BUSH KNEW IRAQI CLAIMS WEREN'T TRUE: SENATE REVEALS

Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true

Nancy A. Youssef and Mark Seibel McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 05, 2008 02:17:52 PM

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/39963.html


WASHINGTON— A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."

“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

It's long been known that the administration's claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect, and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested the problems were faulty intelligence.

"We had the intelligence that we had fully vetted, but it was wrong," she said. "We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it."

But the Senate report, the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them, reached a different conclusion.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.
But Rockefeller called the administration’s statements delibrate, writing: "There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."
The report was approved with on a 10-5 vote. Three Republican members of the committee, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Christopher Bond of Missouri and Richard Burr of North Carolina, denounced the report as "inconclusive, misleading and incomplete." Two Republicans, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snow of Maine, voted with the Democrats.
The report examined five speeches by Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell between August 2002 and February 2003 and dissected key statements. It also looked at statements by other administration leaders during that time. The report found that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet often made declarative statements about the reasons to go to war even though the intelligence community was largely split on key issues.
In some cases, the administration made statements that were not backed up at all, the report found.
"Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information," the report concluded.
Among the reports conclusions:
Claims by President Bush that Iraq and al Qaida had a partnership "were not substantiated by the intelligence."
The president and vice president misrepresented what was known about Iraq’s chemical weapons capabiliies.
Rumsfeld misrepresented what the intelligence community knew when he said Iraq's weapons productions facilities were buried deeply underground.
Cheney's claim that the intelligence community had confirmed that lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 was not true.
The report did not examine statements by senators, who often echoed the administration's statements because committee staffers said the administration's statements had a greater impact. Instead, committee staffers said that the Senate had learned from its mistakes and now has special groups dedicated to specific controversial topics such as Iran and China.
The Senate now is "wary of wholesale acceptance" of the intelligence community and of statements made by intelligence officials, said a committee staffer who asked to remain unnamed so that he could speak more freely.