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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
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 Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:32 pm Panel: Agencies "Dead Wrong" on Iraq WMD |
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| Quote: |
Panel: Agencies Wrong on Iraq WMD
Thursday, March 31, 2005
WASHINGTON � America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the United States knows "disturbingly little" about the threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries, according to a report released Thursday.
A presidential commission on weapons of mass destruction (search) called for sweeping changes to prevent future failures. It outlined 74 recommendations and said President Bush could implement most of them without action by Congress. It urged Bush to give broader powers to John Negroponte (search), the new director of national intelligence, to deal with challenges to his authority from the CIA, Defense Department or other elements of the nation's 15 spy agencies.
Click here to read the full report.
The report said today's intelligence community, even after it's recent reforms, remains "fragmented, loosely managed, and poorly coordinated...a 'community' in name only."
It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office. Also recommended is the creation of an assistant attorney general for national security and a national counter-proliferation center to manage and collate intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons threats.
"The FBI appreciates the work of the WMD commission, particularly its focus on our intelligence program. The commission's thorough review will be extremely valuable in our continuing efforts to strengthen our program," the FBI said in a statement. "We are pleased that the commission recognized that we have made progress, and we agree with its judgment that we have more work to do."
CIA Chief Porter Goss (search) noted both the difficulty in gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and the improvements that have been made in this area.
"We need more robust collection and more rigorous analysis, and I agree wholeheartedly with the commission's findings on these issues," Goss said in a statement. "We can never become complacent. There is still much to be done as we continue to transform the way the intelligence community does its work."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (search) said, "this report will serve as another tool to guide our decision-making to better manage risk, enhance our detection capabilities and improve our intelligence analysis. The department supplies, consumes, analyzes, and distributes intelligence information, and we are always seeking new ways to apply intelligence to our vulnerabilities to make the homeland more secure."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (search) told reporters that the recommendations concerning the FBI and Justice Department deserve "serious consideration." He said they were good recommendations and that officials would spend the next weeks examining them and seeing "how we can strengthen America."
Gonzales also praised the work FBI Director Robert Mueller (search) has done in reorganizing the FBI. Gonzales recognized that the turf battles between the FBI and CIA as discussed in the report do exist, but said, "we are all committed to protecting America."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (search) said he asked Pentagon officials responsible for intelligence activities to "undertake a systematic review of the commission's recommendations, and make suggestions to me for improvements."
The more than 500-page report was the latest somber assessment of intelligence shortfalls that a series of panels have made since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The report implicitly absolves the Bush administration of manipulating the intelligence used to launch the 2003 Iraq war, putting the blame for bad intelligence directly on the intelligence community.
"The daily intelligence briefings given to you before the Iraq war were flawed," the report said. "Through attention-grabbing headlines and repetition of questionable data, these briefings overstated the case that Iraq was rebuilding its WMD programs."
The unclassified version of the report does not go into significant detail on the intelligence community's abilities in Iran, North Korea, Russia and China; those details are included in the classified version.
Frank Keating (search), the governor of Oklahoma and former FBI special agent, told FOX News it's no "great surprise" that the report places heavy loads of blame on the intelligence community. "We've heard those blasts over the past couple of months," he said.
"I know a lot of people are suffering from a lot of reorganization fatigue," Keating said, referring to recent overhauls and reorganizations of various homeland security and intelligence agencies. But, he said, if the Bush administration wants to continue to practice a preemption policy where the United States goes after terrorists before they hit America at home, "we'd better get it right."
"I think it's a very serious piece of work I believe will be viewed with care � and implemented where appropriate," Keating said.
Bush received the report in a meeting with commission members in the Cabinet Room where he was flanked by the panel's co-chairmen, Republican Laurence Silberman (search), a retired federal appeals court judge, and Democrat Charles Robb (search), a former senator from Virginia.
"The central conclusion is one which I share. America's intelligence community needs fundamental change," Bush said after receiving the report.
He said he had directed Fran Townsend, his White House-based homeland security adviser, to "review the commission's finding and to assure that concrete actions are taken."
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said his panel will continue to review the commission's recommendations and determine if any additional legislative action is necessary.
"We owe the American public nothing less," said the Michigan Republican.
'Dead Wrong' on Iraq's WMD
The blue-ribbon panel created by Bush 13 months ago was not commissioned to determine whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, nor how the decision to go to war was made.
Instead, it studied how and why the country's intelligence analysts proved to be so wrong and recommended ways to ensure it doesn't happen again.
"CIA's and the Defense Intelligence Agency's spies, the National Security Agency's eavesdroppers, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's imagery experts ... collected precious little intelligence for the analysts to analyze, and much of what they did collect was either worthless or misleading," the report states.
