The Lie Factory

In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld set up an independent intelligence gathering apparatus within the Pentagon. This was called the Office of Special Plans. Rumsfeld and Cheney were dissatisfied with the opinions and intelligence being provided by the Generals and CIA, so they decided they would gather their own. According to various insiders from the CIA to the Pentagon, the OSP did an awful lot of cherry picking and fabricating of information. In short they lied through their teeth because they so wanted their dirty little oil war.

Here is a story by retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiotkowski, who served in the Pentagon while this stuff was going on.
The Lie Factory

Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest
www.motherjones.com...



There is a new report out there, cited on CNN, saying there are NO WMD IN IRAQ. NONE! As if we already didn't know that.

Report says Iraq didn't have WMD
Author: Political pressure influenced intelligence before war
Thursday, January 8, 2004 Posted: 12:52 PM EST (1752 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq had ended its weapons of mass destruction programs by the mid-1990s and did not pose an immediate threat to the United States before the war, according to a report released Thursday.

Bush administration officials likely pushed U.S. intelligence assessors to conform with its view the country posed an impending danger, said one of the authors of the study.
www.cnn.com...

Anyone clinging to the illusion of this administration's lies are in serious denial.

OT question: Is this new "news" for Americans or is it just never mentioned on ATS before?
Because german magazines had this as story already some months ago.

Just wondering, nothing against the post

I was it a while ago as well.

Nice finds ECK.

Btw, is this Carnegie Report saying that those supposed Iraqi WMD programs and weapon were destroyed before or after the previous administration posted their findings and reports which caused the bombing of an "aspirin factory"?

I'm finding it rather stange how the UN/UNSCOM still had on record and documented those wide variety of "unaccounted for" WMD. I mean geez, why would any nation, namely Iraq, want or have missile and artillery warheads and shells, which were found past the Carnegie time period of Iraq ending its programs, etc., configured and designed to hold and deliver chemical or biological agents if that particular nation had no chemical or biological agents to dispense or were not planning on dispensing. These are not old warheads and shells neither. Why would chemicals be found and tested to have been dumped into the Euphrates River prior to the US Marines entering Baghdad? And the questions go on.....


Carnegie's report reminds me of the Brady Institutes findings and releasing a study or two stipulating that "guns are very bad".......ie: Gun Control.

*scratches head*.....don't mind me, you know I have always been blasted for believeing that Iraq had WMD and stating thus.....crazy me. When am I ever going to see the light, eh?

Good find though ECK.



regards
seekerof

Originally posted by shoo
OT question: Is this new "news" for Americans or is it just never mentioned on ATS before?
Because german magazines had this as story already some months ago.

Just wondering, nothing against the post

Hey,
This was common knowledge - at least to some - before the war started. I just saw the report on CNN today.

Originally posted by Seekerof
Nice finds ECK.

Thanks, Seekerof.

Btw, is this Carnegie Report saying that those supposed Iraqi WMD programs and weapon were destroyed before or after the previous administration posted their findings and reports which caused the bombing of an "aspirin factory"?

The conclusions reached therein are in agreement with prior findings/conclusions (mid-90's). For example, ex Gulf War vet and weapons inspector Scott Ritter strenuously claims that those weapons were put to bed by '98 at the latest. So that assessment was before Klinton pulled his stoopid act. (Don't get me started on him!) And then, Colin Powell actually said back before 9-11, that Iraq was not a threat to us. I'd dig up the quote, but I don't have the time. Sorry.

I'm finding it rather stange how the UN/UNSCOM still had on record and documented those wide variety of "unaccounted for" WMD.

Those came from supplier lists. (From Germany, France, the USA etc.)

I mean geez, why would any nation, namely Iraq, want or have missile and artillery warheads and shells, which were found past the Carnegie time period of Iraq ending its programs, etc.,

Saddam would've tried to get his grubby little hands on just about anything he could get. Half of it was probably bluff, too. It's also suspected, according to his scientists, that they mislead him (after the Gulf war) on the quality and extent of their weapons program.

configured and designed to hold and deliver chemical or biological agents if that particular nation had no chemical or biological agents to dispense or were not planning on dispensing. These are not old warheads and shells neither. Why would chemicals be found and tested to have been dumped into the Euphrates River prior to the US Marines entering Baghdad? And the questions go on.....

Carnegie's report reminds me of the Brady Institutes findings and releasing a study or two stipulating that "guns are very bad".......ie: Gun Control.

*scratches head*.....don't mind me, you know I have always been blasted for believeing that Iraq had WMD and stating thus.....crazy me. When am I ever going to see the light, eh?

Good find though ECK.

