Posted on 02/10/2006 3:43:56 PM PST by voletti
* Former CIA official accuses govt of ignoring warnings of post-invasion violence in Iraq
WASHINGTON: A former CIA official who coordinated US intelligence on the Middle East has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, The Washington Post reported Friday.
The newspaper said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, also accused the administration of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
“Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programmes 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”.
Pillar said mistakes made by US intelligence agencies in concluding that Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction did not drive the administration’s decision to invade, according to The Post.
“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 policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote.
The paper said Pillar was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency’s leading counterterrorism analyst.
By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University. In his article, he said he believes that the “politicisation” of intelligence on Iraq occurred “subtly” and in many forms, but almost never resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or her results, the report said.
Instead, Pillar describes a process in which the White House helped frame intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its arguments about Iraq, The Post said. The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, “repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war,” including information on the “supposed connection” between Hussein and Al Qaeda, which analysts had discounted. afp
Dems must have more embarrasing news coming out. They are at an even higher level of attack the last couple days. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
wonder what is gonna be dumped tonight
Didn't Goss show him the door?
This is a guy who failed to deliver and is now blaming his former boss. Good that they let him go.
The backbiting of an incompetent who was purged. Goss did his job well.
Did he coordinate all those assessments whose snippets appeared in the press that read like this :
The "CIA" has determined that : * the hundreds of tests carried out in the field by military personnel where shells and chemical drums tested positive for WMD are in error.
* Iraq was pursuing a campaign to test wind currents aloft using mobile balloon trailers equipped with bozo the Clown fermenters
* Iraqi industry is devoted to chicken strip production and making bicycles of high strength aluminum tubing.
* Iraqi imports consist largely of field peas from Niger.
* The only terrorists in Iraq are either in Kurdish territory or are harmless retirees, as it is the universal concensus of our nonpartisan leftwing interest group consultants that every country on the planet hosts Islamic terrorists except for Iraq.
* The Iraqi govenment was waging an unprecedented war - but only on insects"
* Iraqi space program was well underway but their missile program was destroyed by Bill Clinton in Operation Desert Fox in late 1998.
* We did not have sex with those UN officials carrying Oil for Food Vouchers.
One guy coordinating assessments from fifteen agencies?
That is interestng Piasa.
Thanks for the ping.
One guy coordinating assessments from fifteen agencies?
...And it had to be this guy?
2013 : (Paul Pillar) In 2013, Pillar wrote an article supportive of the anti-Semitic BDS movement, referring to Israel as a colonizer and again falsely asserting that Israel initiated the war on the Jordanian front. Pillar also authored another article titled “We can live with a nuclear Iran” where he of course downplays legitimate concerns of nuclear weapons falling into the hands world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism..-— Zionist Spies in the U.S.?, FrontPage Magazine ^ | May 13, 2014 | Ari Lieberman
One look at Pillar’s past articles, publications and speeches puts the Newsweek screed in proper context. Pillar is a rabid Israel basher. In March 2014, he spoke at the so-called “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel ‘Special Relationship’” where he attacked Israel on everything from its defensive military operations in Gaza to its concern over Iran’s procurement of nuclear weapons. He even attempted to downplay Iran’s threat to wipe Israel off the map claiming that it was a mere mistranslation. Pillar took his place at the summit alongside miscreants such as Cynthia McKinney and Alison Weir, whose radical views on the Jewish state veer uncomfortably into David Duke territory. -— Zionist Spies in the U.S.?, FrontPage Magazine ^ | May 13, 2014 | Ari Lieberman
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