February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
But while it is harshly critical of how the CIA gathered and evaluated data pertaining to the threat Iraq posed to the U.S. in the run-up to war, particularly in terms of what turned out to be its non-existent nuclear weapons program, it fails to adequately address the conduct of the Bush administration in pressing the case for war on the flimsiest of evidence, much of it outdated, some of it distorted.
Under a deal reached between the committee?s Democrats and Republicans, that subject probably won?t be dealt with until after the November election.
Another committee looking into the intelligence failure, the White House?s hand-picked Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is not required to make its report until next March 31. That group was created earlier this year under mounting public and political pressure, and after the 1,400 weapons inspectors of the Iraq Survey Group, led by David Kay, reported that they had found no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Many believe the administration brought the FIAB into being only to head off what would very likely have been a more aggressive congressional inquiry. Under its broadly defined mandate, the FIAB might not even choose to tackle the issue of whether the Bush administration may have exaggerated and manipulated pre-war intelligence.
With a difficult election looming, there is, of course, good reason for the White House to want to point fingers at others, particularly the CIA, now that so much of the intelligence used to put the U.S. on a war footing has been discredited. But in reality, though the CIA failed badly in its assessment of Iraq?s nuclear capabilities, it fared a bit better in two other important areas. It is, for example, no more culpable than the UN or European intelligence agencies in its assessment that Iraq probably possessed chemical or biological weapons. And as for the administration?s assertion that there were operational links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the Agency clearly debunked that from the start, arguing that governments as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia could in no way be linked to a cohesive terrorist organization.
It is unlikely that any inquiry currently under way will deal head-on the issue of whether the administration was on the up-and-up when it sold Congress and the American people on the need to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. But a newly emboldened American press is increasingly uncovering evidence to the contrary, evidence that points to a concerted — and ultimately successful — effort by neoconservative hawks in the Pentagon and White House to present a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than was being offered by the intelligence community.
Foremost in this effort was the Office of Special Plans, a unit created in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and run out of the Pentagon by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, who reported to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Dissatisfied with the CIA?s nuanced reports of Saddam Hussein?s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities, the OSP essentially operated as a shadow intelligence agency that, it has come to light, in all likelihood willfully distorted existing intelligence while gathering its own from dubious sources. Much of the information it solicited came from the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, the now out of favor head of the Iraqi National Congress and friend of longtime Iraq hawk Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (an advisory panel to the Pentagon) and the man widely considered to be the architect of America?s Iraq policy. According to several respected publications, Chalibi was only too happy to send a steady stream of misleading and often faked intelligence directly to the OSP. Writing in the Atlantic magazine, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA Persian Gulf expert and later National Security Council member in the Clinton administration, said the OSP ?cherry picked? intelligence, passing on only that which supported the administration?s desire to face off against Iraq.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our decision to go to war with Iraq, and there are many, has been its effect on the war on terror. Though the world is a far better place without Saddam Hussein, it is not, as President Bush asserts, a safer one. It is, in fact, a far more dangerous one as a result of our mainly unilateral move against Iraq, an action that has left almost 900 American families — and indeed all Americans — mourning the losses of their brave sons and daughters. Further, the war has transformed Al Qaeda from a terrorist group into a worldwide Islamic insurgency. Indeed, it is na