http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060731/NEWS07/607310346/1009WASHINGTON -- Voters who plan on factoring the Iraq war into their selections this fall will not likely get a definitive answer about whether prewar intelligence was merely wrong or intentionally exaggerated.
The final phase of the long-delayed Senate probe into the intelligence mistakes on Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, unproven Al Qaeda links and scam-artist spies remains bogged down by partisan fighting behind the closed doors of the highly secretive Senate Intelligence Committee.
Voter sentiment on the Iraq war could determine which party runs Capitol Hill, especially if voters believe lawmakers were too willing to back -- or not acting strongly enough to oppose -- a now-unpopular war.
The most contentious fighting is over the parts of the probe designed to determine if the flawed intelligence might have been cherry-picked by the Pentagon, which opened up its own mini-CIA, and then exaggerated by administration officials and top lawmakers.
At stake is not only a full accounting of prewar intelligence inaccuracies but also information that could be vital to the overhaul of the nation's intelligence network, which the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war exposed as deeply dysfunctional.
"If we can get through the accountability part of this, you could have an effective explanation of what happened and where all the distortions came from," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a senior member of the committee.
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