Senate Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.senate.gov/index.html
Duh! Of course these things were going to happen. All the more reason to go.
It is a good thing that Al-Qaeda is there getting their butt kicked whenever they try to engage our bravest.
After Afghanistan, the WOT needed a new front. Iraq was the logical choice. Any image of a stable Middle East is one where Saddam Huessein is out of power.
Thank goodness that Bush didn’t shrink at these estimates.
Well...better to fight Al Qaeda over there than in our cities...
In any endeavor, you expect the worst and hope for the best...
Those AP reporters, are they serious?
I am sure the Dims would have been ALL FOR either scenario!!
Tell that to Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi.
Duh! Take out Saddam and invite al-Qaeda and Iran to the party - several birds with one stone - and that's bad?!
Another attempt by the leftists.....to taint the effort of taking on al-Queda...and all of their supporters....which is what Saddam was.....
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Just days after President Bush made a major address arguing that al Qaeda has become the biggest threat facing U.S. goals in Iraq, it has come to light that US intelligence communities warned of the likelihood of that outcome prior to the invasion.
In the majority view of the "Phase Two" report on pre-war intelligence by the Senate intel committee, Democratic senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island write:
"The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al-Qaida.... America's prolonged presence in Iraq, the Intelligence Community correctly assessed, has allowed al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to take advantage of the security vacuum in-country and to increase their attacks against Americans with deadly results."
The issuance of "Phase Two" of the Senate Select Committee on intelligence's inquiry into pre-war intelligence has been highly anticipated since the first report's release prior to mid-term elections in 2004.
The minority view of Republican senators Kit Bond (MO), John Warner (VA), Orrin Hatch (UT), and Richard Burr (NC) did not comment on the substance of the report as much as they defended the release of Phase 1 and argued that Phase 2 had "become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report."
The investigation reviewed many assessments but primarily focused on two January 2003 papers from the National Intelligence Council: "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq" and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq," which were both widely circulated to top officials.
Major conclusions cited by the Associated Press:
* Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a long, steep and probably turbulent challenge. They said that contributions could be made from 4 million Iraqi exiles and Iraq's impoverished, underemployed middle class. But they noted that opposition parties would need sustained economic, political and military support.* Al-Qaida would see the invasion as a chance to accelerate its attacks, and the lines between al-Qaida and other terrorist groups "could become blurred." In a weak spot in the analysis, one paper said that the risk of terror attacks would spike after the invasion and slow over the next three to five years. However, the State Department recently found that attacks last year alone rose sharply.
* Domestic groups in Iraq's deeply divided society would become violent, unless stopped by the occupying force. "Score settling would occur throughout Iraq between those associated with Saddam's regime and those who have suffered most under it."
* Iraq's neighbors would jockey for influence and Iranian leaders would try to shape the post-Saddam era to demonstrate Tehran's importance in the region. The more Tehran didn't feel threatened by U.S. actions, the analysts said, "the better the chance that they could cooperate in the postwar period."
* Military action to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would not cause other governments in the region to give up such programs.
ABC's Jonathan Karl printed some key excerpts read to him by US intelligence officials:
* Iraq is unlikely to break apart, but it is "a deeply divided society." There is "a significant chance" that groups would "engage in violent conflict ... unless there is an occupying force to prevent them from doing so."* Neighboring states could "jockey for position ... fomenting ethnic strife inside Iraq."
* "Iraq's political culture does not foster political liberalism or democracy."
* "A generation of Iraqis" who have been subjected to Saddam's repression are "distrustful of surrendering or sharing power."
* Al Qaeda could operate from the countryside unless there is a strong central power in Baghdad.
* There would be "a heightened terrorist threat" that "after an initial spike would decline after three to five years."
Publication of the 229-page document was approved by a committee vote of 10-5, with two Republicans, Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, voting with the Democrats.
Read the released Phase 2 report on SSCI's homepage.
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Partisan politics make for a dirty game, but nowhere more so than in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the Iraqi in charge of the Baghdad security plan and the Interior Ministry, reportedly presented Prime Minister Maliki with a dossier of 15 parliamentarians who should be stripped of immunity and prosecuted for ties to terrorists last month.
Now the NY Sun's Eli Lake reports that one of the names on that list, Khalaf al-Ayan, is suspected of involvement in the April 12 Parliament bombing.
An American military official this week confirmed to The New York Sun that on April 3, American forces raided Mr. Ayan's house in Yarmouk and found stores of TNT that matched the kind used in the suicide belt that detonated on April 12 at the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria. That blast killed a member of parliament, Mohammed Awad, a Sunni Arab member of Mr. Ayan's Dialogue Front, yet the terrorist who killed him is believed to have been a member of Awad's security detail.But the background on Mr. Ayan, who has threatened to return to "resistance" if the political process does not yield to the demands of his Sunni constituency, also implicates him in a string of attacks in Mosul on May 17 that detonated bridges and blew up a police station, according to one senior Iraqi Sunni official and an American intelligence officer who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the investigation. A raid last week on his parliamentary offices, in which American forces participated, yielded time-stamped before-and-after photos of the attacks, according to these sources.
Iraq Transition
Report: Intelligence predicted most problems in Iraq
I hate the Leftists....
Will have to bookmark posts for further reading. Have a nice weekend.
I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be news, or important, that “problems were expected”. This was a war. Of course problems were expected. For example, that some number of our soldiers would get killed, is something I consider a problem. And it is something I expected. This doesn’t really add up to any kind of argument for anything however; we decided on approving war regardless of whatever problems were expected. And so we did.
One thing not anticipated is how many there are in the ME who are weak-willed and do whatever their imam suggests. If their lemming behavior were constrained to body piercings and tattoos like our own young the level of dismay would be much less.