'Preciate it. Seeker, one reason we might have gone to war with Saddam back in '91 could very well have been due to the fact that we discovered his WMD programs to be much farther along than anyone had thought. Of course, that posed a very real threat to our national security - oil - Afterall, our little dictator wasn't exactly the most stable-minded or predictable guy in the world. We just about obliterated the world's fourth largest army at that time, making it impossible for Saddam to go invading anyone else; and we truly did dismantle and destroy the weapons and means to deliver them. Many of the bio/chem stuff he had, also, would not be viable anymore. I've agreed with Scott Ritter's assessments from day one of his inspections' regime. He's been dead on the money straight down the line.

PeaceOut.



regards
seekerof

hmm, well ECK, I'm having and have been having a hard time swallowing all this as 'it' being ONE big lie by the current administration. How can this be so? The prior administration stated and documented Iraq's programs and WMD....the UN, and then UNSCOM inspection teams did likewise...I'm just having a very hard time swallowing that this current administration mis-lead. Would not the prioir adminstrations sayings also make them "liars" as well?

From the 1998 Congressional Report:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
By William J. CLinton, President of the United States, Feb. 4, 1998

"The policies and actions of the Saddam Hussein regime continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, as well as to regional peace and security."
Signed and spoken by William J. Clinton, President of the United States, Feb. 4, 1998


"Force, either our own or that of dissident Iraqis, will be required to remove this regime."
Senator Bob Kerry.

"Dozens of prisoners are believed to have died in agony during a secret program of military research designed to produce potent NEW weapons of mass destruction."
Senator Bob Kerry.

"Lastly, Iraq has confessed to a nuclear weapons development program, but again only after Husayn Kamil�s defection in 1995. According to the white paper, "Iraq has admitted experimenting with seven uranium enrichment techniques..."
Senator Byron Dorgan.

"...there are consequences, which is the threat that Saddam Hussein will use those weapons of mass destruction THAT WE KNOW HE HAS; that he will use the ballistic missile, the delivery system capacity to deliver those weapons of mass destruction that WE KNOW HE HAS IN RUDIMENT AND IS DEVELOPING EVEN FURTHER."
Senator Joe Lieberman.

More from:
www.davidstuff.com...



You then mention "suppliers list"? I find it strange that the UN and UNSCOM failed to report that in their findings:

"Historic Review of UNMOVIC�s Report on Unresolved Disarmament Issues"
Link:
www.state.gov...


Just in case there is doubt on those designed missile and artillery shells:

"Chemical Warheads Found in Iraq, Reuters"
Link:
www.mail-archive.com...@erols.com/msg00020.html

As to the scientists "bluffing"....
In all that "bluffing" where did all that documented funding that Saddam gave for those chemical, biological, and nuclear programs monies go? In all that "bluffing", your failing to indicate that the US, the UK, Spain, Russia, France, Germany, the UN, the UN Security Council, etc. was "bluffed" as well by those same scientists and Saddam!?
Are you indicating that because Saddam's scientist were "bluffing" him, they allowed Saddam, and Iraq to get their arses handed to them, become disposed, etc. just for the "sh_t and giggles" obtained from "bluffing" Saddam? So, in all this high-stakes game of "bluffing," the US, and others ended up not taking all this as a "bluff"....wow, now thats said. But in all this, its maintained that the current administration is lying....but you mention "bluffing" and yet ignore that the consequences of those Iraqi scientist s"bluffing" caused poor Saddam and the innocents in Iraq such tragic consequences. How strange.

Well, I'll be, seems those scientists really bluffed this administration and the last cause:

"There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that at the time I left office, Saddam Hussein still possessed weapons of mass destruction."
Spoken by Bill Clinton on Larry King Live Show


High-stakes game of international poker gone bad.....



regards
seekerof

The incumbent administration has been weaving the greatest web of deception and lies ever perpetrated on the US public since before it even took office.

Every day the administration has cooked disinformation and lies of the worst order, lies that push the enevelope of boundless lies and what an administration thinks it can get away with, much of it conveniently swallowed up by complicit media for the unthinking public to digest unflinchingly.

Timing issue: Do you really believe this version that the OSP was initiated by Rumsfeld through his oversight of the Pentagon, to gain filtered information for the purposes of pushing the war on Iraq? That is obviously criminal enough, but I tend to think otherwise. It happened before, in a less public way, as part of Cheney's fragmentation of the US intelligence system to remove its threat to the administration itself. Bad bad politics that are going to backfire spectacularly very soon.

I have been writing on the OSP here and elsewhere for ages. Nobody here tends to care that much, they just go back to dull middle of the road nothing politics on this and election fraud issues.

Here, have some more...


Office of Special Plans Setup to Push for War with Iraq

In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

Senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.

This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.

The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.

Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.

How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are revealed, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.

The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.

The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.

Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.

An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said there was nothing unusual about that.

Rick Tyler, Mr Gingrich's spokesman, said: "If he was at the CIA he was there to listen and learn, not to persuade or influence."

