The media does seem to be nibbling at some of the issues. I thought this recent AFP article was especially well done. The problem is so far it's all blow and no go. There are a few politicians willing to make huffing and puffing noises but none of them appear to have what it takes to back up their rhetoric with action. As close as I can tell, the lack of WMDs has been a hot topic in Europe for at least the past month, but so far the US media has been more than a little cowardly in reporting the facts. It's supposedly illegal for the government to use the media for propaganda directed at Americans, but so far little George has gotten away scott free on a huge pack of lies presented to America as justification for an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. He's racked up enough of a laundry list of high crimes and misdemeanors it's a mystery to me why there doesn't seem to be a single member of Congress willing to dig a hole and start covering him with dirt.
story.news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US spy agencies have come under scrutiny for
their role in the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), amid charges of poor
performance and even political manipulation of information.
Congress has asked the CIA (news - web
sites) to "reevaluate" the quality of US
intelligence on weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) in Iraq, and on that country's links with
the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
"It is now time to reevaluate US intelligence
regarding the amount or existence of weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and that country's
linkages to terrorist groups, such as
Al-Qaeda," members of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence told CIA
director George Tenet in a letter Friday.
"The committee wants to ensure that the
intelligence analysis relayed to our
policymakers from the intelligence community
was accurate, unbiased and timely," said the
letter, signed by committee vice-chairman
Porter Goss, a Republican, and committee
member Jane Harman, a California Democrat.
The letter, a copy of which was furnished to
AFP, asked Tenet to respond by July 1 to
these points:
-- Was the gathered intelligence sufficient in
quantity and quality?
-- Were the sources of the intelligence reliable?
-- How was the intelligence analyzed and
disseminated?
-- Were divergent analyses taken into account, or swept aside, and, in the
latter case, why?
The query came after The New York Times revealed Thursday that Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had in October asked the CIA to compare the
quality of intelligence collected by various agencies, amid diverging
assessments of Iraq coming from the State Department, the Pentagon
(news - web sites) and the CIA itself.
US and British forces have not yet found any WMDs in Iraq, nor have they
established certain links between the former regime of Saddam Hussein
(news - web sites) and al-Qaeda, the two main premises on which
Washington and London justified their invasion of Iraq.
"Since some questions have been raised and it is taking a long time to find
out about the WMDs, we think it is prudent to ask," said Harman, ranking
Democrat on the committee.
Several critics have suggested that President George W. Bush (news - web
sites) and the Pentagon cooked intelligence on Iraq's possession of WMDs
to support an invasion.
"This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time," said
Harman. "I doubt it, but we have to ask."
In the Senate, as well, Democrats were attacking US intelligence services,
with Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia calling the CIA's performance
in the Iraq affair "wholly unimpressive."
Rockefeller called for internal investigations by the Pentagon and CIA into
false documents used by the Bush government to show that Iraq had tried to
buy uranium from Niger for its nuclear program.
In early March, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), raised a mini-scandal when he told the United
Nations (news - web sites) that documents indicating an attempted uranium
purchase were not authentic.
The US government was forced to admit the documents were false, but
denied any role in their fabrication.
A month earlier, an official British report on Iraq's alleged efforts to conceal
weapons of mass destruction was shown to be in part a crude plagiarism of
a paper by a California student based on information from 1991.
"There is no question there was a lot of pressure on analysts to support
preconceived judgments," a US official told the Washington Post daily.
"But the analysts' records is not bad when you consider you have strong
policymakers pushing analysts for information that supports their specific
views," the official said.
The CIA denied any politicization of its information-gathering.
"Our role is to call it like we see it, to make clear what we think, what we
know and what we don't know. That's the code we live by and that's what
policymakers expect from us," said CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield. |
