False Pre-War Claims

The Phase II report from the Senate Intelligence Committee has been released and what do you know, it provides more proof that the Bush White House outright lied to us in the run-up to the Iraq war. (The report is in PDF format as Part One and Part Two.) The story is outlined on TPM by David Kurtz. Senator Jay Rockefeller released a summary of the report's key findings, as noted at the TPM link above.

--Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

--Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

--Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

--Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

--The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

--The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Let me just remind you, however unnecessary that may actually be, that we have 4,000-plus dead Americans, 500,000-plus dead Iraqis, uncountable casualties from both peoples, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and decades of infrastructure demolished... for nothing. Unforgivable.

5 June 2008