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To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157784)	6/11/2003 5:46:13 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

Democrats Press for Senate Inquiry on Iraq Tue Jun 10, 6:51 PM ET By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats said on Tuesday that a congressional inquiry was needed urgently to settle questions over whether U.S. intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons was exaggerated to bring on the war, but Republicans called for patience. Top Democrats on two key Senate committees pressed Republicans to say whether they will agree to a probe of intelligence that prompted the Bush administration to brand Iraq an imminent threat to the United States. "This is one of the larger issues that's come before this place in a long time," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Intelligence Committee Democrat. "I think we ought to be starting." Concerns have been growing worldwide that the banned arsenal that President Bush (news - web sites) cited as a reason for launching the war has not been found in the weeks since the ousting of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Rockefeller and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, top Armed Services Committee Democrat, last week called for a joint committee investigation into whether the intelligence was flawed or manipulated to boost the case for war. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said talks were ongoing with Democrats on how to proceed with an inquiry. But he stuck with his position that lawmakers first should review documents supplied by the administration before deciding how to continue. Another Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, said he opposed joint hearings which he said would be premature. "I've got a bright idea. How about senators reading the evidence before we start talking?" Lott said. He said the CIA (news - web sites) was to deliver some 100 pages of material and more was coming. Rockefeller and Levin said lawmakers should not be satisfied with the CIA handouts, but should demand other documents and question intelligence and administration officials. Levin said he felt there was "some evidence" that the administration inflated intelligence to indicate Iraq had weapons immediately before the war, and on an alleged al Qaeda-Iraq link. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157784)	6/11/2003 5:52:15 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

Was Iraq war built on hype? Tuesday, June 10, 2003 THE BUSH administration should be held accountable for its stated rationale for the war to oust Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The president and his top aides need to explain, to the satisfaction of an increasingly skeptical Congress and American public, their use of seemingly ambiguous and possibly dubious intelligence reports in building their case for war. The invasion by U.S. and British forces succeeded quickly in dismantling Hussein's forces and chasing him and his brutal Baath Party from power in Baghdad. But questions about the justification for this pre-emptive war will continue to grow in the absence of the purported weapons of mass destruction that supposedly posed an imminent threat to the United States. Was it the result of flawed intelligence, exaggeration by U.S. officials or a crafty move by the Iraqis to conceal, move or destroy these weapons as allied forces were moving in? An affirmative answer to any of those possibilities carries serious implications for this nation's stature and security. The administration's prewar contentions are also in dispute with respect to Hussein's alleged links to international terrorism -- in particular to al Qaeda. Bush repeatedly suggested the existence of an Iraqi-al Qaeda alliance, to the extent that many Americans believed it, and backed the Iraqi conflict as a step in the war against terrorism. Such postwar doubts have led to a chorus of congressional demands for formal inquiries into the quality of U.S. intelligence-gathering and analysis, and the use of same by administration policymakers. Bush and his associates, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, staunchly defend their handling of intelligence and profess the expectation that illegal chemical and biological weapons eventually will be found. Bush has gone out on a limb claiming the U.S. forces in Iraq "recently found two mobile biological-weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents." Even that paltry piece of evidence is the subject of much interpretation and debate. The war has certainly turned up abundant evidence that Hussein was a murderous tyrant who pillaged his country's oil wealth. But that point was never in doubt. The Bush administration went much further before the war, arguing that Hussein had the terrorist connections and the lethal means to pose a looming threat to the United States that could only be extinguished with a massive pre-emptive military attack. The White House is wise, as it did Monday, to accept as "appropriate" a congressional review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The inquiry must be vigorous and independent. The credibility of the Bush administration is at stake sfgate.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157784)	6/11/2003 5:58:49 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Editorial: Where are the weapons? / An increasingly edgy debate on Iraqi WMDs Tuesday, June 10, 2003 Public debate on the question of whether there were or were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is likely to get edgier -- in the United States and the United Kingdom -- before it is resolved. President Bush took the occasion of his visit to U.S. troops in Qatar on Thursday to assure them that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, an assurance he echoed in remarks at the White House yesterday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair continues to be harassed in Parliament and in the British media about critics' claims that the intelligence that British and American leaders put forward on the subject in the run-up to the war was either rigged or shoddy. This question is a big deal because it goes far beyond the issue of whether the Iraqis succeeded in squirreling away or destroying their so-called WMDs before the United States and United Kingdom took over Iraq. There are really two questions. The first is the competence of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence-collecting bodies, fueled by an estimated $40 billion-per-year budget. The second is the more critical question of whether the Bush and Blair administrations lied to their respective citizens about Iraqi weapons in an effort to find a reason for the war that would be convincing to their populations. That Iraq used and experimented with such weapons in the past is not the issue. Even countries that refused to support the United States and Britain thought Iraq's record was sufficiently suspicious to justify sanctions and a new round of weapons inspections. The question was whether Iraq's weapons capability justified immediate and extreme action. On that question, Americans are left with an ugly "lose-lose" choice if no WMDs are found. Did U.S. intelligence fail again on a question of monumental importance to the United States, making a misjudgment almost as grave as failing to detect terrorist planning in advance of the Sept. 11 attack? Alternatively, did U.S. intelligence tell the Bush administration that the evidence for such weapons was shaky -- a scenario that assumes the administration disregarded that warning in a call to arms based on WMDs and possible Iraqi links to the Sept. 11 terrorists? Checking box (a) means that U.S. intelligence is seriously incompetent. Checking box (b) means that our leaders lied to us, about a matter of great national importance -- going to war. Several inquiries are under way which may be able to lead to greater clarity on the subjects of both U.S. intelligence competence and the true story about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Those conducted by congressional committees need to be especially pointed and probing; unfortunately, Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress have taken a "Who, me?" approach to discovering the facts. It is definitely "tell the truth" time. This imperative has little to do with U.S. electoral politics. U.S. elections are still 17 months off and are usually conducted in any case on the basis of domestic considerations such as the state of the economy. The real subjects in question now are the competence of U.S. intelligence agencies and the veracity of the senior leaders of the U.S. government, starting with President Bush. "Where are the weapons?" is a question that won't go away. post-gazette.com