Post by bolverk on Jun 11, 2008 16:00:23 GMT -5
Myth: The Bush Administration Had the Same Intelligence As The Previous Administration
► Defense Secretary Rumsfeld: “The information that he based his decision on was the same information that President Clinton and the previous administration had.” (Press Briefing, 11/15/05)
► RNC Chairman Mehlman: “The fact is since 1998, this administration and the previous administration had the same policy. It was regime change in Iraq…They all agreed that this guy has WMD.” (Meet the Press, 11/13/05)
Fact: Some intelligence was the same, but the fact that the intelligence was outdated weakened, not strengthened, the Administration’s case. While the Bush Administration has tried to shift blame to President Clinton by saying it relied on the same intelligence as the previous administration, the Bush Administration’s reliance on outdated intelligence was one of the key flaws in its case for war. As the New York Times recently editorialized, it “is true that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein’s weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful.” (11/15/05) Saddam Hussein ousted U.N. weapons inspectors, who had served as the primary intelligence source on Iraq’s WMD programs, in 1998. As the CIA noted in a 2000 report, “having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.” (Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Related to WMD, January through June, 2000) The fact is that the Bush Administration made several key judgments about Iraq’s WMD programs based on outdated and uncertain, but never revealed the extent to which it was relying on old intelligence.
Fact: Some intelligence was new – and it came largely from sources discredited by the Intelligence Community. The new intelligence mentioned above by the New York Times editorial came largely out of sources that the Intelligence Community warned were not credible, but were was used by the Bush Administration despite these warnings. Among these sources were several Iraqi defectors:
* The CIA and the Defense Department both warned that “Curveball,” a pseudonymous defector who provided information that “became the centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s presentation to the United Nations,” was not a credible source and was even suspected of being a “drunk.” (Washington Post, 7/10/04; Los Angeles Times, 4/2/05)
* A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report warned that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Iraqi defector who was the sole source of intelligence about Iraq’s alleged training of al Qaeda terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons, was not credible and was likely to be “intentionally misleading the debriefers.” (New York Times, 11/6/05)
* The CIA and DIA both warned that several defectors provided by the Iraqi National Congress were not credible, and that the evidence they provided “was assessed as not reliable and, in some cases, pure fabrication.” (Senate Intelligence Committee Report, 7/7/04)
The Bush Administration relied heavily upon each of these sources in making its case for military action against Iraq in spite of the warnings from the Intelligence Community. Unfortunately, this discredited intelligence constituted a significant portion of the intelligence used by the Administration in making the case for war.
Fact: There were significant differences between intelligence assessments during the Clinton and Bush Administrations. A careful look at declassified intelligence assessments during the Clinton and Bush Administration reveals some key differences. For example, a CIA report in 1999 asserted that “we do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since [Operation] Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs.” (Report to Congress on Acquisition of Technology Related to WMD, January through June, 1999) In addition, biannual CIA reports on Iraq’s efforts to acquire WMD-related technology show that several key qualifiers – language suggesting uncertainty about Intelligence Community conclusions – were eliminated between the publication of reports during the last years of the Clinton Administration and the period leading up to the war under the Bush Administration.
Moreover, the Silverman-Robb Commission notes a critical difference between the two administration: “After the departure of inspectors, the Intelligence Community assumed that Iraq had the opportunity and the desire to jumpstart its covert nuclear weapons program; by the end of 2000, however, the Community had seen no firm evidence that this was actually happening.” (Silverman-Robb Commission report) Obviously, the Bush Administration asserted that Iraq’s nuclear program had been reconstituted; the Silverman-Robb Commission makes clear that, at least through the end of the Clinton Administration, the Intelligence Community did not believe this to be the case.
Fact: Whether or not the intelligence was the same, the two Administrations reached much different conclusions about our policy toward Iraq. The simple fact is that, regardless of how similar or different intelligence assessments were under the current and previous administrations, only one President reached the decision to take our country into a very costly war in Iraq. Previous administration officials believed that a combination of UN Weapons Inspectors, a credible threat of U.S. force, and economic sanctions had effectively contained Iraq from threatening its neighbors or fully restarting its WMD programs. As Bruce Riedel, National Security Council Director of Near East and South Asian Affairs under President Clinton, stated in 1999, “the first goal of American foreign policy is to contain this very dangerous regime and to keep it from acquiring the means to again threaten its neighbors. We do this through strict enforcement of the UN economic sanctions of the no-fly zones and by making clear that we can and will use force if Saddam threatens his neighbors, the Kurds, or tries to rebuild his WMD arsenal. We have been successful in this endeavor despite repeated challenges.” (Address, 6/18/99)
Indisputable Fact: Bill Clinton's administration cut both military and intelligence spending, weakening our ability to gather our own intelligence. Hence, we had to rely on England, Russia and Germany for intelligence that led up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
England agreed that Iraq had WMD's and was a threat to Europe.
Russian intelligence linked Iraq to terrorism.
German intelligence was used in preparation for the war.
Now why did we even have to rely on outsiders for this information?
Because Democrats in Congress cut $1 Billion from intelligence budgets despite strong warnings from R. James Woolsey, who as Director of Central Intelligence. Congressional officials have said that Mr. Woolsey has contended that cuts below the Administration's request could have "devastating consequences" on the ability of United States intelligence agencies to monitor developments around the world and to assess their significance.
In fact, he warned them sternly. And this was a typical response:
"I personally think it's part of the 'we'll close the Washington Monument' syndrome," said a prominent Congressional official, who said he and others had concluded that Mr. Woolsey's arguments "just don't fly."
Clinton's failure to fight for what we needed, better intelligence, led directly to the first and second World Trade Center bombings, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole, and our Embassies in Kenyan and Tanzanian.
This failure carried over into the next administration, because there was not enough time to bring the intelligence community up to full operational mode, due to the cuts of the previous administration. If you recall, the second attack on the World Trade Center happened just a bit over seven months after Bush took office, amid the chaos left by members of the previous administration. Remember the 'W' being stolen off of every computer in the White House in 2001? Oh, wait, you were barely 20, and probably not paying attention at that time.