But there was no indication that spy agencies distorted the evidence, a charge raised against the administration during last year's presidential campaign.
It says bluntly: "We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction ... This was a major intelligence failure."
The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.
But the panel said that Negroponte should not be the person who briefs the president during the daily intelligence briefings or even be in the room every day when the report is given.
"For if the DNI is consumed by current intelligence, the long-term needs of the intelligence community will suffer," the report said. But Bush said, when he chose the former ambassador to Iraq for the job, that he planned to give Negroponte � who faces Senate confirmation hearings next month � responsibility for those briefings.
The report did urge Bush to give more authority to Negroponte, however.
"It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department or to the CIA," the commissioners said. "They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around � or over � the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways," the commission told Bush.
But overall, it delivered a harsh verdict. "Our intelligence community has not been agile and innovative enough to provide the information that the nation needs," the commission said, noting that other investigations have reached similar conclusions.
In an implicit swipe at the Bush administration, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the report did not review how federal policymakers used the intelligence they were given.
"I believe it is essential that we hold both the intelligence agencies and senior policymakers accountable for their actions," Reid said.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said not only was the intelligence about Iraq's weapons wrong but "the president's decision to go to war in Iraq was also dead wrong � the intelligence never supported his claim that Saddam was an imminent threat to the United States."
Sizing Up America's Enemies
The panel also examined the ability of the intelligence community to accurately assess the risk posed by America's foes.
"The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries," the report said. The commission did not name any country, but appeared to be talking about nations such as North Korea (search) and Iran.
"We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies," the report said, in order to combat such threats.
On Al Qaeda (search), the commission found that the intelligence community was surprised by the terrorist network's advances in biological weapons, particularly a virulent strain of a disease that the report keeps secret, identifying it only as "Agent X." The discovery of Al Qaeda's work came only after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan removed the Taliban from power.
"Al Qaeda's biological program was further along, particularly with regard to Agent X, than prewar intelligence indicated," the report says.
U.S. officials have previously said they found signs of Al Qaeda's work in anthrax weapons in Afghanistan, but it was not clear if "Agent X" referred to anthrax. Al Qaeda had not yet "achieved a functioning biological weapon with this substance," the report noted.
The panel recommended that Bush demand more of the intelligence community, saying, "The intelligence community needs to be pushed," the report said. "It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policy-makers � sometimes to the point of discomfort."
At the same time, the report said the administration must be more careful about accepting the judgment of intelligence agencies.
"No important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the (intelligence) community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true," the report said.
FOX News' Liza Porteus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Dirt
Exercise Boy
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 2086
Location: a tree
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| Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:16 pm |
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I swear to God, there are WMDS in Iraq! Ahem. 
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Fri Apr 01, 2005 12:21 pm |
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Predictable
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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webtaz99
Commodore
Joined: 13 Nov 2003
Posts: 1229
Location: The Other Side
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| Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:38 pm |
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[angry sarcasm]
I guess those thousands of Kurds were "dead" wrong about being gassed by Saddam, too!
[/angry sarcasm]
-------signature-------
"History is made at night! Character is who you are in the dark." (Lord John Whorfin)
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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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| Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:38 pm |
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| Dirt wrote: | | I swear to God, there are WMDS in Iraq! Ahem. |
For once you might actually be right  .
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 14823
Location: Classified
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| Sat Apr 02, 2005 8:34 pm |
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| webtaz99 wrote: | [angry sarcasm]
I guess those thousands of Kurds were "dead" wrong about being gassed by Saddam, too!
[/angry sarcasm]
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Yeah. And also, I'm still skeptical about this report. They still may yet show up.
-------signature-------
"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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borgslayer
Rear Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2003
Posts: 2646
Location: Las Vegas
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| Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:50 pm |
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Well there was this report that most of Saddams WMDS or all of them were destroyed after the First Gulf War.
Just some facts.
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 14823
Location: Classified
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| Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:24 pm |
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| borgslayer wrote: | Well there was this report that most of Saddams WMDS or all of them were destroyed after the First Gulf War.
Just some facts. |
Actually, we truly do not know that. There has been evidence of secret shipments to Syria, too, which was likely WMD.
-------signature-------
"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Founder
Dominion Leader
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 12755
Location: Gamma Quadrant
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| Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:26 pm |
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We keep finding components of them! Why would Saddam only have components? He had them! Geez....
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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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| Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:29 pm |
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Sad that a panel is stupid enough to falsify what the world has known to be there. Amazing how since Bush went into Iraq, people seem to forget all the evidence, and more importantly, commonly known information that he did indeed have WMDs.
