Senate Report: Bush Used Iraq Intel He Knew Was False

[quickerthanmost]

Curveball, oh Curveball


Senate Report: Bush Used Iraq Intel He Knew Was False

More than five years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally gone on the record: the Bush administration misused, and in some cases disregarded, intelligence which led the nation into war. The two final sections of a long-delayed and much anticipated "Phase II" report on the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, released on Thursday morning, accuse senior White House officials of repeatedly misrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.

In addition, the report on Iraq war intelligence harshly criticizes a Pentagon office for executing "inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities" without the proper knowledge of the State Department and other agencies.

In addition to judgments that could prove troublesome for the White House and make waves in the presidential race, the report also contains some stinging minority reports from Republican committee members who allege that Democrats turned the intelligence review process into a "partisan exercise."

However, when the GOP controlled the intelligence committee and steered its "Phase I" reporting on the use of Iraq war intelligence, critics complained that tough questions about the Bush administration's actions had been kicked down the road, and thus required a second round of fact finding -- dubbed "Phase II." The committee's delay in producing that full report to the public was seen by Democrats as evidence of a stonewalling campaign executed by President Bush's Republican Senate allies.

Former Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) often vacillated over whether or not the report was worth completing, first promising in 2004 that the work would be finished, and then calling it a "monumental waste of time" later in 2005. When Democrats gained control of the Senate after the 2006 midterm elections, they gained a majority of seats on the committee and set the course for the production of the final reports. Whether by partisan design or simple chance, however, the committee managed to save some of the best questions for last.

The "Phase II" report states -- in terms clearer than any previous government publication -- that there was no operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that Bush officials were not truthful about the difficulties the United States would face in post-war Iraq and that their public statements did not reflect intelligence they had at the time, and, specifically, that the intelligence community would not confirm any meeting between Iraqi officials and Mohamed Atta -- a claim that was nevertheless publicly repeated.
"Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.

"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed. ... There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."


The key findings released by Rockefeller and his divided committee brings the five-part "Phase II" of the committee's report on prewar intelligence to completion. The investigation's first phase was released on July 2004, and two less controversial parts of "Phase II" were declassified in September 2006.

The potential election year impact of these latest findings is uncertain. On the stump, Sen. John McCain has explained his support of the "surge" strategy in Iraq by saying the country has become the "central front" in the war on terror -- a framing that attempts to shoot past the question of Iraq's status in the terror hierarchy during the 2003 campaign waged in Congress to authorize military action.

Still, the breadth of the Committee's citations of examples in which the Bush administration's comments were not supported by intelligence could reignite public dissatisfaction over the war. According to a release from Rockefeller's office that was provided to The Huffington Post, these examples include:

-- Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
-- Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

-- Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.-- Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

-- The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
-- The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.


"It has been four years since the Committee began the second phase of its review," Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote in her note attached to the report. "The results are now in. Even though the intelligence before the war supported inaccurate statements, this Administration distorted the intelligence in order to build its case to go to war. The Executive Branch released only those findings that supported the argument, did not relay uncertainties, and at times made statements beyond what the intelligence supported."

[IEATV8S]

Well, how about that! The LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC SENATE just came up with a startling revelation, just in time for the election!

AMAZING!!!!!!

[Weester]

So what else is new??????

This is old news!!!


ROTFL...........................

[salvageV6]

" "It has been four years since the Committee began the second phase of its review," Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote in her note attached to the report. "

Wow that biatch is awfully slow.

Like most Dumocrats.

Anybody who seriously listens to Feinstein is a hippocrit of the first order.

Ask her how she got her handgun permit.

[quickerthanmost]

Originally Posted by salvageV6

" "It has been four years since the Committee began the second phase of its review," Sen. Dianne Feinstein wrote in her note attached to the report. "

Wow that biatch is awfully slow.

Like most Dumocrats.

Anybody who seriously listens to Feinstein is a hippocrit of the first order.

Ask her how she got her handgun permit.

When confronted with the facts salvagev6 does what any common criminal or drug addict would do. Change the subject and deny the FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One thing that you might try salvaging is your reasoning and critical thinking, putdown Hannity for just one minute and breathe some fresh air.

