CIA Defends Itself on Iraq Intelligence

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030928/ap_on_go_ot/us_iraq_intelligence&cid=513&ncid=1473

WASHINGTON - The CIA defended itself Saturday against charges by two congressional critics that there were "significant deficiencies" in the intelligence community's ability to gather information on Iraq before the U.S.-led war.

"The intelligence community stands fully behind its findings and judgments as stated in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs," CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said.

In a letter first reported Saturday on The Washington Post's Web site, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and its ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of California, said the CIA relied on old intelligence dating to 1998, along with "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence" to develop its reports on Iraq's weapons programs.

Harlow said that was not the case. "The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd," he said in a statement. "In the post-1998 time period the intelligence community launched an important and sustained effort to enhance our unilateral understanding of Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. From all of our disciplines, important gains were made."

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[KharmaTrain]

1. ...And We Still Look Inept

I'm getting some popcorn going, this battle between the executive and the CIA is going to be interesting.

So, as many of us easily assumed, manchild's war was based on pre-1998 CIA data and that any revisions or updates were thrown aside, or those updates were ignored altogether. In either case, this regime is going to do everything in its dirty bag of tricks to slime and discredit anything anyone at the CIA says from here on out.

So, if the pre-1998 stuff was THAT good, then why didn't this regime look closer at those reports about planes flying into American landmarks or the threat of Iraq was purely regional...and very minimal at best. It's cause this boy and his handlers wanted this war so bad and they got it...and now it's too bad, you're stuck with it so cough up the $87 billion like a good "Murican". Of course I expect it'll be Clinton's fault somewhere along the line here...musta been in those files missing from those trashed offices, eh?

What's real disturbing is the more the sniping between BushCo. and the CIA goes into the open...or its subsequent damage control, it's showing our "enemies" and our few remaining friends abroad how stupid, arrogant and really vulnerable this country really is.