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U.S. Prewar WMD Intelligence on Iraq Not Sole Basis For War, Acting CIA Director Says By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin said yesterday that the Bush administration did not choose to invade Iraq solely based on U.S. prewar intelligence on former President Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD efforts — intelligence that has come under heavy criticism by a recent Senate report (see GSN, July 14). Last week, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report consisting of more than 500 pages detailing the findings of a yearlong inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq. The committee found that “most of the major judgments” contained in the CIA’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts either “overstated, or were not supported by” the available information. During a press conference Friday to release the report, committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and top Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) expressed varying levels of doubt over whether lawmakers would have supported the Iraq war knowing the flaws in the WMD-related intelligence. McLaughlin yesterday, though, denied that the 2002 estimate had provided the sole rationale for war. “The implication that has come out of all of this discussion is that somehow decisions to go to war were based on this document that was studied for a year overstates the role of this document,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio. McLaughlin seemingly accused lawmakers of failing to delve into the body of the 2002 estimate, which he said contained a number of caveats not included in the document’s summary on the assessments. “When you get past the first five pages there is a lot of argument laid out in that estimate,” he said. “If you go into the document itself, you’ll find that there were strong dissents established,” McLaughlin said. He also said that if the 2002 estimate had been the sole reason for invading Iraq, then the caveats contained would have been more prominent in the debate over the war. “More would have been made in the debates about the fact that we said that Saddam didn’t have nuclear weapons. More would have been made in the debates about the fact that we said that he was not enriching uranium,” McLaughlin said. “I think that there was more involved in this debate,” he said. “This was, after all, not Switzerland we were writing about,” McLaughlin added. He also said that he did not believe that Bush administration officials knowingly exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts. The Senate intelligence panel is now set to begin examining the administration’s use of prewar intelligence, though the results are not expected to be released before the 2004 presidential election. “I would say, policy-makers, unlike intelligence analysts, make their statements and their judgments on a broad range of issues,” McLaughlin said. Among the judgments lawmakers have to make, he said, was “what is the level of risk you’re willing to take in the post-9/11 environment? That’s not an intelligence judgment. Intelligence doesn’t make policy.” Ultimately, the American public should have confidence in the U.S. intelligence community despite the Senate report, McLaughlin said, noting other successes achieved against proliferation, such as Libya’s decision to end its WMD efforts and the dismantlement of the international nuclear network. “Look, we are in the classic position now that American intelligence gets into about every 10 years. There’s a cycle here, where perceived shortcomings overshadow dramatically the successes. So I would say to the American people that they need to have confidence in their intelligence community,” McLaughlin said.
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