There seems to be a myth around that although WMD have not been found in the US - it was the intelligence communities that were at fault and we cannot hold our politicians to what they said, as they were just reporting what they were told. Really? This article is revealing:

And a review of material that is now public shows that the intelligence”solid or not”did not back up many of Bush?s assertions. Here is a highly abbreviated run-through:

Biological weapons
In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said Iraq possessed a “massive stockpile of biological weapons.” The NIE had concluded”wrongly, it now seems”that Iraq had an extensive bioweapons development program. But its conclusions had not mentioned the existence of any gigantic stockpile. And weeks ago, Tenet noted “We said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of [biological] weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdad?s disposal.”

Chemical weapons
In his high-profile presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that it was the administration?s “conservative estimate” that Iraq possessed 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons. His remark made it seem that Iraq might have much more of this deadly stuff. Yet the NIE had reported that the intelligence community “had little specific information on Iraq?s CW stockpile.” Still, its analysts assumed Hussein “probably” had stocked 100 tons and “possibly” had stored as much as 500 tons of chemical weapons. In other words, they were not sure. Moreover, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence service of the Pentagon, had at this time produced a report that said, “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons.”

Nuclear weapons
Bush and his aides consistently maintained that Hussein had revived his nuclear weapons program. In December 2002, Bush even said, We don?t know whether or not [Hussein] has a nuclear weapon”"a comment suggesting he might have one. Yet Tenet noted last month that before the war, “We said Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon.” Indeed, the NIE said that Iraq could have nuclear weapons by the end of the decade but only “if left unchecked.” (At the time of the war, inspections and sanctions were keeping Hussein quite checked.) And the NIE reported that State Department intelligence analysts believed there was no “persuasive evidence that Baghdad had launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.”

Unmanned aerial vehicles
In that October 2002 speech, Bush raised a frightening prospect. “We?ve also discovered through intelligence,” he said, “that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We?re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States.” But the NIE said that the intelligence suggested that Iraq had an UAV “development program”"that is, not a “growing fleet.” And this conclusion”like others”was a matter of internal debate. The NIE noted that U.S. Air Force intelligence analysts”the analysts with the most experience in the UAV field”had concluded that Iraq?s UAV were not being developed to deliver WMDs but to conduct reconnaissance missions.

Thanks to talkingpointmemo for the link

This entry was posted on Friday, October 22nd, 2004 at 1:01 pm by phil and is filed under World Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.