Doubts, dissent stripped from public version of Iraq assessment

[huckleberry]

By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

snip

The stark differences between the public version and the then top-secret version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate raise new questions about the accuracy of the public case made for a war that's claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. service members and thousands of Iraqis.

The two documents are replete with differences. For example, the public version declared that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and says "if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade."


But it fails to mention the dissenting view offered in the top-secret version by the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as the INR.


lots more at
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/7914490.htm

[Guaranteed]

1. Wow....where's the BBC on this?

This is a big deal if the public documents were "sexed up."

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. The BBC has been brought to heel.

News media who provide accurate coverage of the bush regime's wishes lose fewer personnel to tragic accidents, and are disappeared with much less frequency than those who chose to defy America's will.

[dbt]

5. EXACTLY!

I cannot believe that the BBC has somehow been muzzled. Something is beginning to stink in England. And if I can smell it over the stench of Washingtoon, you KNOW it's rotten!

:freak:
dbt

[0rganism]

20. You do know what's happened to the BBC, right?

Total bodycheck. Top BBC officials were forced to resign, as well as the reporter (Gilligan, IIRC) who made the "sexed up" remark. BBC charter is under review. They're getting railroaded like hell for being too hard on the politicians.

It's vicious.

[UpInArms]

3. kick

:kick:

[Gman]

4. This is exactly why

Bob Graham screamed to no avail to get the classified report declassified. Now we know why they refused to declassify it. Not because it had sensitive information, but because it had dissenting views that they didn't want us to know about.

[UpInArms]

7. and they continue to refuse to

release any documents that will show their madmness

[Bragi]

6. Congrats to Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder is singled out in an article this week in the NY Review of Books as almost the only mainstream news organization that didn't kowtow to Bush and Patriotic fervor in the run-up to the war.

See "Now They Tell Us" at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922

- B

[calimary]

8. I just read this. I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor.

This says EVERYTHING I've been afraid of, and have suspected, especially of my former colleagues. EVERYTHING. How they were intimidated by threats of dried-up sources and lack of access, and the pack mentality of journalists and editors - not wanting to stick their necks out if they're the only ones. I sure saw that when I was still working. Everybody read everything of everybody else's and took note. If the such-and-such paper had it, we had to have it, or why didn't we, or look what THEY'RE saying about it, or if so-and-so reporters didn't mention it or didn't have anything on it, are we sure of this, do we wanna run with it?

JEEZ. It's all there. I kept thinking - stick THAT in your footnotes pipe and smoke it, Ann Coulter!

I wonder how many journalists and editors will even read this. No less acknowledge it.

Just wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books, where this article appeared:

"Michael Massing's BRILLIANT compilation "NOW THEY TELL US" makes me almost literally want to sob. As a retired journalist myself, I am distraught to see how my former colleagues have allowed themselves to be blinded, deafened, and duped. WHY were those stories buried? Can we finally start UNBURYING some of this stuff? Especially since it's cost more than 500 of our sons and daughters their lives, and our nation its global credibility? I have long lamented how my former profession has turned from watchdogs to lapdogs. Massing's piece has just confirmed this."

[Mountainman]

9. This shows the lie the wingnut talk radio has been using.

I here 24/7 that the Dems and Kerry and Congress had the same intelligence Bush had. Well no they didn't!

[tedzbear]

11. Sorry, but it's no lie...

The Congressmen on the Intelligence committees WERE privy to the top secret version of the CIA report. They are just as culpable as Bush for misleading us.

:kick:

[Just Me]

10. Great article leaving the administration to explain its dismissal,...

,...of so many caveats. I think a clearer case is being made that the WMD "mistake" had nothing to do with intelligence but rather everything to do with a cabal intent upon rhetorically twisting everything and anything to allow its plan for an invasion and occupation of Iraq to succeed.


<edit - inserted "case">

[KansDem]

12. U.S. House & Senate committees on intelligence...

House:
http://intelligence.house.gov/

Senate:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/

[catzies]

13. My idiot congresscritter Gallegly is on House Perm. Committee

He is a tool and a toady and a willing Bush bootlicker. God knows why he's reelected over and over and over and...

[KansDem]

15. Yeah, well one of my senators, Pat Roberts (R)...

is CHAIRMAN of the Senate committee...

Now I find out he withheld vital information from me (and my fellow Kansans). Do I EVER trust this man again???? :grr:

[tedzbear]

16. I called Diane Feinstein and gave her a piece of my mind!

She was obviously in on the deception. This is another example why I vote Green party now even though I am a registered Democrat.

:kick:

[KoKo]

18. Here's the list of folks on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Some of these folks were against Iraq Invasion i.e. Levin, but most were in favor of it. So, how do we figure if they saw that there weren't enough reasons to Invade that they went ahead? And, why didn't Levin blow it apart by saying there was a big difference in the public and the private? Edwards was always in favor of the war, and Biden, Bayh and the rest, but maybe they saw the "public version" and not what the CIA had? Could they have been misused? Or, was it just one happy family Repugs/Dems to get us into Iraq?

DEMOCRATS *

John D. Rockefeller IV
West Virginia, Vice Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Dianne Feinstein, California Ron Wyden, Oregon Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Evan Bayh, Indiana John Edwards, North Carolina Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland

REPUBLICANS

Pat Roberts, Kansas
Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Mike Dewine, Ohio Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Trent Lott, Mississippi Olympia J. Snowe, Maine Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Saxby Chambliss, Georgia John W. Warner, Virginia

[0rganism]

21. Wyden voted against IWR, so it's hard for me to diss him, but still...

it does make me grumpy. What does he do in there, if he can't at least appeal to the conscience of fellow Democrats?

[reprehensor]

14. Bump (n/t)

[denverbill]

17. Reminds me of 'Pentagon Wars'.

I love that movie. In that movie, the guy who is supposed to be checking out the Bradley writes a horribly critical report, and his superior officer simply edits out the negative words or rearranges the wording.

[The_Casual_Observer]

19. Don't forget that there was all kinds of bogus information

In that "assessment" including the later dismissed "yellow cake"
nonsense. Although Scott Ritter had fairly well discounted all of the claims sometime before, he wasn't being listened to and was pretty much a voice in the wilderness - not too many doubting voices in opposition.