What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq

[Beacool]

By John Walcott
1/24/2016

The document reveals gaps of intelligence on WMD. Why didn’t Pentagon chief share it?

On September 9, 2002, as the George W. Bush administration was launching its campaign to invade Iraq, a classified report landed on the desk of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It came from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and it carried an ominous note.

“Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD,” Rumsfeld wrote to Air Force General Richard Myers. “It is big.”

The report was an inventory of what U.S. intelligence knew—or more importantly didn’t know—about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Its assessment was blunt: “We’ve struggled to estimate the unknowns. ... We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program.”

Myers already knew about the report. The Joint Staff’s director for intelligence had prepared it, but Rumsfeld’s urgent tone said a great deal about how seriously the head of the Defense Department viewed the report’s potential to undermine the Bush administration’s case for war. But he never shared the eight-page report with key members of the administration such as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell or top officials at the CIA, according to multiple sources at the State Department, White House and CIA who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. Instead, the report disappeared, and with it a potentially powerful counter-narrative to the administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons posed a grave threat to the U.S. and its allies, which was beginning to gain traction in major news outlets, led by the New York Times.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530

I was asked to repost this article here. For some reason it was locked on LBN. Whatever..........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141324010

[leveymg]

1. A lot of people buried realist WMD intel and promoted lies. It's how careers

It's how careers were made including Petraeus'. Why was he made CIA Director in 2011?

[Beacool]

4. The question is, did Rumsfeld hide this report from Bush?

The article implies that he did. It wouldn't surprise me, Cheney was the power behind the throne. I doubt that he (Cheney) was kept in the dark.

[leveymg]

5. Since Bush doesn't read, makes little or no difference to the outcome.

Yes, Rumsfeld suppresed several important DIA WMD reports both before and after the invasion. This is hardly a revelation.

[Octafish]

2. All for War.

And War for All.

Wealthiest times in human history, squandered.

[bigwillq]

3. Any good Democrat would never vote for war

No matter what the Intel said.