CIA Boss: Iraq Not Called Imminent Threat

WASHINGTON - In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA (news - web sites) Director George Tenet said Thursday U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq (news - web sites) posed an imminent threat.

Tenet said analysts had varying opinions on the state of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and those differences were spelled out in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate given to the White House. That report summarized intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.

Analysts "painted an objective assessment for our policy makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests, " he said in a speech at Georgetown University.

He said that "in the intelligence business, you are never completely wrong or completely right ... When the facts of Iraq are all in, we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong."

He also noted that the search for banned weapons is continuing and "despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished. " That was a direct rebuttal to claims made by David Kay, Tenet's former top adviser in the weapons search.

Since Kay resigned two weeks ago, his statements that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s purported weapons didn't exist at the time of the U.S. invasion have sparked an intense debate over the prewar intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is turning into a major political issue ahead of the presidential election, calling into question the justification for the war as U.S. casualties mount. Republicans in Congress have increasingly been blaming poor intelligence and Tenet, who was originally appointed by President Clinton (news - web sites).

Democrats have said intelligence agencies deserved only part of the blame and have accused the White House of showcasing intelligence that bolstered the case for war, while ignoring dissenting opinions.

Bush was expected to announce another commission this week to review the intelligence community. At least five other inquiries into prewar intelligence are already under way.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., scheduled a meeting Thursday to study a 200-plus-page report compiled by committee staff on the prewar intelligence.

I say that Bush should have made that case before the war. But now it will be a little tricky.

You made some excellent points. But this is the main one. It's hard to provide a really rational and consistent explanation for all that has occurred under the justification of American security concerns unless we find WMD and/or prove some Iraqi connection to al-Qaeda (and not just Palestinian terrorists).

I think we can do it. I just wished we had better evidence. Perhaps it will surface in due time.

In the end, it will be said that we claimed more than we could prove, I think. And no one can tell exactly what the longterm effects of that will be in foreign policy. I personally think we'll get away with it. I'm not certain that Blair, Berlusconi and other leaders will. It is as much for their sakes as our own that I hope we produce compelling evidence against Saddam on 9/11 terrorist training or a plausible quantity of WMD.

And we were advised by the administration to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape for exactly what reason then?

I don't remember being "advised" to do this. I remember a lot of panicky people doing it. Anyway, people who did this (mostly back in late 2001 as I recall) were worried about terrorism.

The connection between this point of yours about terrorism warnings/fears, and Bush's stance on the nation-state of Iraq, truly escapes me.

I think a lot of people had the impression of a pretty imminient domestic threat even if the word 'imminent' can't be found by a Lexus/Nexus search.

That's their problem.

I've got news for you: had there been an imminent domestic threat, Bush wouldn't have sat around for six damn months engaging in a public, meandering debate (first in Congress, then in the UN, always in the media...) over the matter. He would have JUST ATTACKED.

Presidents can do that, you know. They can JUST ATTACK if a threat really is "imminent". They don't NEED to ask for Congressional resolutions or such niceties when a threat really is "imminent". Thus, the fact that Bush didn't do that is one indication that he didn't think the threat was "imminent".

"Imminent threats" don't usually sit there on Pause for six months while you have a heated, public debate over whether to attack them.

Iraq is part of the overall WOT. But what you said is not the same. You claimed we were told to buy plastic sheeting, implying it was a DIRECT result of the war in Iraq. It wasn't, it was a DIRECT result of the fears that we may get attacked by terrorists. Your statement was implying that since there was no WMD found in Iraq, we shouldn't have been worried about buying plastic to protect ourselves. What is so hard to understand about that? I would think with the screen name you selected that you would have some sort of grasp of all of this.

"You know, we would never believe any country, not even Britain or Israel, if they staged an invasion into an oil-rich country and then had no proof of aggression or WMD.
"

That is just ludicrous. I guess all the land grabs by the Euros in the last 50 years were only to stop the spread of WMD, right? Wake up! It's an ugly world out there. Nations do what they need to all the time. And I couldn't care less if other nations trust us or not. I don't trust any of them.

His intent was to sell this war to the American people based on the inference that Saddam was a clear and present danger, and he did so.

"clear and present danger" is a catchphrase. Use plain English. I'd say it like this: he sold the war to CONGRESS (not "the American people" but CONGRESS, that's who authorizes wars by the way) based on the idea that Iraq was a danger. (let's cut out the "clear and present" jazz, because what the hell does that even mean?)

