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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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June 5th,
2008 - Senate Panel Rebukes Bush, Cheney on Prewar Iraq Claims |
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Senate Panel Rebukes
Bush, Cheney on Prewar Iraq Claims It says many statements, particularly about Al Qaeda links, were not
backed by intelligence. Republicans Snowe and Hagel vote for the report, but
others are critical. By Greg Miller Los Angeles Times June 5, 2008 Washington - In a
long-awaited report, the Senate Intelligence Committee rebuked President Bush
and Vice President Dick Cheney today for making prewar claims - particularly
that Iraq had close ties to Al Qaeda - that were not backed by available
intelligence. The report, which was
supported by some Republicans but criticized by many others, accuses the
president and other members of his administration of repeatedly exaggerating
the evidence of an Al Qaeda connection to take advantage of the charged
climate after the Sept. 11 attacks. "In making the case for
war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in
reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent," said
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee. "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation
into war under false pretenses." The report amounts to the
most direct rebuke to date of the Bush administration's use of intelligence
to build support for the Iraq war. But the document, which catalogs hundreds
of statements by administration officials, stops short of calling for any further
inquiry or punishment. In a second report released
Thursday, the committee provides new details on a series of clandestine
meetings between Defense Department officials and Iranian dissidents seeking
support for a covert plan to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran. In that document, the
committee accuses National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and others of
"inappropriate" conduct for an activity that the committee
concludes was intentionally hidden from the CIA. The main focus of the
documents released Thursday was a detailed examination of hundreds of
statements that Bush, Cheney and other administration officials made in the
run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many of the White House's
claims about Iraq's work on chemical and biological weapons, and its alleged
pursuit of nuclear capabilities, were consistent with intelligence reporting
available to government officials at the time, even though that intelligence
was later shown to be wildly off-base. But statements suggesting
that Iraq and Al Qaeda had forged a partnership were not substantiated by the
underlying intelligence, the report concluded. And statements by Bush and
Cheney indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to provide weapons of mass
destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States
"were contradicted by available intelligence information," the
report said. The report was approved on
an 10-5 vote by the bipartisan panel in April, with Republican Sens. Olympia
Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska voting in favor. However, senior
congressional Republicans accused Democrats on the Intelligence Committee of
using the report to score political points in an election year, and of
violating previous agreements to examine not only the prewar claims of Bush administration
officials, but also those of Democratic members of Congress. The Republicans attached
dissenting views that included quotations from Rockefeller and other
Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), that also warned that
Iraq posed a growing danger to the United States. "It is ironic that the
Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings
and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted
and mischaracterized the intelligence," said Sen. Christopher
"Kit" Bond (R-Mo.), the ranking Republican on the intelligence
panel. Responding, Rockefeller drew
a distinction between the statements of many congressional Democrats and
those of top Bush administration officials. "There is a fundamental
difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately
painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully
accurate," he said. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-intel6-2008jun06,0,7603497.story |