TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
Saturday, January 31, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A full-blown investigation of Iraq intelligence failures would pose election-year risks for President Bush. No one could be certain where it would lead, who it would touch or what it would uncover.
But resisting an investigation has hazards, too, because that would give Democratic presidential rivals an opening to keep the issue alive and question what the White House might be hiding.
A bipartisan proposal for an independent investigation is blossoming into a prominent issue on the presidential campaign trail and on Capitol Hill. The issue moved to the fore when former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he believed Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and Bush's decision to go to war was based on inaccurate intelligence.
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Kay's recent comments have created another major headache for an administration already being investigated for the leak of an undercover CIA employee's name, and for mistakes that some say may have left the nation vulnerable to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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