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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

CIA experts on Iraq arms shifted to different jobs / Some say 2 staffers in 'exile' because banned weapons not found
(Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003)
The CIA has reassigned two senior officials who oversaw its analysis on Iraq and the deposed regime's alleged weapons of mass destruction, a move that a CIA spokesman said was routine but that others portrayed as an "exile." . . . The officials served in senior positions in which they were deeply involved in assembling and assessing the intelligence on Iraq's alleged stocks of chemical and biological arms. . . . The failure so far to find banned weapons in Iraq has raised questions of whether the prewar intelligence was flawed or shaded to support the White House's desire to present a compelling case for war. . . . One of the officials was reassigned last week to the CIA's personnel department after spending the past several months heading the Iraq Task Force, a special unit set up to provide 24-hour support to military commanders during the war. . . . "Two of the key players on this problem have essentially been sent into deep exile," said one agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. . . . In some cases, records show officials reaching one conclusion on Iraq's weapons, only to offer a contradictory conclusion a few months later. "It's all fodder for the Democrats," the aide said. "What they'll find is people having said things that aren't consistent with what they're saying now." . . . the official compared the pressure analysts faced preceding the war to that applied by lawyers "badgering the witness -- asking the question over and over and over again to the point where people get worn down." . . . Much of this pressure, the source said, came from top officials at the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . . . The weapons controversy has exposed new fault lines between the White House and the intelligence community. . . . Many in the intelligence community are now pessimistic that stocks of anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin gas or other agents Iraq was accused of producing will be found. . . . "It's not that they were never there or that we worked for years on erroneous information," one intelligence official said. Rather, there is growing concern that the nation's spy community missed the destruction of the materials because analysts were not prepared to consider Hussein capable of taking such a step.

posted by Lorenzo 12:11 PM