In a February 8, 2004, appearance on Meet the Press, President Bush said: ” ‘I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons’ and ‘We thought he [Saddam] had weapons.’ ” – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Page 424 […]
2/6/2004
On February 6, 2004, President Bush “took the podium in the White House…to announce that he was signing an executive order appointing nine people to the Silberman-Robb Commission [to investigate intelligence capabilities regarding WMD in Iraq].” – Bob Woodward, State of Denial, Page 286 […]
2/6/2004
Regarding intelligence failures in Iraq, on February 6, 2004, President Bush “appeared in the press briefing room to announce what was now old news. He said he would appoint a nine-member commission to look at American intelligence capabilities and the intelligence about WMD worldwide. It was to determine why some prewar intelligence about Iraq’s alleged […]
2/5/2004
“The ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] report that was handed over to the U.S. command in Baghdad [Iraq] in early February [2004] was a horrifying litany of systematic abuse, including brutality and physical or psychological coercion during interrogation, as well as ‘excessive and disproportionate use of force…resulting in death or injury’ at Abu […]
2/5/2004
CIA Director George Tenet admitted to errors in intelligence gathering at his February 5, 2004, speech at Georgetown University: “[T]he intelligence community had been ‘generally on target’ in its warnings that Saddam was developing long-range missiles. But the CIA ‘may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making’ on nuclear weapons. As for biological weapons stockpiles […]
2/5/2004
According to a New York Times article from February 5, 2004: “…the Bush administration was obliged to acknowledge that its muscular post-9/11 foreign policy and military interventionism had damaged American prestige abroad so thoroughly that ‘it will take us many years of hard, focused work’ to restore America’s international standing. Particularly hurtful were disclosures in […]
2/5/2004
Following Iraq Survey Group leader David Kay’s resignation and claims that there were no WMD in Iraq: “Forced by public opinion, the opposition Democrats and even Republicans, [President] Bush finally agreed in early February [2004] to an independent investigation regarding the weapons of mass destruction fiasco, but made sure any report would be published well […]
2/5/2004
“The best source the CIA had [for Iraqi intelligence] was provided by the French intelligence service, which had cultivated Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, as its agent. Sabri said that Saddam did not have an active nuclear or biological weapons program. Evidently his reporting was rejected. Sabri was the man to whom [CIA director George] […]
2/5/2004
While giving a speech at Georgetown University on February 5, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet addressed issues of pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s potential possession of WMD: ” ‘Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of these [WMD development] programs and those debates were spelled out in the [National Intelligence] estimate [of October […]
2/5/2004
” ‘We did not have enough of our own human intelligence [in Iraq],’ conceded [CIA Director] George Tenet [on February 5, 2004]. ‘We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum.’ It was the same story as in Afghanistan, as well as in Iran, North Korea, and most other trouble spots around the world. Instead of […]