Mr Gingrich visited Langley three times before the war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.

Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP.

In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.

"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.

As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".

"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."

In fact, the OSP's activities were a com plete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.

"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."

The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."

Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."

The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.

"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.

The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.

In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.

The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.

The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.

The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.

A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by a rival organisation.

As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.

(also...)

The spies who pushed for war

Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force

Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

Already, I contest your assumption when you imply:
"The incumbent administration has been weaving the greatest web of deception and lies ever perpetrated on the US public since before it even took office."

Already shown that the prior administration had spoken and documented that Saddam and Iraq had WMD and programs. This current administration used such information, thus the 'weaving' of that 'web of deception' was being done long before Bush sought office for President.



regards
seekerof

And 'if' the current Bush Administration is indeed lying, well, "then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same lies since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples of what I'm talking about..."

"If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People"
Link:
www.rightwingnews.com...

Excerpt:

""[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003




regards
seekerof

"Already shown that the prior administration had spoken and documented that Saddam and Iraq had WMD and programs. This current administration used such information, thus the 'weaving' of that 'web of deception' was being done long before Bush sought office for President."



Actually I am sorry that the "web of deception" could be interpreted so narrowly. The non-fact (lie) about WMDs in Iraq, while a disgrace, is such a small scale of lie in the Bush administration as to be insignificant against some of the others. The justification for the Iraq War is but a couple of threads in the disgusting web.

Here's a link to videos and audio from a Democracy Now show, interviewing Dreyfuss and Karen Kwiotkowski.

www.informationclearinghouse.info...

good shiznit

[Edited on 8-1-2004 by Jakomo]

[Edited on 8-1-2004 by Jakomo]

To Seekerof, Masked Avatar and Jakomo,

You've brought up some excellent points, Seekerof. I have every reason to believe the Clinton administration is equally filthy in their guilt and criminality. If you read Terry Reid's excellent book "Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA" you will see how interconnected the Clinton's and Bush's actually are. Or how connected they are at a higher level. If you recall, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter was no more friendly toward Clinton and his crew than he is with BushCo. Two equally frustrating relationships. The Bush's and Clinton work for the same shadowy elites.

Masked Avatar, thanks for the lucid remarks and excellent follow-up. I concur with everything you related. The deceit was clear before the war, for anyone willing to see. The mainstream media is complicit in the invasion of Iraq, having buried the truth and promoting the lies and distortions. Americans have got to wake up to the obfuscation and disinformation that passes for mainstream news.

Jakomo, thanks for the link! I hope everyone listens to it. As for Lt. Col. Kwiotkowski, I have the highest respect for her. For a soldier in her position, even retired, to come out so boldly in the face of such ruthless power, to tell the unvarnished and unpopular truth takes great courage. She knows full well what someone like Karl Rove is capable of when cornered. She's put everything on the line to defend the truth. She is a true warrior.

Here are some follow-up articles on the Carnegie report and a link to the report itself. Hope it helps!

US quietly withdraws 400 weapon hunters from Iraq :
WASHINGTON - January 7 2003: (New York Times)
The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.
www.informationclearinghouse.info...

White House 'distorted' Iraq threat
By Stephen Fidler in London

Published: January 7 2004: (Financial Times)

These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.
www.informationclearinghouse.info...

Iraq report undermines Bush doctrine

By Stephen Fidler in London
January 7 2004: (Financial Times)

Intelligence failures in the run-up to war with Iraq and evidence that US intelligence bowed to political pressures in assessing the threat posed by Iraq undermine a critical element of the Bush administration's national security doctrine, according to a report to be published on Thursday by a Washington think-tank.
www.informationclearinghouse.info...

WMD IN IRAQ
Evidence and Implications

Summary of New Carnegie Report

WMD in IRAQ: Evidence and Implications, a new study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, details what the U.S. and international intelligence communities understood about Iraq's weapons programs before the war and outlines policy reforms to improve threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, strengthen the UN weapons inspection process, and avoid politicization of the intelligence process.

The report distills a massive amount of data into side-by-side comparisons of pre-war intelligence, the official presentation of that intelligence, and what is now known about Iraq's programs.
Full report:
www.ceip.org...

Here's the brief summary of the report:

WMD IN IRAQ
Evidence and Implications

Summary of New Carnegie Report

WMD in IRAQ: Evidence and Implications, a new study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, details what the U.S. and international intelligence communities understood about Iraq's weapons programs before the war and outlines policy reforms to improve threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, strengthen the UN weapons inspection process, and avoid politicization of the intelligence process.

The report distills a massive amount of data into side-by-side comparisons of pre-war intelligence, the official presentation of that intelligence, and what is now known about Iraq's programs.

The authors of the report are: Jessica T. Mathews, president; George Perkovich, vice president for studies, and Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and non-proliferation project director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
view full summary:
www.ceip.org...