US to probe Iraq war intelligence by Reuters / BBC / The Australian 12:19pm 2nd Feb, 2004   February 03, 2004    "Bush bid to defuse WMD poll bomb" By Roy Eccleston. (Published by the Australian)    A YEAR ago this week US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the world in graphic detail about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. There were diagrams, intercepted communications, satellite photographs and even a tiny vial of fake anthrax.    In front of the UN Security Council, Mr Powell put US credibility on the line. He claimed Washington knew "a missile brigade outside Baghdad" was "dispersing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations".    He said the US was aware of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails, and had photographs of banned materials being moved from "Iraqi WMD facilities".    Yet none of these things have been found. The man Washington sent to find Iraq's WMD has returned convinced Saddam Hussein retained his ambitions for terror weapons, but did not have the large stockpiles and programs described so forcefully by Mr Powell.    "It turns out we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing," David Kay told a Senate inquiry last week.    The question now is why. Did the Bush administration twist the arms of its intelligence analysts, and the evidence, to present a smoking gun that did not exist? Was this a massive intelligence failure? Or was there a mix of both?    If the US spying system is badly flawed, this is a major blow to George W. Bush's controversial doctrine of pre-emptive war, which is built on the expectation of accurate intelligence.    With an election due in November, the US President has decided to defuse what threatens to be a red-hot political issue for Democrats who are accusing him of misleading Americans on the need for the war.    Mr Bush is expected to announce this week a bipartisan inquiry to examine the intelligence that was presented as the main reason for the invasion of Iraq. However, it is likely the inquiry will not report until next year -- well after Mr Bush hopes to be re-elected.    The President was forced to agree to the inquiry because of widespread concern in the US, even among his own party. Prominent Republican senators such as John McCain and Chuck Hagel want answers.    Senator Hagel said the issue was not just about intelligence shortcomings, but "the credibility of who we are around the world and the trust of our government and our leaders".    Even former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, a member of the Bush cabinet for two years until he was sacked in late 2002, says Mr Bush was looking for a reason to go to war with Iraq. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O'Neill said last month.    A permanent member of the US National Security Council, Mr O'Neill saw all the CIA evidence and said he did not see any concrete proof in two years of Iraqi WMDs.    "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying 'Go find me a way to do this'," he said.    The Bush administration has already made some dubious assertions about Iraqi weapons programs, especially Baghdad's supposed attempts to build a nuclear bomb.    In his State of the Union speech last year, Mr Bush touted British intelligence that Iraq had been looking for uranium in an African country to develop its nuclear program.    He was later forced to acknowledge the claim should not have been in the speech, because the CIA had checked it out and was doubtful about its truth.    The White House also claimed Iraq was buying aluminium tubes for use in centrifuges to make highly enriched uranium for bombs. But most experts - now including Dr Kay - said the tubes were to be used for rockets.    By the time Mr Bush made his latest State of the Union speech last month, he had been forced to drop his claim that actual weapons would be found in Iraq and instead talked about "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" - whatever that means.    The only good news for Mr Bush on WMD has been Dr Kay's insistence that in his discussions with US intelligence analysts there had been no evidence the administration tried to influence their thinking.    But US newspapers have reported that Vice-President Dick Cheney made several trips to CIA headquarters before the war to pressure analysts, and Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean has accused Mr Cheney of berating CIA officials.    While the apparent intelligence failure in Iraq is an acute political problem for Mr Bush, it is also a serious problem for the US as it faces the prospect of WMDs spreading around the world - and possibly to terrorists.    Dr Kay pointed out that the US had not just overestimated the Iraqi threat but missed growing threats elsewhere.    "I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue," he said. "There's a long record here of being wrong."    February 2, 2004. "US to probe Iraq war intelligence". (Reuters / BBC)    After months of debate over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, United States President Bush is poised to establish an independent investigation into exactly what was known about the weapons program.    Mr Bush is expected to announce this week the establishment of a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.    Peter King, a Republican congressman and a leading member of the House International Relations Committee, says it appears it will be an inquiry similar to the Warren Commission, set up after the assassination of president John F Kennedy.    "It will be much more of a fact-finding commission," Mr King told the BBC.    "It will be looking for details, trying to see what went right and what went wrong. It'll almost be in the form of a trial, I would say, as far as getting all the details and finding out exactly what we knew and what wasn't known."    A senior Bush administration official who asked not to be named told Reuters: "The President wants a broad, bipartisan and independent review of our intelligence, particularly relating to weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation efforts."    The commission is expected to be given until next year to report back, instead of this year as Democrats have demanded.    Election    The Democrats want any inquiry to release its findings before US presidential election in November.    But a senior administration official said: "It is important that the work of the commission is done in a way that it doesn't become embroiled in partisan politics."    Mr Bush has been under strong pressure from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support an independent probe into intelligence that said Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons when none have been found.    The President cited assertions that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for the war, in which more than 500 US troops have died.    The controversy over Iraq's weapons regime stepped up this month when David Kay resigned as the chief US weapons hunter in Iraq, saying "we were almost all wrong" in believing that Iraq had illicit weapons.    Mr Bush has previously rejected the need for an independent probe amid White House fears of a political witch-hunt by Democrats hoping to unseat him.    But it is believed that he has begun to reconsider the position in recent days, given the bipartisan pressure for an investigation.    "I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Mr Bush told reporters on the weekend.    -- Reuters/BBC    February 1, 2004. WASHINGTON (AP) - (Published by the San Fransico Chronicle)    "Problems with prewar intelligence undermine Pre-emption Policy" - David Kay. By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press    Lawmakers from both parties say America's credibility is being undermined by uncertainty over flawed intelligence that led the United States into war in Iraq. They want the Bush administration to create an independent panel to look into why the information was so far off the mark.    President Bush is expected to announce this week whether he will set up a bipartisan commission.    "I don't see there's any way around it," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."    "We need to open this up in a very nonpartisan, outside commission, to see where we are," Hagel said. The issue is not just shortcomings of U.S. intelligence, he said, but "the credibility of who we are around the world and the trust of our government and our leaders."    Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, another top Republican on the committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he may be willing to go along with an independent commission because "I think we have major problems with our intelligence community. I think we need to take a look at a complete overhaul."    Asked by CNN whether it was time for such a commission, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., replied: "Absolutely."    And Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also said an independent panel is needed posthaste.    "It cannot, as some of our colleagues indicated, start a year from now or at the end of the year," Rockefeller told Fox. "It's got to start very soon. You don't take national security and say, `Oh, let's just put it on hold for a year, until an election is over.' ... We're talking about national security."    Despite months of searching, U.S. inspectors have found no banned weapons in Iraq. Bush cited the presence of such weapons as a rationale for the war. David Kay, former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, has said that the administration's intelligence on Iraq was "almost all wrong."    Flawed intelligence about deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons program undercuts the Bush administration's policy of pre-emption, striking first if U.S. interests are deemed to be under threat, Kay said, also on Fox. Until it's clear how prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons ended up being inaccurate, the public will be dubious of government claims that Iran or North Korea, the other two members with Iraq of Bush's "axis of evil," pose grave dangers, he said.    "I think most of us would have greater doubts," Kay said. "I would hope even the president would have greater doubts until we understand the fundamental causes" of the misleading intelligence.    "If you cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is credible to the American people and to others abroad, you certainly cannot have a policy of pre-emption," Kay said.    Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., agreed. "America's credibility's at stake," Biden told CNN. "This isn't about politics anymore."    January 29, 2004    'It turns out we were all Wrong' about Iraqi Weapons, Kay Testifies. Seattle Times    (Published by Seattle Times news services).     WASHINGTON — The former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq issued a broad critique of U.S. intelligence gathering yesterday, saying the U.S. government was simply "wrong" to conclude before the war that Iraq was maintaining major stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.    Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, David Kay said that contrary to earlier claims by President Bush and his Cabinet, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not possess "large stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons and was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons.    "There's a long record here of being wrong," Kay said, adding he believed that Bush and other U.S. officials, as well as U.S. allies, had based their beliefs on flawed intelligence. "It turns out we were all wrong," he said.    Kay said the errors raise serious questions about intelligence-gathering methods. "We've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong."    Bush and top Cabinet officers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, frequently cited intelligence reports that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons as justification for invading Iraq.    As for critics' charges that the Bush administration had pressured U.S. intelligence analysts to shade their assessments of Iraq's weapons programs to justify a war, Kay said he had found no evidence to support such claims.    But Kay said yesterday that the U.S. had failed to develop valid human intelligence sources inside Iraq during the past decade, relying instead on information gathered by United Nations weapons inspections from 1991 to 1998 and from other governments that shared information in what are called "liaison" arrangements. That information, he said, proved incorrect.    Later, on CNN, Kay was asked about the credibility of prewar assertions by Saddam and his lieutenants that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. "The best evidence is they were telling the truth," he replied.    Even so, Kay said in his Senate testimony that Saddam's government retained the intention to develop an arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and was therefore a serious threat. And he supported Bush's contention that the world is safer with the dictator out of power.    "All I can say is if you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD (weapons of mass destruction)," Kay said.    Kay said the former Iraqi leader wanted to preserve the illusion that he retained weapons of mass destruction even after his arsenal had been largely destroyed as a result of United Nations weapons inspections in the early and mid-1990s.    Saddam, Kay said, did not want to appear to the rest of the Arab world as having caved in to the United States and the United Nations. He also hoped the impression that he had chemical and biological munitions would instill fear and diminish the domestic threat he faced from Shiites and Kurds. Both populations rose up against him after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.    Weapons inspections during the 1990s succeeded to a surprising degree in limiting Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, Kay said.    Kay said that he, too, once believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but that the work of the Iraq Survey Group, which he directed until his resignation Friday, convinced him that Saddam had destroyed his weapons caches several years ago.    Those stockpiles, Kay said, were destroyed when Saddam realized they made him vulnerable to Western scrutiny. The Iraqi leader, he said, instead plotted to retain the scientists and equipment to quickly revive his weapons programs once outside scrutiny had eased.    Until Kay began to discuss his findings in the past week, the White House had insisted that the search in Iraq would produce evidence of weapons of mass destruction.    In his State of the Union speech this month, the president largely avoided the topic other than to note that Kay had found "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."    Kay said the U.S. also had misread recent intelligence on Iran and Libya, and had failed to recognize how far both countries had gone in developing nuclear and other clandestine weapons programs.    In response to Kay's Senate testimony, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday, "It's important that we let the Iraq Survey Group complete their work and gather all the facts they can. Then we can go back and compare what we knew before the war with what we've learned since. But that work is ongoing at this point."    Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suggested the administration had shaded intelligence reports to justify U.S. actions in Iraq. "It's difficult to draw a conclusion that it wasn't ... used selectively, and in many instances manipulated, to carry on a policy decision," Kennedy said of the prewar intelligence.    Levin questioned Cheney's statement last week that two truck trailers containing chemical equipment were mobile weapons laboratories, a claim Kay said he and others in the intelligence field do not agree with.    "I think the consensus opinion is that when you look at those two trailers ... their actual intended use was not for the production of biological weapons," Kay said...    David Kay was appointed by the CIA to direct the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invading U.S. forces failed to turn up direct evidence of their existence.     (Compiled from The Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and Los Angeles Times).    Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
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