In this morning’s WaPo Walter Pincus reports on Senate plans to investigate prewar intelligence.
William Dunke, the intelligence panel's chief of staff, said the committee has prepared by collecting public statements of President Bush and other administration officials, as well as the intelligence data "available at the time." …
The staff, he said, has prepared draft reports for the senators to work on that relate to two other parts of the Phase Two report -- prewar intelligence on what would happen in postwar Iraq; and how the prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs compared with what was uncovered after the war by the U.S. Iraq Survey Group. That group of CIA and Pentagon experts found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction immediately before the U.S.-led invasion. (Emphasis added)
It seems to me that the analysis of Iraqi weapons programs was lacking. The administration strove to provide evidence that the programs existed. They failed to ask more detailed questions about the status of these programs. Had they done so, they might have realized that the WMD threat from Iraq was still years away. Reports on Uranium prucheses now recognized as deceptive would not have been misleading.
There were other reasons to fight the war – ending Saddam’s torture of his own people. He had, after all, used chemical weapons on the Kurds and wanted the world to believe that he had retained this capability.
My guess is that the Senate will find that the failures were due 1) to a collective mindset. Iraq had hidden its nuclear program before and the intelligence community was determined not to be fooled a second time and 2) a failure to conduct a thorough analysis of the status of Iraqi WMD programs.
All this is speculation on my part - but the patterns are there.
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