Damning Damn Lies

Here’s a rundown of some of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's conclusions from yesterday's released report entitled Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments. From page 137 of the report we are told that “by a vote of 14 ayes and 1 no, the Committee agreed to adopt the findings and conclusions of the report...” It was a bi-partisan report with 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats. The lone nay was from Senator Lott (R- Mississippi). The findings speak eloquently for themselves.

Conclusions on Iraq's WMD programs:

Page 52, Conclusion 1: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Information obtained after the war supports the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s (INR) assessment in the NIE that the Intelligence Community lacked persuasive evidence that Baghdad had launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.

Page 52, Conclusion 2: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq’s acquisition of high-strength aluminum tubes was intended for an Iraqi nuclear program. The findings do support the assessments in the NIE of the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that the aluminum tubes were likely intended for a conventional rocket program.

Page 53, Conclusion 3: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake” from Africa. Postwar findings support the assessment in the NIE of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are “highly dubious.”

Page 54, Conclusion 4: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that “Iraq has biological weapons” and that “all key aspects of Iraq’s offensive biological weapons (BW) program are larger and more advanced than before the Gulf war.”

Page 55, Conclusion 5: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq possessed, or ever developed, mobile facilities for producing biological warfare (BW) agents.

Page 56, Conclusion 6: Concerns existed within the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Directorate of Operations (DO) prior to the war about the credibility of the mobile biological weapons program source code-named CURVE BALL. The concerns were based, in part, on doubts raised by the foreign intelligence service that handled CURVE BALL and a third service. The Committee has no information that these concerns were conveyed to policymakers, including members of the U.S. Congress, prior to the war. The Committee is continuing to investigate issues regarding prewar concerns about CURVE BALL’s credibility.

Page 57, Conclusion 7: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq “has chemical weapons” or “is expanding its chemical industry to support chemical weapons (CW) production.”

Page 58, Conclusion 8: Postwar findings support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq had missiles which exceeded United Nations (UN) range limits. The findings do not support the assessment that Iraq likely retained a covert force of SCUD variant short range ballistic missiles (SRBMs).

Pages 58-9, Conclusion 9: Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq had a developmental program for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) “probably intended to deliver biological agents” or that an effort to procure U.S. mapping software “strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.” Postwar findings support the view of the Air Force, joined by DIA and the Army, in an NIE published in January 2003, that Iraq’s UAVs were primarily intend for reconnaissance.

The Senate’s findings on Iraqi links to Al-Qa’ida:

Page 105, Conclusion 1: Postwar findings indicate that the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) assessment that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa’ida resembled “two independent actors trying to exploit each other,” accurately characterized bin Ladin’s actions, but not those of Saddam Hussein. Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qa’ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qa’ida to provide material or operational support.

Page 105, Conclusion 2: Postwar findings have identified only one meeting between representative of al-Qa’ida and Saddam Hussein’s regime reported in prewar intelligence assessments. Postwar findings have identified two occasions, not reported prior to the war, in which Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qa’ida operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al-Qa’ida and Iraq.

Page 106, Conclusion 3: Prewar Intelligence Community assessments were inconsistent regarding the likelihood that Saddam Hussein provided chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training to al-Qa’ida. Postwar findings support the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa’ida associates with chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training in 2000. The Central Intelligence Agency’s January 2003 assessment said the al-Libi claim was credible, but included the statement that al-Libi was not in a position to know whether the training had taken place. Postwar findings do not support the CIA’s assessment that his reporting was credible. No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training recanted his claims after the war.

Page 108, Conclusion 4: Postwar findings support the April 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qa’ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.

Page 109, Conclusion 5: Postwar information supports the Intelligence Community’s assessments that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, using an alias, and members of his network, were present in Baghdad in 2002. Postwar findings indicate al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May 2002 until late November 2002, when he traveled to Iran and northeastern Iraq. Prewar assessments expressed uncertainty about Iraq’s complicity in their presence, but overestimated the Iraqi regime’s capabilities to locate them. Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.

Pages 109-10, Conclusion 6: Postwar information indicates that the Intelligence Community accurately assessed that al-Qa’ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operated in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq, an area that Baghdad had not controlled since 1991. Prewar assessments reported on Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) infiltrations of the group, but noted uncertainty regarding the purpose of the infiltrations. Postwar information reveals that Baghdad viewed Ansar al-Islam as a threat to the regime and that the IIS attempted to collect intelligence on the group.

Page 110, Conclusion 7: Postwar information supports prewar Intelligence Community assessments that there was no credible information that Iraq was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other al-Qa’ida strike. These assessments discussed two leads which raised the possibility of ties between Iraqi officials and two of the September 11 hijackers. Postwar findings support CIA’s January 2003 assessment, which judged that “the most reliable reporting casts doubt” on one of the leads, an alleged meeting between Muhammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, and confirm that no such meeting occurred. Prewar intelligence reporting cast doubt on the other lead as well.

Page 111, Conclusion 8: No postwar information indicates that Iraq intended to use al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist group to strike the United States homeland before or during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Page 112, Conclusion 9: While document exploitation continues, additional reviews of documents recovered in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee’s findings or conclusions.

It’s hard to imagine that the intelligence community in 2002 made so many mistakes without having actively been pushed into them. Interestingly enough, the Democrats on the committee tried to introduce the pre-2002 National Intelligence Estimates to show how starkly the 2002 NIE deviated from the earlier ones, but the Republicans on the Committee quashed this attempt (see discussion at the end of the report for this). In addition, there is something terribly wrong with the reporting in America, when roughly 50% percent of our citizens still believe that Iraq possessed WMDs just prior to the invasion of 2003 and that Saddam Hussein had close ties with al-Qa’ida and was involved in 9/11.