Anyway, I do believe Iraq was a danger, and Congress did too. And this doesn't particularly depend on whether Iraq had or didn't have barrels of some nasty materials within its borders per se.

Michael Howard, asking for the resignation of Tony Blair over the Iraqi WMD question, is wrong and very worrisome. The reason why I say this, is because of the article that has come out today on the non-sanctioned, Pakistan transfer of Nuclear secrets and products to 5 African Countries and North Korea.

This continued attack both on Tony Blair and George W Bush, is dangerous. Pakistan is fighting off a hord of terrorists who are trying to overthrow the government of Pakistan to get thier hands on the controls of such weapons. Numerous attemtps on the lives of the Prime Minister and other officials in Pakistan is proving this out.

If the Transfer of these secrets and products went to Africa, I find that it is probable that the intel was leaked and the CIA and British Intelligence, and knowing that a transfer of this information could be an any day scenario between any of the 5 countries and Iraq a war was inevitable.

The pardon of the individuals responsible for this transfer in Pakistan, had to be done to
lessen the backlash on the Pakistani government, at a time when the Terrorists want create
a revolt within the country and take control of Pakistans WMD.

It seems that political hay, is more important to some in this world, than the security of its citizen's.
I know I am reading between the lines, but to error for security, is more responsible than playing to the desenting voices for votes.

OPs4 God BLess America!

But it is also true that a danger that is "gathering" has to be more "imminent" than if it was not gathering.

WTF are you talking about? There's no "degrees" of imminentness. It's like being pregnant, something either is or it isn't "imminent".

Some people are just OBSESSED with being able to use the word "imminent" in connection with President Bush's statements. I don't get it.

the American people were clearly given the impression that action was needed right away.

How on earth do you square this with a six-plus-month-long debate, that moved from Congress to the UN? Any "American people" who observed this DEBATE DRAGGING ON FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS and still somehow "got the impression" that "action was needed right away" need psychological help.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if action was needed "right away", Bush would have JUST ATTACKED.

He absolutely has the power to do that.

If you have knowledge and material to make WMD....We may have to take you out if you have invaded,murdered,raped and pillaged your neighbor,gassed your own people,tortured amd maimed ,killed men women and children by the hundred thousands in your own country.

If you have broken a cease fire agreement with us and fired on our planes flying over your country to deter mass murder in some areas we will look at you hard.

If you have defied the UN resolutions for many years ,harbored terrorists and promoted terrorism in other countries,after we have been attacked by terrorists of another group,we may decide that you'd better be taken before you join in terror again.

We particularly don't want you to get stronger.It's time to show the terror bunch we aren't gonna take it any more.We are simply finishing a war that, before 911, didn't seem worth the awful expenditure.Some of your neighbors will be getting the message.

Illegal, and lethal, yes, but not in the massive quantities that we were all led to believe.

I never understood why "massive quantities" is supposed to be the standard. "Massive quantities" doesn't mean jack. With some of these materials, it takes only *tiny* quantities to hand off to some terrorist and have him wreak havoc.

The way some people talk, you'd think that we only have the right to be concerned if there's a warehouse full of barrels full of weaponized anthrax. If he's "only" got the equivalent of a file cabinet full of anthrax then we have no right to care.

That is just nuts. Do people who say this even think about what they are saying?

Nah, they find small caches of rocket launchers, RPG's, ammo, etc. every day, but they weren't on the banned list.

But I think stig's (excellent) point was this:

People are now assuming that WMDs don't exist (and never existed..!?) in Iraq because we haven't found them. But the WMDs we are talking about need not be very large to cause much damage. They could be quite small. They could be the size of explosives, RPGs, ammo for example.

So logically speaking, if "we haven't found these WMDs" means they aren't there, then "we haven't found explosives/RPGS/ammo/etc" ALSO means THOSE things aren't there.

Yet somehow the insurgents seem to use them on our troops some 23X per day....

I don't remember being "advised" to do this. I remember a lot of panicky people doing it. Anyway, people who did this (mostly back in late 2001 as I recall) were worried about terrorism.

It was part of an advisory on Homeland Defense preparations. And I didn't do it anyway. But I still can't forget how for a few weeks there, every Walmart and hardware store ran out of duct tape and plastic sheeting. And that guy back in Connecticut (or one of those puny liberal states) who actually encased his entire house in a single plastic sheet. About that time, Ridge came out, a little sheepishly, and told people not to panic over the sheeting thing.

