[WoofDog123]

"Three investigations - David Kay's, the Senate Select Committee's and the Presidential Commission all went to extraordinary lengths to determine is political pressure influenced intelligence assessments on Iraq. All three found the opposite to be true."

That is what government investigations are for, to prove no one inmportant did anything really wrong!!

[Dilbert56]

I don't believe in the sanctity of government investigations. I do, however, believe human beings will act in their own best interests. If any CIA analyst could have pinned the blame on politicians they would have. The alternative is having to admit they screwed up. I don't believe most people want to admit that unless it's the truth. I don't think they feared retribution. The CIA has blasted the Administration through both secret and open leaks as well as books so there are a lot of people at CIA who feel they're safe from political prosecution.

I diagree that the investigations concluded "no one important did anything wrong". The Senate committee and the Presidential committee were most harsh on the management of the CIA, not the operatives. They acknowledged that getting information from a closed empire like Iraq was difficult. They placed most of the blame on the higher ups who pretended their estimates were rock-solid when they were very tenuous. George Tenet and the other directors involved came in for a lot of criticism.

For example, the evidence on both uranium from Africa was weak and the aluminum tubes was weak. Yet the CIA portrayed this to the Administration as proof that Saddam had restarted his nuclear program. They reassured Colin Powell before he went to the U.N. even though they were starting to have doubts.