- The US launched a war on Iraq on the basis of false and
overstated intelligence, according to a scathing US senate intelligence
committee report released today.
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- Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chaired
the bipartisan committee, said CIA assessments that Iraq had chemical and
biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade
were wrong.
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- "As the report will show, they were also unreasonable
and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.
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- The committee's vice chairman, Democratic senator Jay
Rockefeller, went a step further today, telling reporters: "We in
Congress would not have authorised that war, we would not have authorised
that war with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now."
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- While the report is harshly critical of the CIA, it does
not address the role played by the administration of the US president,
George Bush.
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- Following pressure from Republicans on the committee,
the report is being published in two phases, with the White House being
spared the committee's scrutiny until phase two begins. The second part
of the report may not be published until after the presidential election
takes place in November.
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- Mr Roberts said: "The committee found no evidence
that the intelligence community's mischaracterisation or exaggeration of
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the
result of politics or pressure. In the end, what the president and the
Congress used to send the country to war was information that was provided
by the intelligence community, and that information was flawed."
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- But Mr Rockefeller insisted: "The central issue
of how intelligence on Iraq was, in this senator's opinion, exaggerated
by the Bush administration officials, was relegated to that second phase,
as yet unbegun, of the committee investigation, along with other issues."
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- He insisted that, in the run-up to war, the Bush administration
had repeatedly characterised the threat from Iraq "in more ominous
and threatening terms than any intelligence would have allowed".
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- The CIA insisted that 20% of the report should remain
hidden from the public on national security grounds.
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- The report repeatedly condemns the departing CIA director,
George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with
the CIA's view, and casting aside dissenting views from other intelligence
agencies overseen by the state or defence departments.
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- It blames Mr Tenet for not personally reviewing Mr Bush's
2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references
to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. Mr Tenet has resigned,
and leaves his post on Sunday.
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- "Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth
in this report will affect our national security for generations to come,"
Mr Rockefeller said.
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- "Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in
the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans
in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation
is more vulnerable today than ever before."
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- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, travelling with
Mr Bush on a campaign trip today, said the committee's report essentially
"agrees with what we have said, which is we need to take steps to
continue strengthening and reforming our intelligence capabilities so we
are prepared to meet the new threats that we face in this day and age."
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- Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that
Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more,
as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons programme.
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- In fact, investigations after the invasion of the country
unearthed no indication that Saddam had a nuclear weapons programme or
biological weapons. Only small quantities of chemical weapons have ever
been found.
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- Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information
because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,
the report said.
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- "This 'group think' dynamic led intelligence community
analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence
as conclusively indicative of a WMD programme as well as ignore or minimise
evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction
programmes," the report concluded.
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- Such assumptions had also led analysts to inflate snippets
of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical
and biological weapons, the report said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1258002,00.html
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