The Senate just Proved in salvage's own words: Lying righty rethuglicans

[Gothmog]

We knew this years ago, and some people still dont ( hi Salvage, Hi IEATV8)



The smoking gun was the False Niger Claim that got into the state of the Union...
They asked tenet, "you knew that claim was false, why did you let Bush say it"
He said "oh yeah, my bad"

then Bush gave him a medal

Just like Libby....if you lie and cover for Bush, you WILL BE REWARDED

[ekafrawy]

This is why Bush is an A$$.

I also just finished reading "What Happened" Scott McClellan's new book. It is quite interesting. After going through it, to me it seems like it was not all Bush or even mostly Bush, but the success of the people around him to make Bush feel that the case for war was the only way to prevent further acts of terrorism.

I saw an interview a few days ago with Scott, and the question was asked if Bush knew Saddam didn't have WMDs, would he have still invaded. Scott imediately said of course not, but that Bush and his former press secretary has to say yes he would, for political reasons.

Obviously Bush must take the blame for everything since he is the president, but I just feel for the guy being manipulated in such a negative way. Ruined a great American name, and unless Iraq is the next post war Japan in 10 -15 years from now, he will never be vindicated.

Sad

[Turbo RX-6]

"Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.

I hate to break it to you, but these are not quotes from the Senate report, these are excerps from committee members, called additional views that are not even part of the report, but are members on the committee expressing their personal views.

You just chose to post one from the Democrats, notice the name Rockenfeller, I.E. John D. Rockenfeller, Democrat, and how it was leaked to the Huffington post.

Hell, anyone can play that game, here's the opening of the Chairman of the committee's report.

Additional Views
of
Chairman Pat Roberts
joined by
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Senator Orrin G. Hatch
I have no doubt that the debate over many aspects of the U.S. liberation of Iraq will continue for decades, but one fact is now clear, the U.S. Intelligence Community told the President, the Congress, and the American people before the war that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. More than a year after Saddam’s fall, it also seems clear that no stockpiles are going to be found, the Iraqi nuclear program was dormant, and the President, the Congress and American people deserve an explanation. In short, the Intelligence Community’s prewar assessmentswere wrong. This report seeks to explain how that happened.

Ambassador Wilson’s emergence was precipitated by a passage in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address which is now referred to as “the sixteen words.” President Bush stated, “. . .the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The details of the Committee’s findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon which the Committee’s Democrats would not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.

The former ambassador’s wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador’swife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA’SDirectorate of Operations which said, “[mJyhusband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.’’ This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division’s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.
Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.
At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador’s comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents “may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were Wrong,”’
and could not have been based on the forrner ambassador’s actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador’s trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador’strip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates
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in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA’s reports and said he may have become confbsed about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.
Following the Vice President’s review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA’s analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger. The former ambassador’s public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President’s request for the Agency’s analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6,2003, said, “The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.” The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.
These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report “debunked” the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public’s understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.
During Mr. Wilson’s media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had “debunked” the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT “debunk” the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.

Notice how the Democrats refused to have damaging evidence included in he report, you don't think the Republicans did the same?

I have looked over the actual official Senate report, I haven't found any of the stuff in your quotes in the actual report, but I'll keep looking..

I could go on and on, these are just personal views, do you really expect us to believe that if a Senate Report had come out yesterday that specifically stated that Bush flat out lied to the American public about the Iraq war, that it wouldn't have exploded the liberal news media, it would be all you were hearing about today.

[UNGN]

Originally Posted by ekafrawy

Obviously Bush must take the blame for everything since he is the president, but I just feel for the guy being manipulated in such a negative way. Ruined a great American name, and unless Iraq is the next post war Japan in 10 -15 years from now, he will never be vindicated.

Sad

Post War Japan took 30 years before it became anything, but they weren't sitting on oil reserves.

I don't think Iraq has to become Japan. That sets the bar pretty high to a country with 3 distinct ethnic groups. If they become another Egypt or Turkey in 10 years, Bush will be vindicated.

1. because No matter if he had WMD's or not, Saddam wanted them and would use them if he had them (because he did).
2. Iraq as a Ally puts the squeeze on Iran, as it did back before Saddam went all WMD crazy in the late 80s.
3. With Iraq on our side, we can go after those bankrolling the terrorists in SA and other countries in the region. They have a personal stake in it now, because these terrorists killed Iraqi's.

