From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 22:36:01 MDT
Well, gee:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/31/1054177767278.html
Doubt on key war claims
June 1 2003
By Staff reporters and agencies
The controversy over the quality of intelligence used to justify
the Iraq war flared yesterday after reports that British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell,
privately expressed serious doubts about the information.
...
The report, which has been rejected as "untrue" by the British
Foreign Office, came as:
The former head of worldwide intelligence gathering for the
US Defence Intelligence Agency, Patrick Lang, said the
organisation had been "exploited and abused and bypassed" in
the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the
presence of weapons of mass destruction.
The top US Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lieutenant-General
James Conway, said US intelligence was "simply wrong" in
leading commanders to fear attacks with chemical weapons
during the March invasion.
Vince Cannistraro, a former
CIA chief of counterterrorist
operations, said he knew of
serving intelligence officers who believed it was a scandal that
the Pentagon played up "fraudulent" intelligence.
The Guardian quoted a diplomatic source who it claimed had
seen a transcript of the 10-minute discussion between Mr Straw
and Mr Powell at the Waldorf Hotel, where both expressed
concerns that intelligence reports were mainly assumptions and
assessments not supported by hard facts or other sources.
Mr Powell reportedly said he had come away from briefings by
the Pentagon's office of special plans, set up by Mr Wolfowitz,
"apprehensive" about what he called, at best, circumstantial
evidence tilted in favour of assessments drawn from the office
itself, rather than actual raw intelligence.
Mr Powell told the British Foreign Secretary he hoped the facts,
when they came out, would not "explode in their faces".
The Guardian said the "Waldorf transcripts" were being
circulated within NATO and had been leaked by diplomats who
had supported the war against Iraq, but now believe they had
been lied to.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat May 31 2003 - 22:44:48 MDT