OT - Report says Iraq didn't have WMD

[NoMyths]

Here is the CNN link: Report says Iraq didn't have WMD

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Report says Iraq didn't have WMD
Author: Political pressure influenced intelligence before the war

Thursday, January 8, 2004 Posted: 12:13 PM EST (1713 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 imminent danger, said one of the authors of the study.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- a nonpartisan, respected group that opposed the war in Iraq -- conducted the report.

It follows a nine-month search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical -- the key reason the administration cited in its decision to invade Iraq.

"We looked at the intelligence assessment process, and we've come to the conclusion that it is broken," author Joseph Cirincione said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning."

"It is very likely that intelligence officials were pressured by senior administration officials to conform their threat assessments to pre-existing policies."

More than 1,000 U.S. inspectors have worked daily since before the war began in March, searching the country and interviewing scientists and other Iraqi officials, according to Cirincione.

"We found nothing," Cirincione said. "There are no large stockpiles of weapons. There hasn't actually been a find of a single weapon, a single weapons agent, nothing like the programs that the administration believe existed."

The Carnegie report based its conclusions on information gleaned from declassified U.S. intelligence documents about Iraq from U.N. weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations. The endowment also said the study used statements from the Bush administration and corroborated reports from the news media.

"This is the first comprehensive review of everything we knew or thought we knew about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and it turns out that some of the things we thought were working -- our threat assessments -- we're deeply flawed," Cirincione said.

"We exaggerated the threat. We worst-cased it and then acted as if that worst case was the most likely case."

However, Cirincione also said other systems put in place to prohibit Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction were working better than experts thought at the time.

Iraq's "programs were crippled by years of [U.N.] inspections and U.S. military strikes," he said, "and the sanctions that prevented them from getting anything going at all."

Cirincione said one reason for the apparent lack of progress in the Iraqi weapons programs was because Iraqi scientists were "telling Saddam that they were further along than they actually were."

"Apparently that was picked up by some of the Iraqi defectors who came to the U.S. telling stories of elaborate advanced weapons programs," he said.

"So the defectors were fooled, Saddam was fooled, but as it turns out Saddam himself had made the decision -- as far as we can tell -- in the mid-'90s to shut down these programs."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC News' "Nightline" on Wednesday that there is no way to know for sure what weapons were or were not in Iraq at the time.

In a dramatic display last year before the war, Powell presented the U.N. Security Council with U.S. intelligence information about alleged Iraqi weapons.

"Everything we have seen over those years since they actually used these weapons in 1988 led us to the conclusion, led the intelligence community to the conclusion that they still had intent, they still had capability and they were not going to give up that capability," said Powell, apparently referring to Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Iraq.

"And the intelligence community to this day stands behind the judgments that were made and that were presented to the world, presented to the Congress and presented to the American people through the national intelligence estimate, and that I presented before the Security Council."

The Carnegie report isn't "a gotcha study" seeking to blame officials, Cirincione said. "We're trying to prevent it from happening in the future," he said.

"We recommend the formation of a senior blue ribbon commission to examine this in an independent, nonpartisan way and make recommendations for how to insulate intelligence assessors from political pressures," Cirincione said.

"We don't know what happened in the offices of the administration, but there's a lot of evidence that points to" intelligence assessors being pressured by their bosses.
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[Glengoyne]

LoL!

Carnegie Endowment...Independent report.

Wow that is Rich.

Next time when going for sarcasm use a smiley.

[Poli]

I didn't see any, either.

[The Afoci]

Originally posted by ardent enthusiast
I didn't see any, either.

Is that a problem punkin.

EDIT: BURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Poli]

Grin

[Samdari]

Originally posted by Glengoyne
LoL!

Carnegie Endowment...Independent report.

Wow that is Rich.

Next time when going for sarcasm use a smiley.

That was my first thought.

An organization with "for Peace" in their name is somehow considered non-partisan when reviewing a decision to go to war?

[BishopMVP]

Originally posted by NoMyths
"We found nothing," Cirincione said. "There are no large stockpiles of weapons. There hasn't actually been a find of a single weapon, a single weapons agent, nothing like the programs that the administration believe existed."

