Posted on 07/19/2003 12:48:51 AM PDT by hole_n_one
WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday sought to quell a controversy over President Bush's case for war with Iraq by releasing portions of a top-secret report.
The report, from last year, concluded that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking nuclear weapons.
But that finding in the classified National Intelligence Estimate, prepared for the White House last October, came loaded with reservations. They reflected deep divisions in the intelligence community over Iraq's weapons programs and were at odds with the certainty expressed by Bush and his top aides.
The report even quoted intelligence experts at the State Department as describing claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa as "highly dubious." Bush nevertheless repeated the assertion in his State of the Union speech in January while arguing the need for war. Uranium is a key component of nuclear bombs.
The release of information came as U.S. combat casualties in Iraq surpassed the total of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, reaching 148, when an American soldier died as his convoy was hit by a remote-controlled bomb near the town of Fallujah.
In Najaf, an Iraqi center for the Shiite branch of Islam, a prominent cleric urged his followers to resist the new U.S.-selected Governing Council of prominent Iraqis. The Shiites initially welcomed the overthrow of Hussein and his Sunni Muslim-dominated regime.
Although the report released Friday at the White House concluded that Iraq was seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, it acknowledged the scarcity of solid information. If the excerpts accurately reflect the full report, Bush reached the decision to go to war by assuming the worst about Iraq's capabilities and Hussein's intentions.
"We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs....We have low confidence in our ability to assess when Saddam would use WMD," the intelligence experts reported.
They also acknowledged "low confidence" in their ability to predict whether Hussein would attack the United States and how willing he was to share weapons of mass destruction with al-Qaida terrorists. Bush repeatedly raised concerns about those threats in making the case for war.
The controversy over the White House's use of intelligence has focused on one sentence in the president's State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
White House officials held an extraordinary 75-minute briefing Friday on White House contacts with the CIA during the drafting of the speech. A senior administration official, insisting on anonymity, said the CIA approved the wording of Bush's speech without "any flag raised about the underlying intelligence."
The official disputed suggestions that White House officials pressured the CIA to sign off on the speech despite misgivings in the agency. CIA director George Tenet has acknowledged that the intelligence agency should have deleted the assertion from Bush's speech.
The claim that Iraq had shopped for uranium in Niger was based at least in part on documents that turned out to be forgeries. Although U.S. officials have backed away from the assertion, British officials continue to stand by it, citing other intelligence information they have not disclosed.
While the various agencies agreed that Iraq had "a large-scale" biological weapons program and a more limited chemical weapons program, they were split on nuclear weapons.
The report concluded that Iraq could have produced a nuclear bomb "within several months" if Hussein had been able to buy bomb-making material from other countries. The timeline expanded to between 2007 to 2009 if Iraq had to produce its own highly enriched uranium and other bomb components.
Officials at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, disputed those conclusions and questioned whether Iraq had any significant nuclear weapons program.
"Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment," the State Department concluded. "Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began shortly after the departure of U.N. inspectors or to project a timelime for the completion of activities it does not now see happening."
The agency was even more skeptical about claims that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa and tried to buy aluminum tubes and other bomb-making equipment.
"Some of the specialized but dual-use items being sought are, by all indications, bound for Iraq's (non-nuclear) missile program," the State Department experts concluded in another dissent. "Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's opinion, highly dubious."
The senior administration official said Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were unaware of the dissenting opinion, even though it was prominently mentioned in the 90-page intelligence report.
Meanwhile in Iraq:
• Imam Moqtader al-Sadr, addressing thousands at a mosque in the central holy city of Kufa, vowed to establish a council "of the righteous" that would rival the new government.
Al-Sadr said the current 25-member ruling council, appointed by the Americans, is comprised of "nonbelievers" who do not represent the people.
He said he would launch a parallel government and draft a constitution in consultation with all the country's Islamic movements.
• The attack in Fallujah came Friday afternoon when a bomb was detonated by remote control as a convoy passed through a traffic circle near the main bridge over the Euphrates River, according to Sgt. Amy Abbott, a military spokeswoman. She said a soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division died.
U.S. military engineers discovered another bomb in Baghdad but defused it.
• A new audio recording purportedly by Hussein urging Iraqis to continue a "holy war" against U.S. forces is probably authentic, a U.S. intelligence official said Friday.
The message was broadcast Thursday, the 35th anniversary of the coup that brought Hussein's Baath Party to power. It was likely recorded recently -- a finding that was further evidence Hussein survived the war, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
• In the northern city of Tikrit, soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division used plastic explosives to topple a 30-foot bronze statue of Hussein brandishing a sword atop a rearing horse.
Pulling out their cameras, some soldiers stomped on the head of the statue, while others posed atop it.
The soldiers carted the head to their base. The rest of the bronze will be shipped to Texas, where it will be melted down for a memorial, said Sgt. Maj. Gregory Glen.
The idea that we were supposed to trust that this madman Saddam, who's used WMDs on his own people, would not share them with terrorists, because the CIA is not confident they can "predict" such an event is nuts.
I trust Bush's judgement on this far more.
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