work orders totalling $529.4 million related to the Afghan and Iraqi wars under a ten-year contract with no spending ceiling, Mr Waxman said. The sum was well in excess of what had been previously disclosed, he said. Halliburton said that the original contract was awarded in 1992, well before Mr Cheney joined the company. The Vice-President’s links to Halliburton have been a point of controversy since Mr Bush took office.
But I don't care if Iraq had WMD's or not, we still should have gone ahead with the war.
They [Iraq/Saddam/his associates] broke the deal that ended the hostilities the first time. They broke the deal, and since they broke the deal it's only logical that they should face the consequences of breaking the deal.
They broke the deal and they deserved what they got.. Period.
In fact, they should have been punished under Bill Clinton and all this Iraq stuff should have been old news already..
If you have to proclaim your sanity, most likely it's in doubt.
They look at everythiung with pink glasses as long as it some one who hates the us.
Apparently, the whole thing was a sham. Saddam was a really nice guy. He used to go up and barbeque with the Kurds all the time.
Those checks he used to write for the palestinian terrorists, those were for anti-terror education programs. He just couldn't understand why we kept blowing up his baby formula factories.
And those sleeper cells were just a bunch of guys trying to make a better mattress for the less fortunate.
Haven't we been here before? Americans do not spell realize with an "S". But the article uses quotes around the sentence. Did they change it for their own readers or is it fabrictaed again?
That may be so significant a development that it's worthy dirtying ourselves with a lie or two(?) Maybe the ends really does justify the means(?)
But I don't care if Iraq had WMD's or not, we still should have gone ahead with the war.
Exactly right on both counts. At first glance, this piece reminds me of the one some Brit paper ran saying that we had gotten caught spying on Security Council members. That just kind of fizzled away, didn't it?
MM
And having saddam sponsoring terrorism today is what, ultimate credibility.
The world is a much better place with saddam gone, unless you are the french or a hand wringing leftist who wishes that saddam and uday today are still sipping margaritas on the banks of the Tigris in one of their grandiose palaces.
Note "ex-CIA". Are these klintonistas or just disgruntled "ex" employees?
Exhibit A is the CIA "animation" created to supposedly explain the destruction of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. There is no credible pilot or aeronautical engineer who can look at the animation and say it can possibly conform to the laws of physics. That, of course, is setting aside the question of what the hell the CIA was doing in the investigation of what was supposedly an airline "accident." Under federal law, airline crashes are investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board which was basically jerked off the case by the Clinton administration.
The CIA accusing anyone of lying is a gut-buster. They have been lying their collective asses off since the agency first came into existence. They turned bald-faced lying into a profession.
The CIA missed seeing the break-up of the Soviet Union before it happened. They blew big-time on the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Some "intelligence" pros they are expressing outrage at other governmental bodies they say are lying. It's kind of like Laurel and Hardy looking down their noses at the Three Stooges and calling them "silly."
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