Large stockpiles no, but you'd have to have a pretty twisted view of what a weapon or weapons agent is to say we've found none.

The Carnegie report based its conclusions on information gleaned from declassified U.S. intelligence documents about Iraq from U.N. weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations. The endowment also said the study used statements from the Bush administration and corroborated reports from the news media.

"This is the first comprehensive review of everything we knew or thought we knew about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and it turns out that some of the things we thought were working -- our threat assessments -- we're deeply flawed," Cirincione said.

I don't see how you can have a comprehensive review of everything based only on declassified documents.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Glengoyne summed it up for me already.

[SackAttack]

Denny Green plans to use them on the NFC next season.

[EagleFan]

That's funny. Thanks for the laugh NoMyths, it's been a rough day and I really needed one.

[NoMyths]

No problem. It's been too long since we've had a good "We found the WMD!...oops, it turns out we've really just got forged documents" laugher, so I figured it was a good time to toss some relatively raw meat to the hawks in the room. Unfortunately, the point the report makes is still as valid, no matter how peace-loving the people that write it: just like U2, we still haven't found what we're looking for.

That is, what we are ostensibly looking for.

(Also, I thought it was fun that CNN made a point to say that the group was bipartisan and respected in the third paragraph in order to try to head off these kinds of comments. So much for that disclaimer.)

[sabotai]

So now we're trusting that an anit-war group will give an objective study on if Iraq had WMD or not?

[NoMyths]

Not at all.

[sabotai]

Good, just making sure.

[Masked]

Originally posted by sabotai
So now we're trusting that an anit-war group will give an objective study on if Iraq had WMD or not?

Well the Bush administration does not appear to have given us an objective view either. Like this anti-war group, they had an agenda and presented their evidence in a way that supported it.

After nine months of war, it looks like, at the least, the Bush administration overestimated (overstated?) the threat.

[Draft Dodger]

Iraq's a big place.

you could probably hide Denny Green out there in the desert, and no one would find him.

[Sun Tzu]

The real question here is...what does Huey Lewis have to do with all of this?

[-Mojo Jojo-]

Originally posted by Masked

After nine months of war, it looks like, at the least, the Bush administration overestimated (overestated?) the threat. [/b]

Ahhh, that would be misoverestimated. This is the Bush administration after all...

[NoMyths]

And in the interest of presenting the administration's response to today's report: Powell on WMD existence: 'This game is still unfolding'

While parts of this are repeated from the earlier link, there is enough new stuff to justify a read. Not to mention a brief shake of the head at the Secretary of State describing the situation in Iraq as a game (I know, hawks, I know...figure of speech. Still.).

Excerpt:
But Powell noted that Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iraq-Iran war and on the Kurds in the 1980s and had the chance to come clean about its programs to the international community through the '90s.

"It's a fact," he said.

He said there was a "solid case" from U.N. inspectors and other officials that the Saddam Hussein regime "was a danger we had to worry about."

"In terms of intention, you always had it," he said. "And anybody who thinks that Saddam Hussein last year was just, you know, waiting to give all of this up even though he was given the opportunity to do so, he didn't do it.

"What he was waiting to do is see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential for future inspections and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction."

Powell said Saddam Hussein "kept the infrastructure, the programs intact."

"Where the debate is, is why haven't we found huge stockpiles and why haven't we found large caches of these weapons? Let's let the Iraqi Survey Group complete its work."

The secretary of state also said that his presentation to the United Nations last year made it clear that "we had seen some links and connections" between Iraq and terror groups "over time."

"I have not seen smoking gun concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of some connections did exist and was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

[Chief Rum]

Originally posted by Draft Dodger
Iraq's a big place.

you could probably hide Denny Green out there in the desert, and no one would find him.

Ah, but the real question is, when will Arizona fans hide Green out there? Or are there Arizona fans?

CR

[Killebrew]

Wow, this was unexpected

[Sharpieman]

The fact is, and the only fact that we can possibly claim right now, at this very moment, is that there isn't any WMD because we haven't found any. I love this analogy about the search for WMD: The Bush administration is like some of the folks up in Washington state. Who claim to have seen Big foot, there have even been pictures of Big foot, but we don't know if it's actually Big foot or just a very hairy man.