Here is the Executive Summary
of the reportThe Los Angeles Times has also posted an article detailing the dispute between the Pentagon and CIA.
"There were like 26 points," in the Feith team's paper, Gimble said. "And essentially [experts at other agencies] disagreed with more than 50% of it, and either agreed or partially agreed with the remainder. When the team briefed Tenet and other senior CIA officials on Aug. 15, the audience was polite but unimpressed. Tenet described the meeting as "useful," Gimble said, but "in our interviews with him he later said that he only said that it was 'useful' because he didn't agree with it and he was just trying to, you know, nicely end the meeting."
The NY Times has recently published a popular OpEd piece on the whole issue. I wish someone, ahem Feith (aka the Dark Prince), would go to jail.
"A report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war."
"But the C.I.A. kept saying there was no reliable intelligence about an Iraq-Qaeda link. So Mr. Feith was sent to review the reports and come back with the answers Mr. Cheney wanted. The inspector general’s report said Mr. Feith’ s team gave a September 2002 briefing at the White House on the alleged Iraq-Qaeda connection that had not been vetted by the intelligence community (the director of central intelligence was pointedly not told it was happening) and “was not fully supported by the available intelligence.”
BTW: Cheney doesn't think the VP is part of the executive branch. Be afraid, very afraid.
And More
So now Feith, on NPR, is disputing the accuracy of the report attacking his reports. He seems to think NPR is asking questions based on flawed intelligence (the actual report cited above).
CHADWICK: What the inspector general's report says is that your office presented findings which appeared to be based on a full reading of intelligence and they were not based on a full reading of intelligence.
Mr. FEITH: That's simply not correct. And I don't believe that's what the inspector general report says. I mean there's an enormous amount of loose talk about this and vague and loose allegations. And it's really - it's very difficult to refute stuff that is so, you know, so thoroughly inaccurate.
PS: Its good we are getting to the bottom of this now, when we can do something about it.
7 comments:
All The News That Fits Our Agenda
How can it be? I’ve just leafed through the Sunday New York Times, Feb 11, 2007, and there’s not one mention of Douglas Feith to be found. Hmm. One article on Scooter Libby, but they focused on Libby’s lawyer Theodore V. Wells, describing what a great guy he is… I’m sure their right. The NYTimes also gave Wells some pointers on how he should advance his case against Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Wow!
Just like the NYTimes to turn the other way when there’s a big story that doesn’t fit their agenda. I guess the thinking is… if there’s nothing nice to say about a subject we care about, why say anything at all.
The whole WMD thing and terrorist sponsorship is ambiguous to me. I really don't doubt that Saddam had WMDs since we were his main supplier of the technologies when he was fighting Iran (back when we liked him). I also read a book by an Iraqi Air Force general that Saddam had transported a lot of weaponry via air to Syria before the invasion. As far as hiding WMDs the western part of Iraq is a ginormous desert... it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"Bill Clinton’s administration clearly believed Saddam had WMD and the Intel for that assessment came from the Clinton appointed leadership of the CIA. A CIA that had to develop the intel on Iraq solely through ELINT and IMINT from satellites because Clinton gutted the HUMINT capability of the CIA" - A now retired Special Forces soldier who was in Iraq (1 and 2).
As for the terrorist thing, Saddam openly sponsored terrorists for numerous years. He offered cash awards to Suicide bombers and organizations including HAMAS.
A lot of (stupid) Americans sided with Hamas on the last Israel vs. Hamas bout in Lebanon. Hamas is a terrorist organization who has DIRECTLY attacked us numerous times including the killing of 200 or so Marines sleeping in their barracks.
On the way to Baghdad we ran into a terrorist training facility and were fighting foreign fighters. Many who were probably al-Qeida. They were there for a reason. To this day we are fighting al-Qeida in Iraq... that is all the Saddam al-Qeida linkage that I need even if he didn't support that individual terrorist group before the war.
I'll paste what the same Special Forces soldier as he touches on the issue deeper than I:
"The war in Iraq has stood up to international law. While the U.N. and the weak and pathetic European Union may not like that we went into Iraq without their official blessing, the justification for the attack and invasion of Iraq was not rooted in U.N. approval but in the 1991 United Nations cease fire signed by Iraq on April 6, 1991 after Desert Storm.
Read it here: http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0687.htm
Saddam violated several of the terms of the cease-fire agreement—violations which included kicking out United Nations weapons inspectors and firing on American aircraft patrolling no-fly zones.
Saddam stood in defiance of 17 subsequent U.N. Security Council resolutions insisting that he come into compliance with the terms of the 1991 agreement or face serious consequences—thus making a mockery of the Security Council and the entire U.N.
Saddam was providing training facilities across Iraq for Muslim terrorists of every stripe, including thousands of radical Islamists, and he had opened up his territory as a safe haven for al Qaeda operatives chased from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.
sought to recruit suicide bombers to attack American interests and Israeli civilians (as revealed by newly translated documents captured during the first stages of the invasion of Iraq).
Saddam kept open the door to forging an operational relationship with al Qaeda—as indicated in the 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden by the Clinton Justice Department, which reads in part: “Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq.”
continued to fleece the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program out of billions of dollars—money which was supposed to be used to provide humanitarian relief to the Iraqi people, but which Saddam used instead smuggle arms from North Korea and to buy influence among European politicians as well as American and European businessmen in an effort to undermine U.N. sanctions…while hundreds of Iraqi children, under the age of five, died every month for lack of food and medicine that the Oil-for-Food program was supposed to supply."
You can decide these things for yourself I'm not trying to change anyone's opinoins here.
That's right, you didn't. But good try.
"PS: Its good we are getting to the bottom of this now, when we can do something about it."
In all seriousness the reasons for invading Iraq are irrelevant. WE are in Iraq now and we can't just leave as some of the Democrats and Republicans are suggesting. I don't think people realize what pulling out of Iraq would mean. The country would probably go into a full civil war - the kurds would stay out of it and fortify their land probably trying to make it a country (and keep the oil field revenues for themselves)- and the battle hardened Sunnins would probably destroy the Shiites. All of this would happen as Syria would militairly support the Sunnis and Iran would support the Shiites. Then the neutral people would all be forced to either side or to become refugees and leave the country.
Not a pretty picture. As far as a plan goes... there is no candidate for 08 with a viable one.
robert l (rivalries) couldn't have said it better myself. And what about the Kurds who were massacred before Gulf War I? The cause of death was not gunfire, because there were no bullet holes in the bodies. Coalition forces are still uncovering mass graves of Kurds and Iraqis that Saddam had murdered. People deny that he had chemical/biological weapons, but how else can you explain the thousand of Kurd bodies?
For a Shiite Muslim perspective from a pro-Iranian nationalist, I strongly recommend to everyone to read Vali Nasr's book "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future."
To gain insight from an individual who is connected to this part of the world is beneficial for understanding the various components of the struggle in Iraq between the Shia and Sunni Muslims.
I heard Vali Nasr address the issue of sectarian violence in the Middle East at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations on 16 January 2007.
Whether one agrees with Vali Nasr's assessment of the situation in the Middle East regarding Iran, Iraq and Israel, his book does provide an interesting perspective about the current events in this historically plagued region of the world.
Vali Nasr has a brief bio that can be found at the following website for the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/bios/11622/.
~Eric Voogd
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