Re: Iraq war ... ask the GOPers to explain the trillions spent on that disaster
They sure did ...based on what?
How Bush Cherry-Picked Intel to Wage Iraq War
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
AFP - FEb 10, 2006
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/060210104328.p6gl8687.html
Bush waged Iraq war by "cherry-picking" intelligence: former CIA official
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former CIA official who coordinated US intelligence on
the Middle East has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking"
intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to
war, The Washington Post reports.
The newspaper said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer
for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, also accused the
administration of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into
violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with
its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming
issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.
Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting --
and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level
intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
Pillar said mistakes made by US intelligence agencies in concluding that
Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction did not drive the
administration's decision to invade, according to The Post.
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making
even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was
misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will
developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the
intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.
The paper said Pillar was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was
considered the agency's leading counterterrorism analyst.
By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on
Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a
professor in security studies at Georgetown University.
In his article, he said he believes that the "politicization" of
intelligence on Iraq occurred "subtly" and in many forms, but almost never
resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or her
results, the report said.
Instead, Pillar describes a process in which the White House helped frame
intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its
arguments about Iraq, The Post said.
The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, "repeatedly called on the
intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the
case for war," including information on the "supposed connection" between
Hussein and Al-Qaeda, which analysts had discounted.
<!--===========/IMAGE===========--><!--===========CAPTION==========-->President Bush addresses the nation as the Iraq war begins in March 2003.<!--===========/CAPTION=========-->
