Steve, among many other reasons, it’s most likely that the President doesn’t feel the need to reiterate the threat that compelled a decision five years ago. Maybe he’s moved on to the war at hand rather than the DNC political crutch that opposition to the war really is.

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Steve,

Go back and read the whole speach by our President. The WMDs were not found in the quantities they were thought to have been in the UN monitored and inventoried sites. Several tons showed up in Jordan months later in a thwarted attack on Amman.

We did find mobile labs and secreted samples of bio weapons (shown on this website and others).

Yes, I wish our President had been much more forceful on shouting this all out. I have a feeling it would implicate several countries and a person who was pardoned in 2000 in Saddam’s gross violations of the 1991 cease fire.

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I repeat. Since George W. Bush launched his war based on this information, why isn’t HE going on the air to cite it as justification?

Other than the fact it will then be examined and found as faulty as Colin Powell’s “mobile biological weapons factories”.

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Actually, information like this have been cleared by the Pentagon as unclassified for distribution to the public. Why the prime time news and the rest of this country’s mainstream media fail to report on this is a mystery. Why I had to look to foreign news papers to find articles on WMD and Chem Warfare material found in Iraq is an even bigger mystery.

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With all this “ironclad proof”, why isn’t President George W. Bush going on prime time to proclaim it as justification for his decision to invade Iraq in 2003?

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First of all, most of the key judgments in the October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraq’s WMD programs were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting.

Second, in the committee’s view, the intelligence community did not accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 national intelligence estimate to policy-makers, both in the executive branch and here on Capitol Hill.

Third, the committee concluded that the intelligence community was suffering from what we call a collective group-think, which led analysts and collectors and managers to presume that Iraq had active and growing WMD programs. This group-think caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs. While we did not specifically address it in our report, it is clear that this group-think also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well, all of whom did believe the Saddam Hussein had active WMD programs. This was a global intelligence failure.

Fourth, the committee concluded that in a few significant instances the analysis in the NIE suffered what we call a layering effect. Assessments were built or were based on previous judgments without carrying forward the uncertainty of those judgments. This is what we have termed the intelligence assumption train. Layering is a necessary tool for analysts; there’s no question about that. However, if ongoing underlying questions and uncertainties are not incorporated into the subsequent intelligence products, then the subsequent assessment can, unbeknownst to the policy-maker, become increasingly inaccurate. In other words, the assumption train simply becomes longer.

Fifth, the committee concluded there was a failure by intelligence community managers to adequately encourage analysts to challenge their assumptions, to fully consider alternative arguments, to accurately characterize intelligence reporting and to counsel analysts who had lost their objectivity.

Sixth, the committee concluded that there were significant shortcomings on almost every aspect of the intelligence community’s human intelligence collection efforts against the Iraqi WMD target.

Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the U.N. inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target.
In addition to this lack of good source reporting, the CIA did not share its sensitive human intelligence reporting.

Most, if not all, of these problems stem from the broken corporate culture and poor management and cannot be solved by simply adding funding and also personnel.

Seventh, the committee concluded the CIA abused its unique position in the intelligence community to the detriment of this nation’s prewar analysis in regards to Iraq’s WMD programs. In a number of cases, the CIA sequestered significant reportable intelligence and prevented information from being shared with all- source analysts at other intelligence agencies.

But with respect to Saddam Hussein’s regime and his link to terrorists, the committee did find that the CIA judgments were reasonable, based on the available intelligence. The agency was also more careful to inform policy-makers about uncertainties with their analysis.

Finally, the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community’s mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure.

- Senator Pat Roberts 070904 SIC Release of WMD investigation report
Press Conference transcript

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Shattering Conventional Wisdom About Saddam’s WMD

The gist of the new evidence is this: roughly one quarter of Saddam’s WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990′s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990′s. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam’s nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003

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[...] was found and what was done with it in Part 2 here. [?] Share This Similar Posts Saddam’s WMD Program & Site 555, Part [...]

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