US Army Col. (ret) Patrick Lang writes about a third instance in which intelligence officers suspected that the case for WMD in Iraq was unsubstantiated – and were overruled by high ranking neoconservatives in the Bush administration. Go to his 15 monkeys in the room with typewriters to read an extract from a forthcoming Vanity Fair article by Craig Unger. He describes evidence that the Niger documents showing that Iraq wanted to import Yellowcake uranium ore were forgeries.
The professional intelligence analysts I knew ten years ago would have argued that a plan to acquire yellowcake is evidence of a nuclear weapons program, not proof of a weapon, tested and ready to be used. I assume that analysts made similar arguments in 2002-2003. Even if they did, it would not have mattered. Unger provides evidence that the arguments they made were overruled by the neocon’s bent on going to war.
This is the third credible report of administration officials overruling intelligence professionals who were skeptical about Iraqi WMD programs. The second concerns reports on how the top three officers in the CIA would not approve analytical challenges to the veracity of a source code named “Curveball.” The second concerns DITSUM 044-02 This was a Defense Intelligence Summary that, in the words of Col. Patrick Lang
threw cold water on the information provided by al-Libi, a key source in the US government's attempts to "connect the dots" between the Iraqi government and AQ. (Al Qeada)
This was in EARLY 2002!!! Al-Libi's claims to know all about the supposed connection between Saddam and AW were judged by DIA to be doubtful way back then.
And so I ask, as I did on May 21, 2006 how could the Robb-Silberman commission possibly reached this conclusion?
MOTE: this item linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 06/08/06that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments.
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