More Missing Intelligence

[QuietStorm]

As the Pentagon scours Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda, it's increasingly obvious that the Bush Administration either distorted or deliberately exaggerated the intelligence used to justify the war against Iraq. But an even bigger intelligence scandal is waiting in the wings: the fact that members of the Administration failed to produce an intelligence evaluation of what Iraq might look like after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Instead, they ignored fears expressed by analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department who predicted that postwar Iraq would be chaotic, violent and ungovernable, and that Iraqis would greet the occupying armies with firearms, not flowers.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it turns out that the same people are responsible for both. According to current and former US intelligence analysts and government officials, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans funneled information, unchallenged, from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in turn passed it on to the White House, suggesting that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders. The Office of Special Plans is led by Abram Shulsky, a hawkish neoconservative ideologue who got his start in politics working alongside Elliott Abrams in Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson's office in the 1970s. It was set up in fall 2001 as a two-man shop, but it burgeoned into an eighteen-member nerve center of the Pentagon's effort to distort intelligence about Iraq's WMDs and terrorist connections. A great deal of the bad information produced by Shulsky's office, which found its way into speeches by Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, came from Chalabi's INC. Since the INC itself was sustained by its neocon allies in Washington, including the shadow "Central Command" at the American Enterprise Institute, it stands as perhaps the ultimate example of circular reasoning.

"The same unit that fed Chalabi's intelligence on WMD to Rumsfeld was also feeding him Chalabi's stuff on the prospects for postwar Iraq," said a leading US government expert on the Middle East. Says a former US ambassador with strong links to the CIA: "There was certainly information coming from the Iraqi exile community, including Chalabi--who was detested by the CIA and by the State Department--saying, 'They will welcome you with open arms.'" Rumsfeld's willingness to accept that view led him to contradict the Chief of Staff of the US Army, who predicted that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to control Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, a view that seems prescient today.

According to the former official, also feeding information to the Office of Special Plans was a secret, rump unit established last year in the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. This unit, which paralleled Shulsky's--and which has not previously been reported--prepared intelligence reports on Iraq in English (not Hebrew) and forwarded them to the Office of Special Plans. It was created in Sharon's office, not inside Israel's Mossad intelligence service, because the Mossad--which prides itself on extreme professionalism--had views closer to the CIA's, not the Pentagon's, on Iraq. This secretive unit, and not the Mossad, may well have been the source of the forged documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for weapons from Niger in West Africa, according to the former official.

read more...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3858.htm

For more specificity and perhaps balance this timeline pinpoints a specific office NOT the mossad as a whole. It is pretty comprehensive and very long. I have yet not gone through it as I just found it myself. But this baby is getting printed and every word will be read.

You have to scroll down for the outline on it.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/wot/iraq/forged_niger_documents.html

Actually this might be old news already.

[otohara]

1. Dupe - Locking

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=6174

[lindashaw]

2. Thank you. I've printed both! :)

[QuietStorm]

3. Controversial Pentagon Office Gets A Makeover (8/12/03)

Washington - A controversial Pentagon office that included hard-liners who pushed for regime change in Iraq has gotten a bureaucratic make-over, with a name change and a slightly smaller staff, amid complaints by critics inside and outside the Bush administration that the office had overstepped its bounds.

The Office of Special Plans, which reported to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, had been created as a separate office and expanded in October 2002 to deal with defense policy planning for the build-up to the Iraq war and postwar reconstruction. It grew from four people to 15 at its peak.

But last month, Pentagon officials decided the office should revert to its original name, the Northern Gulf Affairs office, and now say that its staff will be about 12. The name change reflects the office's broader mission of dealing with northern Persian Gulf states now that the major combat operations in Iraq are over, senior Defense Department officials said yesterday.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/ny-uspent123411141aug12,0,4096688.story?coll=ny-lipolitics-headlines

[byoff]

4. interesting post

thanks

[QuietStorm]

5. got to watch like a hawk - seems the outage

eclipsed the "sting" story and what has happened regarding follow up on the OSP now named Office of Northern Gulf Affairs?