Holy Cripes: So why...would WINPAC report that Iraq had WMD?

[laststeamtrain]

Holy Cripes

I've been looking through The Italian Letter by Peter Eiser and Knut Royce. There's some amazing stuff in it about Alan Foley, the head of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). WINPAC led the CIA's analysis of Iraq's purported WMD, and so Foley is at the very center of what happened.


<snip>

So why, then, would WINPAC report that Iraq had WMD? Here's the answer (p. 119):

One day in December 2002, Foley called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center's analysts: "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so." The directive was not quite an order to cook the books, but it was a strong suggestion that cherry-picking and slanting not only would be tolerated, but might even be rewarded.

<snip>

...this appears in Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran:

"During my short tenure in Iraqi Operations, I met one woman who had covered Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program for more than a decade. She admitted to me, unequivocally, that the CIA had no definitive evidence whatsoever that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed WMD, or that Iraq presented anything close to an imminent threat to the United States. Another CIA analyst, whose opinion I’d solicited about the connection between Al-Qa’ida and Iraq, looked at me almost shamefacedly, shrugged, and said, "They both have the letter q?" And a colleague who worked in the office covering Iraqi counterproliferation reported to me that her mealy-mouthed pen pusher of a boss had gathered together his minions and announced, "Let’s face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Any serious congressional strategy to end this war would include nationally televised hearings about this and all the other lies that got us into Iraq. The seriousness of the Democrats can be judged by such hearings' non-existence.

<more>

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001517.html
&
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011395.php
*

Plenty o' whores to go around

[bonito]

1. kick n/t

[Cameron27]

2. Kick

and rec.

[laststeamtrain]

3. "Any serious congressional strategy to end this war would include...

...nationally televised hearings about this and all the other lies that got us into Iraq. The seriousness of the Democrats can be judged by such hearings' non-existence."

Shameless kick for important material.

[blm]

4. Exactly. When only 10 senators called for Downing Street Memos inquiry it was eyeopening.

Horrifying, actually.

[Zodiak]

6. blm, it has been apparent for some time, really

any serious analysis by your standard DU lefty would revela that on the Senate side, at least half of the Democrats are shameful when it comes to big legislation and appointments. In fact, when I did a short term two-year analysis of their most important votes, I found that almost all of the republicans vote together 100% of the time and about half of the Democrats vote with the Republicans 50% of the time or more. And we aren't talking run-of-the-mill legislation, but a tremendous amount of the Bushite agenda.

And there are a LOT of people who do not want to face this reality. It is better to make excuses and hold out some hope than it is to hold a mirror up to our own party and admit that we have a serious internal problem that renders us 100% ineffective to make change.

We know what type of Democrats we talk about, too...don't we. The ones from Southern and Midwestern states who stand as proud members of the DLC (and more than a few blue states, as well) or the New Democrats, or whatever the hell other ABC group they want to belong to. The point is...these politicians are overtly against the left in this country and actively try to marginalize the left and the American worker in general.

Under this paradigm (the Republicans hate the left, and half of the Democrats hate the left), there is no impetus for change and any hope we put on this system to work for us is a fool's gamble. Something needs to be shaken up....either the party, or the political system in general.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread laststeamtrain.