Prewar Iraq Intelligence: A Look at the Facts

Morning Edition writes:

Over the past few weeks, the nation's capital has been consumed by an increasingly intense debate over the Bush administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Some critics say the president and other senior officials misled Congress and the public as they built the case for war. The administration has disputed those charges aggressively, arguing that critics in Congress are merely looking for ways to justify their votes for a war that's proving much more difficult than first thought.

I say that too. I would have to think the Bush is changing his story.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," President Bush said at a speech on Veterans Day.

The real history, according to the president, is that Iraq was a threat that had to be confronted in a post-Sept. 11 world, and that both parties accepted the administration's case for war. One key element of that case was the suggestion that Saddam Hussein had -- or would soon have -- the deadliest weapons imaginable.

Yeah he changed it. Remember when he sent Colin Powell to the UN to state that there most definitely were WMD in Iraq? Remember when he said that Al Qaeda and Saddam were best buddies and there were training camps there? Remember the lie that Saddam was buying Plutonium from Niger?

In the fall and winter of 2002, the president and other top administration officials used stark language to help Americans imagine the dangers. "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

Two months later, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice used the very same words to describe the threat. And Vice President Dick Cheney publicly alleged that Saddam Hussein "has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

They're not even back pedaling any more. they are outright denying what they said. Do they think we forget?

Outside the administration, there was widespread belief that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons, but less confidence on the nuclear question. The U.S. intelligence community was deeply divided over the issue. And, despite months of searching, U.N. inspectors -- both before and after the invasion -- failed to find any weapons of mass destruction.

That was no surprise to Hans Blix, the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector for Iraq. "I said to Condoleezza Rice that we were not impressed by the intelligence," Blix recalled in an interview with NPR. "I remember she said, 'Intelligence is never 100 percent. But it is not the intelligence that is indicted. It is the Iraqis who are.'"

The administration tried to bolster its case by making a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, which implied a connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. "We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Mr. Bush said in a October 2002, speech, his first major prime-time talk to help build public backing for a still unannounced war.

We then found out later that the sources that were used diectly lied. Germany knew it. France knew it. Still wonder why they didn't join in the war with us?

The new information came from a captured al Qaeda operative named Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. But eight months before President Bush made that speech, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report saying that information from Al-Libi could not to be trusted. Other informants were also ultimately discredited.

Take the case of a man codenamed "Curveball," an Iraqi who defected to Germany in 1999 and lived under the control of that country's intelligence service. When Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations in February of 2003 -- six weeks before the war began -- some of the key elements in his controversial presentation were the result of information provided by "Curveball."

"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources," Powell told the U.N. gathering. "These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

There is so much more to this article. It's a very good read.
OK, last quote:

As is often the case in such situations, Vice President Cheney has emerged as the leading figure as the White House fights back. "A few politicians are suggesting these brave Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood," Cheney said earlier this week. "This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate."

But critics say Congress is exactly where these things should be discussed.

Prewar Iraq Intelligence: A Look at the Facts