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Link, the Hero of Time
Vice Admiral
Joined: 15 Sep 2001
Posts: 5581
Location: Kokori Forest, Hyrule
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 12:48 am |
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And yet everything found is obsolete and useless from the Gulf War.
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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 1:00 am |
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Yup, you got it exactly. All the stuff that has been found is trash. But not everything has been found, and it may never be  .
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 1:56 am |
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Why do we keep ignoring the reports of Saddam's personal army or w/e replacing the regular border guards, and many trucks going over the border into Syria? Because it doesn't support what we want to believe? Convenient.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
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And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:36 am |
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The reason probably would be because many people believe this information to be false and made up...
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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:50 am |
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Does everyone just take Saddam for being some stupid moron? I am not saying he is good, but anyone who can get into power, and like he did, hold onto it in the manner he did is not stupid. They know how to manipulate people, and are fairly smart. Thus, I don't understand why the idea that he was smart enough to get WMDs he had out of plain sight, having them hidden, or given away is so difficult for some people to grasp.
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:28 am |
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| Jeremy wrote: | | The reason probably would be because many people believe this information to be false and made up... |
Ah. So we disregard evidence to the contrary.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Link, the Hero of Time
Vice Admiral
Joined: 15 Sep 2001
Posts: 5581
Location: Kokori Forest, Hyrule
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:30 am |
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| Theresa wrote: |
Ah. So we disregard evidence to the contrary. |
Welcome to the world.
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:33 am |
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I know. It's too bad, really.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 14823
Location: Classified
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| Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:30 pm |
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| JanewayIsHott wrote: | | Does everyone just take Saddam for being some stupid moron? I am not saying he is good, but anyone who can get into power, and like he did, hold onto it in the manner he did is not stupid. They know how to manipulate people, and are fairly smart. Thus, I don't understand why the idea that he was smart enough to get WMDs he had out of plain sight, having them hidden, or given away is so difficult for some people to grasp. |
Right. It's ridiculous, really. Why disregard it? Well, for the convenience of those opposed to the war, that's why!
| Jeremy wrote: | | The reason probably would be because many people believe this information to be false and made up... |
Yeah, fine. Ignor ALL the evidence to show that it's true...
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Wed Apr 06, 2005 5:49 am |
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| Jeremy wrote: | | The reason probably would be because many people believe this information to be false and made up... |
Yeah, fine. Ignor ALL the evidence to show that it's true...[/quote]
As you say, don't put words into my mouth,
I never said I believe that, just some people do.
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lex
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 23 Dec 2004
Posts: 226
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| Thu Apr 07, 2005 4:13 pm |
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Sheesh, you guys. Give up already. Even the leaders who were so insistent about the presence of WMD have now admitted they were wrong or mistaken - President Bush included. Not only Bush-detractors, but Bush-supporters as well, have long since left arguments on that subject behind, because it's generally accepted at this point that the weapons weren't there. The controversy now focuses on questions like, "Did Bush sincerely believe the intelligence he rec'd about WMD, or did he manipulate scanty evidence (or worse) to support his own agenda," "Was the invasion of Iraq justifiable even though there were no weapons," (Bush's position) and so on. Yes, even Bush has actually come out and said that "we were wrong" about there being WMD in Iraq, so I think it's about time that we lay that story to rest.
As for what WAS found - leftovers from the Gulf War, etc., well ... I find it amazing that some people here consider themselves more highly qualified to interpret their significance than the many experienced, professional specialists that have studied the same questions.
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 14823
Location: Classified
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| Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:01 pm |
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^Uh...okay, yeah. Just because people who supported the war before say that they were wrong doesn't mean that they were 
And btw, it does NOT mean that we are "more highly qualified" to see that they may very well have been there. I am thinking that they may have been, but ideals like those that you have there are just simply saying that "Oh yeah, there weren't weapons because they said so" even though there very well may have been. Sure, drop all the evidence showing that they may have been shipped to Syria. Let's drop all the evidence for all other things, too, then.
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Leo Wyatt
Sweetest Angel
Joined: 25 Feb 2004
Posts: 19045
Location: Investigating A Crime Scene. What did Quark do this time?
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| Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:11 pm |
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Saddam could have shipped the WMDS out somewhere else so we could not find them. I agree with RM.
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 14823
Location: Classified
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| Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:13 pm |
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Again, shortly before the war started, when Saddam sensed the coming storm, the dictator replaced his border patrol agents with special agents, and then several trucks of mass shipments of something were shipped to Syria. What, praytell, could such a secret thing be?
-------signature-------
"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Link, the Hero of Time
Vice Admiral
Joined: 15 Sep 2001
Posts: 5581
Location: Kokori Forest, Hyrule
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| Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:40 pm |
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why do you automatically have to assume they were weapons?
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