[Weester]

Obviously Bush must take the blame for everything since he is the president, but I just feel for the guy being manipulated in such a negative way."

You want to point the finger, point it at Cheney!!! Bush is too stupid to have set this up!!

[quickerthanmost]

[quote=Turbo RX-6;1888340]"Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence," Rockefeller said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.

I hate to break it to you, but these are not quotes from the Senate report, these are excerps from committee members, called additional views that are not even part of the report, but are members on the committee expressing their personal views.

You just chose to post one from the Democrats, notice the name Rockenfeller, I.E. John D. Rockenfeller, Democrat, and how it was leaked to the Huffington post.

Watch the Fontline piece" Bush's war". tell us what you think

FRONTLINE: home | PBS

Why is it so hard for you to believe that this was a predetermined war ( Dec 02) when so many have come forward with proof of it? CIA, administration officials, obvious manipulation of Intel.
One CIA analyst ( on frontline ) even stated that he saw Cheyney damn nearly every week inquiring about intel and requesting the rechecking of dubious intel that had already been disproved. He stated in al his years he saw a VP only occaionally at formal CIA functions.

Ask yourself why was Cheyney constantly badgering the intel folks?

[Turbo RX-6]

Originally Posted by quickerthanmost

Why is it so hard for you to believe that this was a predetermined war ( Dec 02) when so many have come forward with proof of it? CIA, administration officials, obvious manipulation of Intel.
One CIA analyst ( on frontline ) even stated that he saw Cheyney damn nearly every week inquiring about intel and requesting the rechecking of dubious intel that had already been disproved. He stated in al his years he saw a VP only occaionally at formal CIA functions.

Ask yourself why was Cheyney constantly badgering the intel folks?

I think your missing my point, I didn't vote for Bush, I have said that several times, If Bush is actually guilty of this, so be it.

this was a predetermined war ( Dec 02) when so many have come forward with proof of it? CIA, administration officials, obvious manipulation of Intel.

If you want to go there we will.

This is right from your very own Senate report that you posted, I will also note that knowhere in the Senate report does it ever say Intel was purposely fabricated.

Perhaps the most glaring example of the Intelligence Community’s poor management and oversight is revealed in the IC’s failure to convey the uncertainties behind intelligence reporting and assessments while coordinating on the State of the Union address and Secretary Powell’s speech to the United Nations. Discredited information was included in the President’s State of the Union speech, a speech that was a predicate for going to war with Iraq. This should never have occurred and would not have occurred if the speech had been carefully reviewed. Furthermore, this report reveals that the DCI was “not aware of the views of all intelligence agencies on the aluminum tubes” and therefore could not inform the President of the full range of the views on that issue. As the head of the entire Intelligence Community, the DCI should have been aware of the debate within the Community surrounding such a critical issue at such a criticaljuncture.
Finally, during coordination sessions with Secretary Powell in preparation for his speech before the United Nations in February 2003, the Intelligence Community was instructed to include in the presentation only corroborated, solid intelligence. In fact, from our review we learned that the DCI told aNational Intelligence Officer who was also working on the speech to “back up the material and make sure we had good stuff to support everything.” When Secretary Powell spoke before the UN, he said that every statement he was about to make would be “backed up by sources, solid sources...based on solid intelligence.” Incredibly, from our review, we know that much of the intelligence provided or cleared by the CIA for inclusion in Secretary Powell’s speech was incorrect and uncorroborated. For example, the IC never alerted Secretary Powell that most of the intelligence regarding Iraq’s mobile biological warfare program came from one source with questionable credibility nor did anyone alert Secretary Powell to the fact one of the sources cited in his speech was deemed to be a fabricator-something known by IC analysts since the May 2002 issuance of a “fabrication notice”.

One CIA analyst ( on frontline ) even stated that he saw Cheyney damn nearly every week inquiring about intel and requesting the rechecking of dubious intel that had already been disproved. He stated in al his years he saw a VP only occaionally at formal CIA functions.

Well, lets look at the very Senate report you quoted.

