Mephisto
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2005
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New Senate, New Probe Into Pre-War Intel
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 10 November 2006
With the Democrats now in control of both houses of Congress, the new majority leadership is ready to start wielding their power by revisiting a hot-button issue that Republicans never provided answers to.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon, Senators Carl Levin and Jack Reed said they may begin hauling some former Pentagon officials before a Senate committee early next year when they assume control of Congress to respond to lingering questions about the veracity of pre-war Iraq intelligence used by the White House to convince Congress and the public to back a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq. Levin and Reed said they want to find out how the intelligence - much of it reportedly cooked up by Iraqi exiles in a top secret Pentagon shop called the Office of Special Plans - made its way to the White House when numerous CIA analysts said privately that it was highly unreliable.
This aspect of the investigation - also referred to as Phase Two - never got off the ground, largely due to resistance by the Pentagon in providing Senate committees with documents from the Office of Special Plans (OSP). The OSP was headed by Douglas Feith, a key architect of the Iraq war, who has since retired from government work. Many of the details of Feith's shop have been shrouded in secrecy over the years; however, reports have indicated that Feith relied heavily on Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraq National Congress to provide the Pentagon with intelligence that claimed Iraq possessed a cache of chemical and biological weapons.
The intelligence was suspect and was not vetted by career CIA analysts. Instead, Feith's office bypassed the CIA and sent the intelligence directly to the White House, where Vice President Dick Cheney, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held it up as evidence that Iraq was defying a United Nations mandate barring the country from manufacturing or concealing weapons of mass destruction. Later, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and other top Bush administration officials lobbied for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq based entirely on the bogus intelligence that claimed Iraq was a threat to the United States and its neighbors in the Middle East.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111006J.shtml
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 10 November 2006
With the Democrats now in control of both houses of Congress, the new majority leadership is ready to start wielding their power by revisiting a hot-button issue that Republicans never provided answers to.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon, Senators Carl Levin and Jack Reed said they may begin hauling some former Pentagon officials before a Senate committee early next year when they assume control of Congress to respond to lingering questions about the veracity of pre-war Iraq intelligence used by the White House to convince Congress and the public to back a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq. Levin and Reed said they want to find out how the intelligence - much of it reportedly cooked up by Iraqi exiles in a top secret Pentagon shop called the Office of Special Plans - made its way to the White House when numerous CIA analysts said privately that it was highly unreliable.
This aspect of the investigation - also referred to as Phase Two - never got off the ground, largely due to resistance by the Pentagon in providing Senate committees with documents from the Office of Special Plans (OSP). The OSP was headed by Douglas Feith, a key architect of the Iraq war, who has since retired from government work. Many of the details of Feith's shop have been shrouded in secrecy over the years; however, reports have indicated that Feith relied heavily on Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraq National Congress to provide the Pentagon with intelligence that claimed Iraq possessed a cache of chemical and biological weapons.
The intelligence was suspect and was not vetted by career CIA analysts. Instead, Feith's office bypassed the CIA and sent the intelligence directly to the White House, where Vice President Dick Cheney, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held it up as evidence that Iraq was defying a United Nations mandate barring the country from manufacturing or concealing weapons of mass destruction. Later, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and other top Bush administration officials lobbied for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq based entirely on the bogus intelligence that claimed Iraq was a threat to the United States and its neighbors in the Middle East.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111006J.shtml
