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More Missing Intelligence: Mossad and the Forged Documents (ROBERT DREYFUSS, Information Clearinghouse, June 20, 2003) 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. . . . The same unit [the Office of Special Plans] 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. . . . That's a question that ought to disturb Karl Rove's sleep. And it might be a question that Democratic would-be opponents of the President ought to ponder. A massive failure of US intelligence has led to an emerging disaster in postwar Iraq. It's a true crisis, and one that could determine the fate of Bush's presidency. In Watergate, the refrain was: "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" Let me suggest a question for Bush, the know-nothing GOP standard-bearer in 2004: "What didn't the President know, and when didn't he know it?"
posted by LoZo 9:13 PM
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