http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/13431788.htmLONDON - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview....... that U.S. intelligence services had not revealed their doubts to the Bush administration about the reliability of information on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction.
"What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us," Powell said, according to a transcript of the BBC interview.
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Really Mr Powell? ......
•“...a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats ... privately
have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war..."Analysts
at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from
the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. A dozen other officials echoed his views .... No one who was interviewed
disagreed.”
Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28, 2002
•“..analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials
have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible
links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war...At the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a
solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more
than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said.”
The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/02/international/middleeast/02INTE.html?pagewanted=1•"Tony Blair and George Bush are encountering an unexpected obstacle in their campaign for war against Iraq
– their own intelligence agencies. Britain and America's spies believe that they are being politicised: that the
intelligence they provide is being selectively applied to lead to the opposite conclusion from the one they have
drawn, which is that Iraq is much less of a threat than their political masters claim. Worse, when the intelligence
agencies fail to do the job, the politicians will not stop at plagiarism to make their case, even "tweaking" the
plagiarised material to ensure a better fit."
The Independent, UK, February 9, 2003
•“They're cooking the books,..
Basically, cooked information (about Iraq) is working its way
into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of
unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among
analysts at the CIA.."
Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA head of counter-terrorism
UK Guardian, October 9, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807286,00.htmlUSATODAY sept 26, 2002
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-26-iraq-alqaeda_x.htm•“There are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaeda network, according to an official British
intelligence report seen by BBC News....intelligence sources have told the BBC there is growing disquiet at
the way their work is being politicised to support the case for war on Iraq.
...."This almost unprecedented leak may be a shot across the politicians' bows."
BBC, February 5, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2727471.stm•“Downing Street’s embarrassment over its Iraq “intelligence” dossier deepened yesterday with the disclosure
that key sections were cobbled together by junior communications unit staff,...Officials also admitted that
chunks of the document — praised by Colin Powell on Wednesday for its “exquisite detail” — were copied
word-for-word from an article by a 29-year-old Californian academic.”
UK Times, February 8, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-570248,00.html
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