Senate Intelligence Report

[rush22]

I have no idea why none of you posted this earlier as it was released more than a week ago, and it's very important if I do say so myself. At the bottom there are more links to articles about the release of the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq from the United States Select Commitee on Intelligence. Here is a video from the release. I'd be interested in what any of you guys (either 'side') have to say.

(snip)

"We in Congress would not have authorized that war ... if we knew what we know now," said Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report concluded, "Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, 'Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction,' either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."

(snip)

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the chairman of the committee, described as "unreasonable" and "unsupported" the claims that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program," "has chemical and biological weapons," "was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle," "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents," and that "all key aspects ... of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War."

"The Intelligence Community," says the report, "suffered from a collective presumption that Iraq had an active and growing WMD program." This "group-think," it continues, led to a tendency to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting that theory while ignoring or minimizing facts contradicting it.

"We went to war on false claims," said Rockefeller. As a result, he said, "our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before." The war on terrorism remains a threat, he said, now in "a hundred countries," and Osama bin Laden is "potentially ... more back in control."

Washington Times
Senate: Iraq intelligence was faulty

• CNN Report slams CIA for Iraq intelligence failures
  
• CBS Senate Report Blasts CIA
  
• FOXNews 'Group Think' Led to Iraq WMD Assessment
  
• ABC Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error
  
• MSNBC Senate report cites CIA for ‘failures’ on Iraq
  
• USATODAY Iraq report focuses blame on CIA
  
• Washington Post Report Says CIA Distorted Iraq Data
  
• CBC News Senate report slams CIA on Iraq intelligence
  
• BBC CIA slated over Iraq intelligence
  

I don't think you need a membership to any of these sites, but if you do go to www.bugmenot.com

[BOLO]

United States Select Commitee on Intelligence

Senate + Intelligence = oxymoron. ;D

[rush22]

[Peanut]

Rush22 - that's already accepted fact ;D

[BOLO]

YOU DON'T KNOW THE TRUTH. NEITHER DOES THE IDIOT FROM CANADA.
YOUR FORTE, AND HIS, ARE LIES, AND UNSUBSTANTIATED, OPINIONS.
I HAVE HEARD WHAT THOSE IDIOTS ON THE COMMITTEE HAD TO SAY, AND YOU ARE CITING PRE RELEASE. I.E. PARISIAN LEAKS.
I FIRMLY BELIEVE YOU, AND THE CANADIAN IDIOT, WILL EAT ANY PABLUM SHOVED YOUR WAY AS LONG AS IT IS LABELED "FROM THE LEFT
Which makes both of you Liberals, and that speaks for itself as to duplicity and gullibility.

[BOLO]

We in Congress would not have authorized that war ... if we knew what we know now," said Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He is NOT speaking for the entire Congress only his little part of it. He is lying about the rest of Congress.
Next. Isn't hindsight wonderful? It is always right on the money when it suits your purpose.
No one agrees with his frigging assessment except idiots like you, and his fellow Liberals.
Thank God they were not and are not, running the show.
That is the truth you can't handle. These people lie, and you soak it up. What does that make you?

[Peanut]

AWWWWW, Muffin's feelings were hurt, there there *pats head*. Yes BOLO, you are completely right, as always, with everything you say. ;D

[BOLO]

AWWWWW, Muffin's feelings were hurt, there there *pats head*. Yes BOLO, you are completely right, as always, with everything you say.

Gotcha didn't I.
No more points to be made? Not going to prove your asinine statements up. Events caught up with you didn't they?
Poor ol Peanut. Always: Canadian!
Wrong !
Liberal !
Wrong!
And that is with everything you say. One thing about it. you, and R22, make a great team, like the Black Sox. Losers all the way.
I am really looking forward to being in Ontario next month. ;D

[rush22]

I'm not citing a pre-release. The report is finished and available to the public (with some parts of it redacted).

You can go to the United States Select Commitee on Intelligence website, download the pdf, read it, and then decide for yourself. It's fine if you don't like Rockefeller's opinion (I thought it was a little presumptuous myself) and it's also fine if you don't want to read the articles, but please read the actual report before making comments, the report is important isn't it?!!

[BOLO]

Rockefeller's Comments were Pre Release. You cite things in your post that were also pre release and were later refuted by the Actual Senate Report.
Is it important?
Consider:
1. The entire report is colored by Partisanship. Both sides.
2. It had way to many leaks for self serving purposes.
3. It makes recommendations that are ridiculous at best and political at worst.
The Committee was not interested in what is good for the USA only in what was good for each political party.
For that reason and others it is tainted. I for one cast an askance eye at whatever is recommended, and will not agree to another layer of bureaucracy, nor give the Gov more power.
Frankly I do not like politicians who use Hindsight as a means of furthering their own pursuits.
Any one that says hindsight is 20/20 lies.
It never takes into account all the conditions that existed at that time.
Want some interesting reading. Try anything on FDR and Pearl Harbor. I am no fan of FDR, but the Senate Intel reports tore him to shreds and practically made an accusation that he was in Cahoots with Japan. FDR got all kinds of blame. No one took into account the situation as it existed then.
If you read the report and cull out all the Political bull, and then use what can be used, it may have a purpose. Otherwise it is Political Bull.

Senators Promise Swift Action on Reforms

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senators promised swift consideration of proposals to revamp the nation's intelligence structure after leaders of the Sept. 11 commission warned that bureaucratic wrangling leaves America dangerously vulnerable to another terrorist attack.

At a rare hearing Friday during the Senate's typically quiet August recess, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, urged fellow lawmakers to "be bold but not reckless" in considering a reorganization that would amount to a "fundamental overhaul of our intelligence structure and a sea change in our thinking."

