In analyzing the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) completed on October 1, 2002, in terms of its importance to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “An NIE had never been relied upon as a basis for going to war, and, in my view, the decision to invade Iraq was not solely predicated on this one. But if we had done a better job in all our analysis and in this NIE, war critics would have had a harder time today implying that ‘the intelligence community made us do it.’ ”
– George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, Pages 337-338