Again, let's look at what your Senate report that you so proudly posted says on this.

Pay very close attention to the last line in this damning report you posted.

Pressure

The Committee set out to examine a number of issues including whether anyone within the Intelligence Community was pressured to change their judgments or to reach a specific judgment to suit a particular policy objective. Not only did we find no such pressure,” we found quite the opposite. Intelligence officials across the Community told Members and staff that their assessmentswere solely the product of their own analyses and judgments. They related to Committee staff in interview after interview their strong belief that the only “pressure” they felt was to get it right. Every individual with whom we spoke felt a deep sense of responsibility to provide the highest quality product possible. This was especially evident among terrorism analysts whose assessments had become all the more important after September 11,2001.

There was a great deal of discussion among Members on the question of “pressure” and what constituted evidence of pressure. There was general agreement that intelligence professionals work in a high pressure environment. Therefore, it wasn’t evidence of a high pressure work environment with which we were concerned, but rather evidence of pressure to change or alter judgments. After reviewing thousands of documents and interviewing more than 200 analysts, managers, and government officials, we found only one instance that could remotely be characterized as “evidence” of pressure to reach a particular conclusion. This “evidence” was a single unsupported sentence in a report drafied by the Kerr Commission. The sentence is a brief reference to the issue of pressure on analysts in the introductionto the Iraq s Links tu AZ-Qaida section of Kerr’s report. The sentence in question said, “Requests for reporting and analysis of this issue were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significantpressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.” This one sentence stood out because it was the only instance where anyone or any document referenced pressure to reach a particular conclusion. The Committee?s staff vigorously pursued this question with Mr. Kerr.
-445 -
cc
When Mr. Kerr was asked for examples of what he meant by pressure to find evidence that supported a connection, he told staff that he was actually referring to the questioning experienced by analysts on whether there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaida. He further stated that this questioning was not unlike the questioning analysts expect on any high interest topic and that, in fact, he DID NOT find that analysts were being pressured to reach a specific conclusion notwithstandingthe language in his report. Therefore, this solitary piece of “evidence” was, in the end, no evidence at all.
I think that it is also important to point out that the question of pressure can be examined by means other than interviews. The Committee’s staff essentially deconstructed the Community’s assessments and reviewed in detail the progression of its judgments over many years. We were able to track and document how and why analysts reached their conclusions. Nowhere in this process did we find any unexplained gaps or evidence that judgments were changed for any reason other than the logical evolution of the analyses. WhatHad there been a successfull attempt to alter the judgments of the Intelligence community, there would have been an obvious, unsubstantiated and inexplicable deviation from this progression. We found no such deviation. we did find was largely good faith, albeit flawed, analyses that were influenced only by the intelligence reporting and the efforts of intelligenceprofessionalstrying hard to get it right.
Finally, as in any Congressional inquiry, we realize that certain individuals may be reluctant to be completely candid, especially when they are being interviewed by a group of congressional staff in the presence of representativesfrom their home agencies. In my experience, however, if such reluctance exists, it does not extend to every single individual that appears before the Committee or its staff. If someone was pressured to change their views, experience tells me someone would have come forward in some manner. The Committee’s history is replete with examples of individuals approaching its staff or members either directly or anonymously with any number of concerns. We received no such approaches during this review despite my repeated public pleas for anyone with concerns to come forward.
In the end, what the President used to make the extremely difficult decision to go to war was what he got from the Intelligence Community, and not what he or Administration officials tried to make it.

My point is that the info you posted and said is from the Senate report, is not, most everything you posted there was personal opinion from a Democrat.

Again, as I said before, if this were true, you really don't think it would be dominating the headlines, of course it would.

[quickerthanmost]

Your quotes are from phase 1 of the senate report correct?

Interesting facts about what Richard Kerr fmr. Deputy Director of the CIA:

The day before Independence Day, Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who is leading a review of the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq's unconventional weapons, held a series of interviews with journalists and revealed that his unfinished inquiry had so far found that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been somewhat ambiguous, that analysts at the CIA and other intelligence services had received pressure from the Bush administration, and that the CIA had not found any proof of operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime.
In other words, Bush lied.

