IRAQ: Weapons of Mass Delusion

From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 22:36:01 MDT

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    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.



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