CIA report

flogen

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3878969.stm

Tennent has given himself a head start, and things aint looking good for the CIA at all..

from what I've seen of the report press conference, they said:

CIA assumed Iraq had WMD without doing any research
Other groups across the world took CIA info as gospel.
It was a worldwide Intelligence failure.
No sign of Political pressure on CIA.
the CIA was right in saying Iraq had no strong links with terrorism, which the administrations denied.
No US spies in Iraq since 1998.
Relied to heavily on anti-Saddam sources who had vested interests.

Quite interesting. The second guy to speak started by saying they would not have supported the war had they known what they know now, and that he felt they should have looked further into political pressure, and how the administration used the info given, but that wasnt their remit.

I doubt this will end in any high firings in Bush's team, but the CIA is due for a big shake up.

flogen

swiss

This is just another move in the dance of blame. George Bush has consistently said that the evidence on Iraq was based on "good, solid, reliable intelligence". Now that we all know this is an utter sham, there has to be some scapegoat. Since the Bush administration won't want that to be Bush himself, the likely alternative is to blame it on the CIA, who will more than likely blame it on poor or discredited intelligence contacts.

None of this changes the fact that the CIA themselves should have taken the reliability of thier intelligence into account when presenting their evidence to congress, or that the Bush administration should have been more discerning when deciding which intelligence was "good" and which was unreliable.

I have serious reservations at to military "intelligence". The phrase itself is a contradiction in terms. Just today I found this link:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09472555.htm

NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - The Pentagon says military records related to President George W. Bush's service in the National Guard more than 30 years ago were inadvertently destroyed, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Payroll records of "numerous service members," including Bush, were ruined in 1996 and 1997 during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the newspaper said, citing the Pentagon.

Bush's whereabouts during his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking his duty.

The destroyed files cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question, the newspaper said. No back-up paper copies of the records could be found, the Pentagon said in notices dated June 25, according to the Times.

The loss of the records was announced by the Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to the Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Bush's complete service file, the newspaper reported.

In February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's military records. Those records did not provide new evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972, when some Democrats say he was basically absent without leave.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said the released records confirmed the president's fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response, the Times said.

So the papers which details the whereabouts of Bush when Democrats allege he went AWOL "conveniently" go missing. Why am I not surprised?

Rolo Tomasi

I always thought "military intelligence" was the funniest of all oxymoron's.

chewy

No US spies in Iraq since 1998.


thats a strange statement im not sure waht to make of it


scapegoat --- scapegoat --- scapegoat


was there any mention of the cia ignoring domestic terrorism?

The Corinthian

Originally posted by chewy
was there any mention of the cia ignoring domestic terrorism?

No. Ignoring domestic terrorism is the job of the FBI.

sovtek

Originally posted by chewy
No US spies in Iraq since 1998.

Wasn't that also when Saddam "kicked out" the UN weapons inspectors.
But I'm probably just a tin-hat-wearing-looney-conspiracy theorist.

sovtek

JESUS!! Doesn't anyone remember the "missile gap"?

BlitzKrieg

i might be mistaken but i remember on the run up to war some reports on (ex?) CIA officals warning of a lack of conclusive info?




If what i remember is true, then blaming the CIA now seems very much a *scapegoat*



If what i remember is false, the shifting of blame to all information networks by the term 'Group think: seems suspicous.



also 'Group think' the term for when all the information networks make a mistake together because they all want the same goal...is that the friendly term for warmongering?

sceptre

Originally posted by sovtek
JESUS!! Doesn't anyone remember the "missile gap"?

Sweet mother moley sovtek, wake up and smell the napalm. These days we're more concerned about the upcoming mine shaft gap.

shotamoose

What a whitewash. The idea that the CIA maliciously misled the innocent Bush regime into declaring war on Iraq is itself completely ridiculous. The report authors seem to have deliberately avoided drawing any conclusions on whether Cheney and co pressured the spooks into providing the 'right' intelligence. Well, it is an election year after all.

I thought one bit was especially interesting, though. Of the four sources who Powell based his "Iraq has mobile biological weapons labs" bit on, only one - "Curveball", appropriately - was ever actually met in person by a spy. This spy didn't actually believe him, but was told by his CIA contact:

let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about

.

See, it was all the CIA's fault! Poor misled Powers That Be.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by The Corinthian
No. Ignoring domestic terrorism is the job of the FBI.

LOL:D

At the end of the day all of this changes nothing. The deeds done. But is it a case of calling wolf once too often. What happens the next time?

shotamoose

From the Guardian :

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.

Gee, I wonder why?

flogen

geez, what a shock, I thought Bush would love for the public to know the truth about the White House's actions.

What tickles me the most is Bush just wont back down (well, I guess he cant now). When asked about the report, he told reporters that he knew Saddam had the capabilities to make weapons, and he hated America... firstly, how many countries can that be said for? Ireland may not hate America, but it could build WMD if it wanted to. Alot of the middle east hate America, god knows a democratically elected government in Saudi Arabia would despise America... The Senate said they would not have voted for war if they knew the truth... you cannot go to war just because someone doesn't like you.
Funny how Rice and Powell both said in July 2001 that Saddam was kept under check and was of no threat to the US or the ME...
Also funny how Cheney visited the CIA on 10 seperate occasions to see how fact finding was going on Iraq, and they claim they didnt put them under any pressure.

Hopefully, if Bush gets in again, and the report shows they told the CIA to make stuff up, he will either be kicked out, or made impotent by a pissed of Senate.

roll on the Butler Report. There are now doubts about Blair's evidence at the Hutton Inquiry, did they not realise when you lie so much about something, its going to bite you in the ass?

flogen