Recently I investigated the quality control of prewar intelligence analysis that the Bush administration used to make a case for war. It seems that the pressure is finally on, judging by the flurry of media attention this is receiving. The international community desperately needs to see evidence that Iraq possessed these WMD that Powell presented evidence for. Those supposed weapons programs are what made Iraq the imminent threat that according to the “coalition” justified an immediate invasion, a war not sanctioned by the UN. The more time that passes without this evidence, the more skeptical the world will become, and the more suspicious the intentions of the United States will seem, both in Europe but especially in the Arab world, who’s cooperation we most obviously need to fight terrorism properly. So I ask again, did intelligence agencies, both in the US and Britain, get it all wrong , or was this failure actually an intentional manipulation of intelligence data to bolster the case for war?

Wolfowitz brushes the issue aside claiming that we didn’t go to war exclusively because of WMD.

“The truth is, that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US Government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason.”

Fact remains that WMD were the substance, if not the core, of the argument. The case for war, immediate unsanctioned war, depended solely on the fact that Iraq was a clear and present danger to it’s neighbors and the world. If there were no weapons programs, perhaps due to years of containment and crippling sanctions, then there really was no threat. Wolfowitz can hardly be taken without a grain of salt, given PNAC’s imperialist agenda, and the Office of Special Plans rather artistic spin on intelligence.

But more evidence from CIA and DIA sources have exposed the intentional manipulation of intelligence data. There is growing doubt that prewar intelligence analysis was conducted properly. Tenet denies the allegations, but the CIA is reviewing the body of intelligence analysis that was used to make the case for war anyway. Here are a few examples of what has been revealed so far:

• Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former CIA intelligence professionals, send a memo to President Bush. “In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin, cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done with respect to Iraq.”
• Patrick Lang, Chief of Human Intelligence for the DIA in the 90’s offered his assessment of the “intelligence” cherry picking mechanisms that built the case for war in an incredibly revealing interview. This is a must read.
  

  TONY JONES: How much influence did this Pentagon office of special plans have over the President as he came to make his decision on going to war in Iraq?
  COL W PATRICK LANG: It would seem that this office had a great deal of influence in a number of places in Washington in a way that seemed to me to be excessive and rather ill-advised.

• Lieutenant General James Conway, the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, admits intelligence was “simply wrong”.
• The Waldorf Transcripts, show an apprehensive Powell and Straw.
• Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counter-terrorism says of Office of Special Plans: “The politicisation of intelligence is pandemic, and deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious.”

Enough said. Ultimately, Americans have to decide whether to tolerate this any longer. Regardless, Senator Byrd is right, the truth will come out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2003 at 11:46 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.