Intelligence Didn't Back Bush Iraq Stand, Reports Say

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Intelligence Didn't Back Bush Iraq Stand, Reports Say (Update1)

By William Roberts and James Rowley

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Bush administration claims justifying the war against Iraq were based on fragmented, conflicting, and at times unreliable intelligence, according to two reports released today by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Administration statements that Saddam Hussein was allied with Osama bin Laden and was helping al-Qaeda obtain chemical and biological weapons proved wrong and misleading and weren't based on solid intelligence in its possession, the declassified Senate reports said.

Contrary to assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials, Hussein didn't have links to al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist plot, the reports said.

``Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,'' one of the reports said. Hussein refused all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support, said the reports.

While Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress told U.S. officials that Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, that information later proved inaccurate, according to the committee reports.

U.S. intelligence agencies overestimated Saddam Hussein's ability and desire to obtain weapons material while United Nations sanctions were in place, the reports said. Further, the Senate committee determined that Hussein sought weapons of mass destruction as deterrents against Israel and Iran, not for use against the U.S.

Hussein and al-Qaeda

Allegations that Hussein provided chemical and biological weapons training to al-Qaeda operatives also turned out to be false, the reports said. The Defense Intelligence Agency said in 2002 that it was unlikely Iraq gave Bin Laden any useful weapons assistance.

The Senate reports cite inconsistencies and contradictions overlooked by intelligence agencies as they produced intelligence briefings for senior policy makers.

U.S. analysts had ``little specific intelligence reporting'' about Hussein's willingness to ally himself with al-Qaeda, the reports said. The committee quoted a 2002 Central Intelligence Agency report that said ``our assessment of al-Qaeda's ties to Iraq rests on a body of fragmented, conflicting reporting from sources of varying reliability.''

On two occasions, Hussein rebuffed al-Qaeda emissaries seeking to establish a relationship with his regime, information not reported to U.S. intelligence agencies before the war, the reports said.

While Bin Laden's al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq in 2002, he was traveling under cover and eluded efforts by Hussein to capture him, the reports said.

Threat to Hussein

Al-Qaeda operative Abu Hafs al-Mauritani went to Iraq twice -- in 1998 and 2002 -- to meet with Hussein but was rebuffed, according to the reports. Hussein said al-Mauritani should leave the country because he may ``cause a problem'' for the regime.

Further, Iraqi intelligence agents infiltrated Ansar al- Islam, a radical Kurdish group hosting al-Qaeda fighters, because Hussein saw them as a threat and thought the U.S. would use their presence to suggest a link between the Iraqis and the terrorists, the reports said.

Democrats said the reports show that statements by Bush administration officials before the Iraq war began in 2003 weren't supported by intelligence known at the time they spoke.

Republicans Counter

Republicans countered that Democrats were swayed by the same bad intelligence as President George W. Bush and supported the president's decision to go to war with Iraq. Still, seven of eight Republicans on the panel, including Chairman Pat Roberts, voted to approve the conclusions about pre-war intelligence.

Bush has consistently linked Iraq, where more than 2,600 U.S. military personnel have died and the U.S. is mired in a violent conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, to the larger war on terror and fundamentalist Islamic militants such as al-Qaeda.

Bush displayed ``gross negligence'' by citing faulty intelligence in speeches and statements to connect Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, said Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the intelligence panel.

When George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, told Bush that the intelligence case showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a ``slam dunk,'' it was ``a corruption of the intelligence process,'' said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

Snow Comments

Tenet later complied with administration demands that the CIA gloss over inconsistencies between intelligence data and Bush's assertions and should be held accountable, Levin said. The report quoted committee testimony this year by Tenet, who acknowledged ``it was the wrong thing to do.''

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the White House hadn't seen the two Senate reports and wasn't briefed on it.

``Based on the characterizations we've seen, it's nothing new,'' he told reporters at the daily White House briefing. ``So, it's, again, kind of re-litigating things that happened three years ago.''

``It's worth noting,'' Snow added, ``that in 2002 and 2003 members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had, and they came to the very same conclusions.''

Committee chairman Roberts said Democrats were misusing the reports ``by careful cherry-picking through the intelligence and the facts in a political attempt to rewrite history.'' The information available before the war was used by the administration and Congress, Democrats included, to justify going into Iraq, he said.

Partisan Battles

The Senate reports, which were subject to partisan battles behind closed doors, are the result of two and half years of investigative review by the intelligence panel's staff. Democrats last year forced a closed session of the Senate to protest the committee's delays in releasing the reports.

Republican Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine joined with intelligence committee Democrats in concluding that Chalabi actively sought to mislead the Bush administration to overthrow Saddam. Roberts said Chalabi's information played a minimal role.

To contact the reporters on this story: William Roberts in Washington wroberts@bloomberg.net