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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth
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To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (5659)3/9/2004 5:28:49 PM
From: PartyTime  Read Replies (1) of 173976
 
Tenet denies Iraq intelligence manipulation
CIA chief mum on whether he tried to cool WMD rhetoric
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:08 p.m. ET March 09, 2004

WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet said Tuesday he doesn’t believe the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify war in Iraq but declined to say whether he tried to cool U.S. officials’ rhetoric about the now-disputed claim Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“I’m not going to sit here today and tell you what my interaction was ... and what I did and didn’t do, except that you have to have confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it,” Tenet told a congressional hearing. “I don’t stand up publicly and do it.”

The CIA director’s comments came at the end of an exchange in which Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., asked whether Tenet privately challenged President Bush and others — and why he didn’t speak up publicly — when officials portrayed the threat from Saddam Hussein as more urgent than CIA reports suggested.

“I do the intelligence ... they take the intelligence and assess the risk and make a policy judgment,” Tenet said.

'Superheated rhetoric'
Kennedy cited several occasions when officials referred to an urgent threat, the possibility of a nuclear attack and other “warmonger” descriptions of weapons programs it now appears Saddam didn’t have.

“If you’re saying there was no immediate threat and you hear ... the president, vice president, secretary of defense using that superheated rhetoric, we have to ask what is your responsibility,” Kennedy said.

Asked specifically whether he thinks policy makers misrepresented the intelligence facts to justify the war, Tenet said: “No sir, I don’t.”

Tenet said that besides key intelligence findings, his agency also believed that Saddam made a continuing effort to deceive the world about this weapons and that it was possible he could surprise them with something.

msnbc.msn.com
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