CIA was False on Iraq: Senate Intelligence Committee
Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk

WASHINGTON (US): The key US assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons — were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted on Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to “group think” assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, concluded a bipartisan report. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the US intelligence community — which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.

“As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence,” he said.

“This was a global intelligence failure.”

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said: “Tragically, the intelligence failures set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come. Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before.”

The report repeatedly blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA’s view and elbowing out dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the State or Defense departments. It faulted Tenet for not personally reviewing Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references to Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, travelling with President Bush on a campaign trip Friday, said the committee’s report essentially “agrees with what we have said, which is we need to take steps to continue strengthening and reforming our intelligence capabilities so we are prepared to meet the new threats that we face in this day and age.”

Tenet has resigned and leaves office Sunday.

Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons programme. Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons programme and no biological weapons, and only small amounts of chemical weapons have been found.

Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.●