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New report casts doubts on justifications for war
By Rick Maze
Staff writer
A new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee casts continued doubts on the Bush administration’s justifications for going to war with Iraq.
The report, released Friday, finds no direct connections between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., and dismisses as unfounded pre-war statements by Bush administration officials about a supposed meeting between one of the Sept. 11 hijackers and an Iraqi intelligence official.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been among those trying to make the link. On Sept. 26, 2002, Rumsfeld said, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-Qaida leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
Republicans tried to downplay the report. “I think that anyone who has been paying attention the last couple of years will recognize that there is little that is new in this report,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, D-Kan., the intelligence committee chairman. “As we have all known since 2004, this nation and our allies experienced an intelligence failure with respect to pre-war intelligence on Iraq.”
And, Roberts noted, it was not just the Bush administration led astray. He noted that top Democrats, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, were among those saying in 2002 that Iraq had an aggressive nuclear weapons program and could have a nuclear bomb within five years. “The long-known fact is that the pre-war intelligence was wrong,” Roberts said.
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