Yes, there was a bit of a panic in some quarters.

Presidents can do that, you know. They can JUST ATTACK if a threat really is "imminent". They don't NEED to ask for Congressional resolutions or such niceties when a threat really is "imminent". Thus, the fact that Bush didn't do that is one indication that he didn't think the threat was "imminent". "Imminent threats" don't usually sit there on Pause for six months while you have a heated, public debate over whether to attack them.

Points well taken. And I have consistently defended the full legality of the president in securing the support of the congress in this matter. Our real mistake there, in hindsight, was giving the U.N. a chance to try to muck up the authority we claimed (legitimately) to possess under previous resolutions. Actually, we should have "JUST ATTACKED". It would have been so much more effective a deterrent. I blame Powell. I think our president wanted to do exactly this. He's a pretty direct kind of guy.

Unless we had a credible WMD/terrorism threat, in addition to the U.N. resolutions, we had a slim pretext for war.

I don't agree, and Congress didn't either. You can hold this opinion but yours was the losing end of the argument.

But if we maintain that Saddam was a 'gathering threat' and that justifies our invasion, even against world opinion, then we have accorded ourselves the right to invade anyone anywhere any time they make us a little nervous.

"make us a little nervous" = support and harbor terrorists, try to develop mass-deaeth weapons, and invade another country and then violate the ceasefire after we kick them out?

I guess so, then.

We have to ask exactly why the rest of the world should trust us when the situation is reversed.

I don't give a rat's ass about "the rest of the world" "trusting" us. They are not going to no matter what we do. Your assumption seems to be that our primary concern in all this is or ought to be whether "the rest of the world" "trusts" us. Some of us have different priorities than that.

That is just ludicrous. I guess all the land grabs by the Euros in the last 50 years were only to stop the spread of WMD, right? Wake up! It's an ugly world out there. Nations do what they need to all the time. And I couldn't care less if other nations trust us or not. I don't trust any of them.

Huh? What European land grabs in the last 50 years? The Soviets tried for Afghanistan and failed. The old colonial powers of Europe were losing their empires and are now almost fully divested of all of them. Perhaps they (France, Belgium) still have a loose hold upon a few African colonies but those aren't much more meaningful than the hold the Queen has upon Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia.

Can you name any European land grabs in the last fifty years? Even any attempts?

[duct-tape etc] It was part of an advisory on Homeland Defense preparations.

Got it. Relevance to the debate we're having about Bush's statements on Iraq.......?

Our real mistake there, in hindsight, was giving the U.N. a chance to try to muck up the authority we claimed (legitimately) to possess under previous resolutions. Actually, we should have "JUST ATTACKED". It would have been so much more effective a deterrent. I blame Powell.

I agree, mostly.

From what I've read it seems a good argument could be made that it was worth the effort to protect Tony Blair politically and thus keep Britain as an ally in the war. But it still seems like a costly move given that going to the UN caused the myopic legalistic focus to be on these "WMD" things.

I don't agree, and Congress didn't either. You can hold this opinion but yours was the losing end of the argument.

In fact, it is the Congress and both parties that want answers. That is why Bush is announcing the independent probe. Republicans want some better answers. Not just Democrats.

I don't give a rat's ass about "the rest of the world" "trusting" us. They are not going to no matter what we do. Your assumption seems to be that our primary concern in all this is or ought to be whether "the rest of the world" "trusts" us. Some of us have different priorities than that.

Short-sighted jingoism. It's all good and fine to be the last superpower, capable of outspending the rest of the world combined on arms and with the finest technology. But, in the end, we have to have friends and allies. We simply can't go it alone.

If we cannot provide a strong proof and justification for Iraq, the next time we have to deal with a real threat, like North Korea or Iran or even Syria, we'll stand on pretty weak grounds when we try to recruit a coalition of partners. We could, at the least, see Blair and Berlusconi gone from office over this. And there are other leaders who risked a lot to back us. I don't think there are others in real danger of parliamentary defeat. The Spaniards were pretty opposed but somehow Agca (is that his name?) has held them together quite well. He has proven a far more adept national leader than he has been given credit for.

You may not think it's important. But I'm glad we have some grownups in charge of foreign policy, however much I might occasionally dissent from their methods.

Got it. Relevance to the debate we're having about Bush's statements on Iraq.......?

I was establishing that there was a general air of panic in the States, something a few others seemed to have forgotten.

Even a majority of Dims were supporting Bush. And you know how much they really hate him for Floriduh and other matters.

