WASHINGTON, 10 July 2004 — US intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, relied on dubious sources and ignored contrary evidence in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, a Senate committee reported yesterday.
In a harshly critical report, partly blacked out for security reasons, the Senate Intelligence Committee took US spy agencies to task for numerous failures in their reporting on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which helped President George W. Bush build a case for war. No such weapons have been found.
US Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the Senate would not have voted overwhelmingly in 2002 to approve the war if it had known how deeply flawed the intelligence was.
“The administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war. And we in Congress would not have authorized that war, we would not have authorized that war, with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now,” he said.
Rockefeller said the Iraq war left the United States less safe and would affect national security for generations. “Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower,” he said.
“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.”
The committee chairman, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, said the intelligence community suffered from “collective group think” in reaching the unwarranted conclusion that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
“This ‘group think’ caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs,” he said.
The report absolved the Bush administration of charges that it had pressured analysts to reach preset conclusions on Iraqi programs. But some Democrats dissented from that conclusion.
“The committee’s report does not acknowledge that the intelligence estimates were shaped by the administration,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. “In my view, this remains an open question that needs more careful scrutiny.”
Over Democratic objections, the committee decided to delay a report on how the Bush administration used the intelligence it received until after the Nov. 2 presidential election.
“There is a real frustration over what is not in this report ... after the analysts and the intelligence community produced an intelligence product, how is it then shaped or used or misused by the policy-makers?” Rockefeller asked.
The report, which ran to more than 500 pages, said that conclusions in an October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons programs “either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting.”
