Throughout the world yesterday, guys in trench coats joined in whispery choruses of we-told-you-so after the Senate Intelligence Committee de-classified its report on prewar intelligence assessments (see pdf ). Made before the Iraq invasion, the assessments were "widely circulated within the Bush Administration before the war" (Washington Post). Here's a tidbit:
"In January 2003, the Intelligence Community assessed a 'US-led defeat and occupation of Arab Iraq probably would boost proponents of political Islam and would result in 'calls from Islamists for the people of the region to unite and build up defenses against the west.' Assessments concluded that 'funds for terrorist groups probably would increase as a result of Muslim outrage over US action.'" [Page 9 of report, citations omitted]
The AP reported that a former intelligence official "said the decision to go to war had been made months before the 2003 papers were drafted."
Senate Intelligence Committee members Jay Rockefeller, Sheldon Whitehouse, Evan Bayh and Ron Wyden summed up the info as follows (Report, page 188 ):
"Prior to sending troops to Iraq, the Bush Administration promoted the terrorist nexus between Iraq and al-Qa'ida (and the attacks of 9/11) as a central part of its case to the American people that Iraq posed an imminent threat that only military action could extinguish, despite the Intelligence Community's view that Iraq and al-Qa'ida viewed each other with suspicion and were not operationally linked.
"What the Administration also kept form the American people were the sobering intelligence assessments it received at the time warning that the post-war transition could allow al-Qa'ida to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at Americans it did not have prior to the invasion."
At a press conference Friday, while defending his decision to invade Iraq, Bush "invoked the terrorist group [al-Qaeda] 19 times and even suggested it was going after individual reporters' kids," according to the Washington Post (see also Dan Froomkin's coverage of other news outlets' take on the awkward press conference).
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