From what I've read it seems a good argument could be made that it was worth the effort to protect Tony Blair politically and thus keep Britain as an ally in the war. But it still seems like a costly move given that going to the UN caused the myopic legalistic focus to be on these "WMD" things.

Absolutely. I think we would have had few partners if we hadn't at least tried. It opened a political debate among the political classes of the nations of our eventual coalition. Largely, they concluded that they must support us. Even over the massive opposition of their voters.

In fact, it is the Congress and both parties that want answers. That is why Bush is announcing the independent probe. Republicans want some better answers. Not just Democrats.

You're mixing up issues. The "answers" Congress wants are about the apparent gap in our intelligence. I want those answers too.

That wasn't what you and I had been talking about. I had responded to your statement about there being a "slim pretext for war". Which is a different issue.

[how I don't care about "the rest of the world" "trusting" us] Short-sighted jingoism.

I'm sure it felt good to use the word "jingoism", but that word is not just an abstract pejorative, it has a definition and it doesn't really apply to my statement per se. I can suggest other pejoratives which may be more applicable if you really want... ;-)

But, in the end, we have to have friends and allies. We simply can't go it alone.

I agree. I want friends and allies as much as the next guy. But it just so happened that, when we wanted to invade Iraq, we looked around and didn't have all that many friends or allies willing to help us do it. C'est la vie. What's your point?

If we cannot provide a strong proof and justification for Iraq, the next time we have to deal with a real threat, like North Korea or Iran or even Syria, we'll stand on pretty weak grounds when we try to recruit a coalition of partners.

Granted this is a real danger. It is part of the cost of the choice to invade Iraq. Beyond that there is not much to say about it.

The idea that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq (when it became clear that certain nations didn't want to help us) for the sake of preserving "solid grounds" in the event of future invasions elsewhere is pretty wacky. If foreign opposition prevents us from engaging in invasions then "credibility" in the sense you describe - the ability to garner help for future invasions - is utterly worthless (because foreign opposition will prevent us from engaging in invasions). At some point we have to break out of the circular logic and realize that Hey, wait a minute, we're a country too, and *we* (not they) decide when/whether to go to war.

This by the way has nothing to do with all that "last superpower" jazz you've tossed up. It is something which is true of every single country on earth, including France: "we, not they, decide".

Obviously it would be of some help to our "credibility" to find some "evidence" to "justify" it all (in foreign eyes), and if only for that reason this is to be hoped for. But again, the idea that such considerations ought to sway our view on the war itself (from "justified" to "unjustified") is wacky and self-defeating.

Well, let's see, we had the French and British trying to take over the Suez Canal in the late 1950's, of course using the Israelies to do most of the job, We also have the Algerian War in the early 60's, and where do you think Vietnam came from? That wasn't exactly OUR war to begin with.

The Suez Canal flap was an issue of national sovereignty over a body of water, not over its territorial integrity. Britain and France were not trying to conquer and annex Egyptian soil. Since they didn't succeed (only Israel having demonstrated military effectiveness), it can hardly be said to further your argument.

The Algerian war was complex, being a French matter, but it was also a colonial concern which eventually led to their independence. Again, not a war of conquest by France. An enforcement of the perogatives of a recognized colonial empire.

Vietnam was much the same. However, Viet Nam had attempted to secure independence when the post-war planning was going on where Algeria did not. When the French whined to us that they would collapse to the Red threat domestically if they didn't have someone to look down on and kick around, we paid 80% of their Vietnam war costs and even provided most of their initial troop transport. And when they failed, we picked up the ball, LBJ wailing for instance that if Vietnam was lost, we'd have to pull our defenses back to the Golden Gate bridge.

At any rate, you've hardly established a case for European powers engaging in wars of conquest for annexation and colonizing in the last fifty years. I could name a few smaller examples of exactly that but they wouldn't prove your case either.

[duct-tape & Iraq] I was establishing that there was a general air of panic in the States, something a few others seemed to have forgotten.

Again, the general air of panic you refer to occurred mostly in late 2001 and early 2002. The relevance of this to Bush's statements to garner support for the Iraq war (the debate for which didn't commence until mid or late 2002, the authorization coming in October 2002, the actual invasion commencing in March 2003) is lacking.

Even a majority of Dims were supporting Bush. And you know how much they really hate him for Floriduh and other matters.

Right. So if you're really interested, you should ask yourself - or, more to the point, them - why they voted "yes" on that resolution.

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