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The Washington Post has published an article about an ex-CIA official who was at the heart of the intelligence fixing for the Iraq war. He says the administration ordered the CIA to dig up dirt and then the administration deliberately cherry picked intelligence reports only accepting the ones which helped them make a case to invade Iraq. It is good to see CIA people fighting back because the administration has tried to make the CIA the fall guy when it was the administration which invented claims out of thin air.
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Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; Page A01
The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.
"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between (Bush) policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 10, 2006; Page A01
The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.
"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between (Bush) policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.
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