Added the committee's top Democrat, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut: "We're going to get this job done and get it done with unprecedented thoughtfulness and speed."

As Congress continued its debate, a working group appointed by President Bush was meeting Friday about a possible administration package of changes. A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the panel was close to presenting its recommendations to Bush.

Among ideas prompting discussion is the establishment of a new national intelligence director, a major proposal from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The official said the administration's internal debate has centered on the scope of that person's authority and the individual's working relationship with the CIA.

Without providing specifics, the official said the working group is looking at options that could go beyond the commission's recommendations and indicated that one focus might be in the area of protecting privacy rights and civil liberties.

"Reform is not easy," Bush said at a campaign stop in Springfield, Mo. "Achieving reform requires taking on the special interests, requires challenging the status quo."

During the Senate hearing, the 9/11 commission's chairman, Thomas Kean, and vice chairman Lee Hamilton acknowledged institutional resistance to change will make reforms difficult but said the status quo is not an option.

The panel has recommended more than 40 changes, but Friday's hearing focused on creating a new national counterterrorism center and the job of intelligence director, who would oversee the 15-agency intelligence community.

"We have concluded the intelligence community is not going to get its job done unless somebody really is in charge," Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, told the committee. "That is just not the case now, and we have paid the price."

Intelligence reform has become a key issue in the fall election, with Kean, Hamilton and other commissioners vowing to keep the pressure on Congress and the Bush administration to make changes.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has endorsed the commission findings. Bush created the working group, which he instructed to draft executive orders that could immediately implement some of the proposals.

The commission's report recounted numerous intelligence missteps in the months preceding the 2001 terror hijackings that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and a Pennsylvania field.

The 10 commissioners, traveling in pairs, are embarking on a nationwide tour next week to share their report with the public and to draw attention to the need to overhaul U.S. intelligence gathering and use. Kean said the commission is seeking private donations to continue its work past Aug. 26, when it is scheduled to dissolve under the law that created it.

Collins and Lieberman support the proposed national intelligence director and national counterterror center. But both are examining details about how to make the two ideas work.

Congressional critics are surfacing as well. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., questioned whether the new national intelligence director would be too close to the White House to provide independent analysis. He said he has reservations about what the counterterrorism center would mean for the command structure at the Defense Department.

The hearing was the first of at least 15 that will be held in coming weeks by more than a half-dozen House and Senate committees.

home.bellsouth.net/s/editorial.dll?bfromind=2214&eeid=4256741&_sitecat=1522&eetype=article&render=y&ck=

The 911, and the Sen Intel have to be tied together. The 911 was way tainted, and not worth a dam as far as reports go.
Yet both will be used to further political causes.
Peruse the above article carefully, you can see the partisan issues.
Security first, Politics second, or last, or later.
One last thing. I am really tired of those who want to blame the current situation on President Bush (Partisan Politics). They refuse to place the Blame where it actually belongs. On Osama bin Laden. Period.
Secondary fault lies with a Congress that gutted the Intel, and law Enforcement, communities. Not the President.

[rush22]

This is the report released about Iraq, not 9/11. It does not make recommendations. The quotes cited by the Washington Times are in the first line of the overall conclusions report. The report does not blame President Bush.

Please pay attention or do your research.

[BOLO]

This is the report released about Iraq, not 9/11. It does not make recommendations. The quotes cited by the Washington Times are in the first line of the overall conclusions report. The report does not blame President Bush.

Please pay attention or do your research.

Please Pay attention, and try 2 doses of comprehension.

This is the report released about Iraq,

No. It is an excerpt of the full report I cite.
If one part is tainted, all is tainted by Partisan Politics.
In this case the whole thing was tainted from start to finish. They would not even allow the House to be represented. Which has been done before.

It does not make recommendations

The 911 Commission did, and so did the Individual Senators, most notably the Liberals.
The two (911 & Senate intel) were, and are tied.
If you believe thay are not, then you are as bereft of common sense as peanut.

The quotes cited by the Washington Times are in the first line of the overall conclusions report.

So. They are still valid. They were made.

The report does not blame President Bush.

I did not say they did. I am refering to FDR and the conclusions drawn by many citizens when presented with the report.
The same will happen here.
It will be slanted on way or the other. Either by those like you, who excerpt or use a part of the whole or by individual politicians as they try to sell themselves, or a pet project.
That superiority complex you got ever bother you at night?
Try Neosporin.

[rush22]

THIS IS THE FINISHED REPORT ABOUT INTELLIGENCE IN IRAQ NOT ABOUT 9/11.

Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq

Please visit their website.

[Matter]

"We in Congress would not have authorized that war ... if we knew what we know now," said Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report concluded, "Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, 'Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction,' either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."

Hmmmm......

news.myway.com/top/article/id/381249|top|08-09-2004::17:46|reuters.html

{excerpted}

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Which contradiction would you like to discuss? Pick your poison.

[TNRighty]

Key word, "NOW". "If we had known what we know NOW"

George Bush didn't have the luxury of hindsight when he began the war on terror. He relied on common sense and a knowledge of history, none of which Kerry possesses. Saddam Hussein at one time or another had weapons of mass destruction. We know this to be fact. Ask the thousands of Kurds lying face down in shallow graves scattered across the desert. He was a sworn enemy of the United States. So was is bin Laden. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" Ever heard that wise quote?

New evidence suggests Hussein smuggled WMD to Syria as late as just days before the US invasion (perhaps someone can provide me a link, if not, I'll find one).

We did the right thing. Would you rather Rockefeller be saying, "Knowing what we know now, we should've done something sooner". Had we not taken the action we did, there's a good chance we'd be saying exactly that.