I have no comment!The American people were misled over the threat posed by Iraq in the run-up to war, according to a scathing US senate intelligence committee report released today.
The bipartisan committee found the key US assertions leading to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons - were wrong and had been based on false or overstated CIA analyses.
While the report is harshly critical of the CIA, it does not address the role played by the administration of the US president, George Bush.
Following pressure from Republicans on the committee, the report is being published in two phases, with the White House being spared the committee's scrutiny until phase two begins.
The second part of the report may not be published until after the presidential election takes place in November.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade had been 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 vice-chairman and ranking Democrat, Senator 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."
Even before its publication, it was clear that the senate intelligence report would not be the final word on what the Bush administration knew, when it knew it, and how much it may have sought to cherry-pick intelligence to justify a previously-made decision to attack Iraq.
Senator Rockefeller expressed regret that the committee had split the investigation into two phases.
He insisted that, in the run-up to war, the Bush administration had repeatedly characterised the threat from Iraq "in more ominous and threatening terms than any intelligence would have allowed".
In addition, the CIA insisted that 20% of the report should remain hidden from the public on national security grounds.
The report repeatedly condemns the departing CIA director, George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view, and casting aside dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the state or defence departments.
It blames Mr Tenet for not personally reviewing Mr 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 Mr Bush on a campaign trip today, 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."
Mr Tenet has resigned, and leaves his post on 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 following the invasion of the country showed Saddam had no nuclear weapons programme and no biological weapons. Only small amounts of chemical weapons have ever been found.
Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.
"This 'group think' dynamic led intelligence community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD programme as well as ignore or minimise evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programmes," the report concluded.
Such assumptions had also led analysts to inflate snippets of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons."
Although it probably has more to do with the Bush administration wanting to get rid of Saddam than a actual failure of intelligence.
