Senate panel set to release report damning US intelligence on Iraq

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A scathing congressional report to be released Friday will blame the CIA for much of the faulty intelligence the Washington used to justify last year's invasion of Iraq, US lawmakers said.

Members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee planned a press conference early Friday to introduce the 400-page "Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq" which has been more than one year in the making.

"Tomorrow's report ... will be intensely and extensively critical of the CIA for its intelligence failures and mischaracterizations regarding Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction," Democratic senator Carl Levin, a member of the panel, said at a press conference.

Officials who have read the document said it is a damning indictment of CIA's inadequate collection of intelligence, sloppy analysis, and reliance on sometimes uncorroborated sources and faulty data -- all of which led the agency to the apparently false conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

"It is an accurate, hard-hitting and well-deserved critique of the CIA," Levin said.

The document also scrutinizes Iraq's alleged ties to global terror, whether Iraq posed a threat posed to Middle East stability, and Baghdad's human rights violations.

A second phase of the panel's work, focusing on how the White House used the assessments from its intelligence agencies on Iraq, will be released by the end of the year, Levin said.

The chairman of the intelligence committee, Republican senator Pat Roberts, told US television recently that the document -- the product of months of research and closed-door testimony -- is "a good report" although "not a good news report."

The report is expected to prompt fresh finger-pointing over critics' allegations about US motives for invading Iraq.

President George W. Bush and top US security officials insisted for months before the war that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and strong links to the al-Qaeda terror network made it a threat to the United States requiring the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Since the end of the war, however, weapons inspectors who combed the country have failed to uncover evidence that Baghdad had a current nuclear weapons program or had stockpiled chemical and biological agents.

The report's release comes after weeks of delay while being vetted by the CIA for security reasons, and officials on the intelligence panel accused the agency of "footdragging."

It had been originally scheduled to be released on Thursday, but was postponed by one day to accommodate a farewell planned at the CIA for its director George Tenet, who formally resigns on Saturday.

The delay sought to avoid an awkward juxtaposition between the report's expected criticism of Tenet and the CIA's tribute to him.

Tenet will be replaced by deputy CIA director John McLaughlin until a successor is named.

Last month Roberts and Rockefeller top Democrat on the intelligence committee, issued a joint statement praising Tenet as someone who "served his country with distinction and honor during difficult and demanding times."

But the lawmakers noted as well that Tenet "steps down during a period of controversy over events leading up the attacks of 9/11 and the quality of intelligence prior to the Iraq War."

Is there any such thing as vincible stupidity? The same old theme keeps being pulled out and hammered on, the only reason we went into Iraq was because of the massive quantities of WMD ready to be trotted out and used in attacks at various targets around the world.

There were several reasons, not the least of which Saddam had failed to be in compliance with UN directives that had been passed a number of times on the Security Council. The UN was reluctant to enforce their own directives, it turns out, because there were several nations who were secretly dealing with Saddam in contravention of the Oil for Food Program. Sure there was oil coming out, but a commensurate amount of food and medicines were not being sent in and distributed to the populace within Iraq for whom it was designated, and there were widespread shortages in many pockets of despair. Turns out this was part of Saddam's domestic policy, wholesale punishment of non-compliant villages and regions, for entirely capricious reasons, such as attending the wrong mosque, or attending too often, or having the wrong ancestors.

Meanwhile, Saddam was treating the national treasury as his private bank account, spending judiciously in ways and places that insured that unrest continued, particularly between the Israelis and Palestinians. There was an indemnity paid for each successful "suicide bomber" that took out a number of Israeli citizens in any one location, payable to the bomber's surviving relatives. More than just the ghoulish aspect of sacrifice of one's own kin for monetary gain, it was a terror weapon delivery system, plain and simple, against non-military targets. Not a positive socially redeeming benefit.

And Carl Levin, of all people, himself a son of an ethnic group hunted and hounded from just about every country in Europe and western Asia, not standing up and being counted as being foursquare in defense of those other sons of this same ethnic group who have chosen to make Israel their homeland, is proof that some things are simply more compelling than mere blood ties.

Now someone like Michael Moore, American Hatriot, not being Jewish, betrays nothing when he expresses such loathing for the cause of the Israelis, by attacking Bush. George W. Bush is on the side of the angels with this one, smiting the enemies of peace, good will and representative government. And for doing so, he is vilified, called calumnious names, subjected to sabotage of his efforts, and pictured as doing the very things those who accuse him, are doing themselves.

In Iraq, the people of the West were abused and demeaned by Saddam in much the same vein of rage as what drives the American Hatriots in their dispute with the honest and just people of this country. "Honest and just" are ridiculed and laughed at as if they were a bad thing, and at heart, those attitudes are anything but. Some people try very hard not to be loved or lovable, and the simple impulse is to respond accordingly. Still, we may not simply ignore them, but we can isolate them and leave them impotent, a far more devastating response.

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