CIA 'wildly inconsistent' about policing Iraq claims
White House exaggerations on Iraq's alleged WMD often went unchallenged.
USA Today reports that Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet acknowledged Tuesday before the US Senate Armed Services Committee that the CIA was "
wildly inconsistent" about policing White House statements on Iraq before the invasion last year. Under questioning from Senate Democrats, Mr. Tenet said that he was "too busy" to check every public utterance by Bush administration officials, but said he had no major problems with the case the White House made before going to war in Iraq.
US Senator Ted Kennedy (D) of Mass. called into question the sharp difference between CIA statements that there was no imminent threat from Iraq and comments from President Bush about the "grave" and "unique and urgent" threat posed by that nation.
"You can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" Kennedy said. "If you're saying that there was no immediate threat and you hear either the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense using that super-heated rhetoric, we have to ask, what is your responsibility?" Tenet replied, "I have a responsibility. I lived up to my responsibility." Tenet said that when he was aware that a senior administration official exaggerated the Iraqi threat, he took action internally.
Knight-Ridder reported Tuesday, however, that Tenant did
reject recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program. Tenet also told the committee that he had spoken privately to Mr. Cheney about his recent comments that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a biological weapons program. Tenet said no conclusions have been reached about the trailers.
In another revelation, Tenet also acknowledged that a special intelligence unit at the Pentagon, known as the
Office of Special Plans, privately briefed White House officials on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without his knowledge. Tenet said the CIA later informed the Defense Dept. that it did not agree with "
the way the data was characterized" in the memorandum presented by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who had sent up the OSP. The Pentagon later issued a correction. But the memorandum, which had been leaked to
The Weekly Standard, was quoted again by Mr. Cheney
in a January newspaper interview as proof of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Tenet said he planned to speak to Cheney about that statement as well.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday that the disclosure of the pre-war meeting with Mr. Feith shows that the Pentagon office played
a greater role than earlier admitted in shaping the Bush administration's views on Iraq's ties to the terrorist network, and "bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts."
Salon features an article by Karen Kwiatkowski, a former high ranking military official and vocal critic of
neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who was
present at the creation of the OSP.
The education I would receive there was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie – intense, fascinating, and frightening. While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy – Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism – walking the corridors of the Pentagon. It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy war between good and evil. The evil was recognized by the leadership to be resident mainly in the Middle East and articulated by Islamic clerics and radicals. But there were other enemies within – anyone who dared voice any skepticism about their grand plans, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Anthony Zinni.
Tenet made several other important statements during his appearance on Tuesday.
United Press International reports that Tenet said attacks by insurrgents in Iraq are actually
on the rise again, reaching levels similar to last August. And
The Washington Times quotes Tenet as saying the threat of Al Qaeda terrorists
acquiring weapons of mass destruction is growing, and the terrorist group continues planning "spectacular attacks" against the United States and its allies.
While there were no immediate comments from the White House about Tenet's remarks, some Republican Senators are calling for his dismissal.
The Cinncinnati Enquirer reports that US Sen. Jim Bunning (R) of Kentucky
rebuked Tenet during a Wednesday morning conference call with Kentucky reporters. "Knowing what I know about George Tenet, he is covering his ass," Mr. Bunning said. "I'm sorry, but that's the way I've felt about him the last 10 years." Bunning called for Tenet to be replaced as soon as possible.
In an editorial,
The San Francisco Examiner writes that whether it's the White House or the intelligence agencies who are responsible for the prewar intelligence failures (or exaggerations), it's time for a
change in the relationship between the two. George A. Lopez and David Cortright, writing in the
Boston Globe, say it's time to stop asking about why Washington saw "weapons that weren't there" and look into why "a plethora of
publicly available information on the destruction and deterioration of Iraq's weapons capability [from the United Nations and others] was not processed into the equation about the scope of Iraqi firepower." And
USA Today reports that Iraq has changed both the way the US gathers intelligence ("Portrayed by the Bush administration as a threat to Americans, Saddam Hussein was probably
only a regional threat at best") and makes war.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also coming under fire for another project started before the war in Iraq.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the Pentagon is still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) who has close ties to the Bush administration, for "intelligence collection" about Iraq. The project was started in the summer of 2002. The
Chronicle reports that internal government reviews have found that almost all the information provided by Mr. Chalabi and his group before last year's war was "
useless, misleading or even fabricated." Much of the information on which the Office of Special Plans
based its reports came from Chalabi's Iraq Nation Congress.
Chalabi, who was the early favorite choice of the Pentagon to replace Saddam Hussein as leader of Iraq, has recently sided against American interests. Last week, he was one of five Shiite IGC members who
would not sign the new interim consitution. Fred Kaplan writes in
Salon that Chalabi is loyal to just one cause:
his own ambition.
Chalabi has amassed a fair amount of power he would like to preserve. In
Newsweek, Christopher Dickey reports the staggering array of positions that Chalabi has come to control within the Governing Council. He is head of the economics and finance committees, which oversee the ministries of oil, finance, and trade, as well as the central bank and several private banks. He also runs the De-Baathification Commission, and thus – if he manages to hang on to the post – holds potentially vast control over the flow of personnel into, or out of, any future Iraqi government.
The Age of Melbourne, Australia also features a piece on Chalabi, "
Bush's shadowy man in Baghdad."
Also...
•
US media reports on Iraq 'inadequate' (
The Age)
•
'Delight' at release of Guantanamo men (
BBC)
•
Halliburton won contract after Pentagon warning (
Financial Times)
•
Iraq a year later: long, hard slog for US (
Independent Online, South Africa)
•
Saudi women get the vote (
Guardian)
•
The skeptical spy (
Mother Jones)
•
Kojo & Kofi – Unbelievable UN stories (
National Review)
•
Ain't nothing like the real thing (
Weekly Standard)
•
Karl Rove's testimony in Plame investigation is revealed for the first time (
American Prospect)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan.
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