Bush had said that intelligence gathered by the United States and other nations had determined--"no doubt"--that Hussein possessed WMDs, and he had declared that the Iraqi dictator was "dealing" with al Qaeda. Kerr's statements undermined these vital assertions Bush had made to justify the war.

Kerr was not trying to be difficult. His remarks were primarily pro-CIA. He maintained that the agency had been right to tell Bush and top administration officials that Hussein was seeking WMDs. He said that intelligence analysts had resisted pressure and had done a fine job, considering the limited amount of material they had to work with. Kerr noted that US intelligence analysts had been forced to rely upon information from the early and mid-1990s and had little hard evidence to evaluate after 1998 (when UN weapons inspectors left the Iraq). The material that did come in after then was mostly "circumstantial" or "inferential," he said. It was "less specific and detailed" than in earlier years, "scattered." Speaking to The Washington Post, he commented, "It would have been very hard to conclude those [WMD] programs were not continuing, based on the reports being gathered in recent years." And he noted that CIA intelligence reports included the "appropriate caveats" regarding their less-than-definitive conclusions. (An unclassified CIA report released last October said, without qualification, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." But its supporting material was nuanced, and Kerr noted that intelligence analysts usually pointed out that their information was not perfect.)

Though Kerr did not say so outright, his findings indicate that there was no hard-and-fast intelligence that Iraq possessed ready-to-go chemical or biological weapons. Yet that is what Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Ari Fleischer and other administration officials had asserted repeatedly. In his interviews, Kerr remarked that US intelligence analysts were right to assume, based on older evidence and more recent circumstantial material, that Iraq was maintaining its unconventional weapons programs. But developing weapons is not the same as possessing weapons. Bush and his advisers did not argue that the United States was compelled to go to war--rather than support more intrusive inspections--because Hussein had ongoing weapons programs; they claimed the United States had to invade because it was imminently threatened by actual weapons that were in Hussein's mitts (and that he could slip at any moment to his partners in al Qaeda).

Before the war, there was little doubt that Hussein had a fancy for mass-killing weapons and was defying UN disarmament resolutions in part to maintain programs to develop such awful devices. Yet a desire for WMDs and a development program are not as threatening as the real things, and Bush and his colleagues said the intelligence showed--without question--Hussein was armed with biological and chemical weapons, was close to building a nuclear bomb, and was in league with Osama bin Laden. Kerr's comments offer further proof none of this was true.
So did front-page headlines scream, "Former Deputy CIA Director Contradicts Bush's Key War Claims"? Nope. Kerr's remarks were treated more as a hiccup than a bombshell. A search of the Lexis-Nexis newspaper database turned up only three stories that were published; they appeared in the Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Diego Union-Tribune. And the headlines focused on Kerr's rah-rahing for the CIA. "Basis for Arms Claims Affirmed" (the Post). "Official Backs Prewar Claims" ( The Los Angeles). "Internal Review Backs CIA on Iraqi Weapons" ( The San Diego Union-Tribune). Each piece emphasized Kerr's endorsement of the CIA's analysts, rather than the fact that his findings revealed that the Bush administration had misrepresented the work of the analysts. As of this writing, The New York Times has not published a word about Kerr's preliminary findings. You think it's a coincidence that Kerr spoke to reporters the day prior to a long holiday weekend? You don't have to be James Bond to figure that out.

Slowly, official material is seeping out that confirms the allegation that Bush and his national security crew misled the country into war. Last week, Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, referred to preliminary findings of a review being conducted by her committee. This examination, like Kerr's, has found that the intelligence analysts had attached caveats and qualifiers to their assessments of the WMD threat from Iraq (which Bush never bothered to mention) and that there had been no good intelligence linking Hussein with bin Laden. (Click here to read more about her remarks.)

Perhaps Kerr is right and that US intelligence analysts had good cause--if not good evidence--to conclude that Hussein was still on the prowl for WMDs. A cynic, though, might wonder whether this former senior CIA official (who was a longtime analyst for the agency) is being overly kind to his alma mater. Nevertheless, the issue at hand is what Bush and his administration told the public. Kerr's remarks add to the case against Bush. They are another signal that thorough investigations could end up establishing that the accusation that Bush lied needs no qualifiers or caveats.