WP: WMD Data Flawed, Lacking, Panel Says

[kskiska]

Intelligence Commission Outlines 74 Fixes for Bureaucracy

By Walter Pincus and Peter Baker

Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A01

U.S. intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in their prewar assessments of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and today know "disturbingly little" about the capabilities and intentions of other potential adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, a presidential commission reported yesterday.

While praising intelligence successes in Libya and Pakistan, the commission's report offered a withering critique of the government's collection of information leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, calling its data "either worthless or misleading" and its analysis "riddled with errors," resulting in one of the "most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history."

The 692-page report to President Bush determined that many of the problems that led to the Iraq breakdown have not been fixed and warned that they may be undercutting the quality of current U.S. evaluations of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons development. To avoid a repeat performance, the commission produced a set of 74 recommendations intended to "transform" a sprawling intelligence bureaucracy that it described as "fragmented, loosely managed and poorly coordinated."

The report presented the most extensive examination to date of how the United States came to believe that Saddam Hussein was harboring secret weapons of mass destruction, leading to a war that toppled a dictator but turned up no such weapons. The report depicted an intelligence apparatus plagued by turf battles, wedded to old assumptions and mired in unimaginative thinking.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15184-2005Mar31.html

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. Heck, us dumm Canuks knew that BEFORE the invasion

.
.
.

din need no 692 page report . .

sheesh!

[Wonk]

2. Well, duh?

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.

Please try the following:

• Click the Regime change button, or try again later.


• If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ).


• To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options. On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO.


• If the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass Destruction.
  If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them,
  click Detect weapons


• Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install.


• If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq.


• Click the Bomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld.

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer

Bush went to Iraq to look for Weapons of Mass Destruction and all he found was this lousy T-shirt.

[grytpype]

3. Great article!!!! My favorite part

"Yet while unstinting in its appraisal of intelligence agencies, the panel that Bush appointed under pressure in February 2004 said it was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the faulty information to make perhaps the most critical decision of his presidency.

"As he accepted the report yesterday, Bush offered no thoughts about relying on flawed intelligence to launch a war and took no questions from reporters.

[grytpype]

4. My other favorite part

"Some Democrats complained that the commission effectively ducked the central issue of how Bush decided to go to war in Iraq to eliminate weapons that were not there. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said the report "fails to review an equally important aspect of our national security policymaking process -- how policymakers use the intelligence they are provided."

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was even sharper. "The president's decision to go to war in Iraq was also dead wrong," she said, adding, "The investigation will not be complete unless we know how the Bush administration may have used or misused intelligence to pursue its own agenda."

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. See Will Pitt's thread on this - he adds some extras

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3394547

And be sure to read the full text of the intelligence panel's letter to Bush; it's in Reply #24:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3394547&mesg_id=3395139

[Zorra]

6. Oh, bullshit. The PNAC hade been intent on attacking Iraq for years

prior to the invasion. Cheney and the boys even set up their own private Intelligence Agency, the OSP, so that they could spin intelligence data any way they liked.

They knew damn well Iraq had no WMD, and they knew they had no justifiable reason to invade Iraq, so they just outright lied.

This new spin is just another batch of manufactured crap spun out to try to convince the American people that Bush and the PNAC crew are not the biggest, most dangerous liars in the history of the world.

The only genuine intelligence failure here will occur if the American people buy into this Commission's report.

[boddhi]

7. What I don't understand

is how the NYT's called the Iraqi WMD reports the greatest intelligence failure - have they forgotten 9-11? And between the intelligence failure of 9-11-01 and the attack on Iraq in 2003, this administration had 18 months to at least address some of the obvious intelligence failures but chose instead to take our nation to war based on the same intelligence apparatus with NO changes or improvements.

Even if we accept the ideologues arguments that 9-11 was Clinton's fault, then the Bush Administration was at least to SOME degree culpable for not questioning the validity of the reports from this obviously flawed intelligence apparatus. For not going back and saying "Look boys and girls, you didn't do so well with predicting 9-11, are you sure there are WMD's there? Let's check one more time, shall we?" Isn't that what a good commander-in-chief, CEO, head of state, etc. would be expected to do?

Or am I missing something here?