The Administration, and particularly President Bush and Vice president Cheney, made repeated assertions about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein that were not supported by the intelligence available at the time. Those assertions overstated the nature and urgency of the threat, as described in the intelligence, ignored ongoing disagreements and uncertainty within the Intelligence Community, and, at times, outright contradicted intelligence assessments.”

96/172 Senator Feinstein agrees with Feingold: There was flawed tradecraft. “Even though the intelligence before the war supported inaccurate statements, this Administration distorted the intelligence in order to build its case to go to war.”

Lastly, Rockefeller expresses some anger. “For three years, the Committee’s investigative mandate foundered. Under the direction of the then-majority…. Committee Chairman Pat Roberts halted the investigation on the intelligence activitiesw of the Defense Department officials and farmed out the work to the DoD Inspector General in November 2005. The public statements section of the investigation was slow-walked… and a draft report was never presented to the Committee membership… evidently a task too politically sensitive to handle.” 90/172

Eventually the DoD IG produced a report saying that the policy office in the Pentagon had expanded its role and inappropriately disseminated an analysis linking al-Qaeda 9/11 terrorists and Iraq. As a concession to Bond, the Chairman agreed not to cover that ground again, and instead examined the Ghorbanifar case.

Rockefeller points out that the intelligence community based itws reports on flawed analysis and false information. The declarative and unequivocal statements of the administration were not substantiated.

Representing to the American people that the two [al-Qaeda and Iraq] had an operational partnership an posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the Nation to war on false premises.” 92/172 The Administration pressured intelligence analysts to support the existence of that link.

Finally, he says that Bond refused to bring up his proposed amendments at the Committee so they passed the report without considering them. Bond is a jerk, and Rockefeller called him on it.

I think the answer is that they say one thing, and provide the data, from which those of us with a more jaundiced eye can conclude that Bush et al. were lying. It makes it all the more aggravating that the NYT and others quote the conclusions and not the data.

Let’s see how that works, using the question of Iraq and nuclear weapons. The structure of the report is to set out a speech followed by a discussion of the state of intelligence at that time.

The first speech is Cheney on August 26, 2002. He asserts that Iraq has resumed pursuit of a nuclear weapons development program, and said that Hussein would obtain nuclear weapons fairly soon.

Then the committee says that the consensus in the intelligence community as late as the December, 2001 NIE was that it would take Iraq 5 to 7 years to generate enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, and that if it could acquire that material, it would take a year to produce a weapon. Both of these term estimates begin when the program is actually reactivated. Over the next several months, there was a shift in the views of the agencies. In April, 2001 the CIA pointed to the purchase of the aluminum tubes and some other dual use equipment as suggesting that Iraq might be reconstituting its nuclear program. Then in August 2002 the CIA issued a new paper saying that the procurement activities indicated that the Iraqis had restarted their nuclear program. The DIA issued several similar assessments that year, including a May report that:

“Although there is no firm evidence of a current nuclear weapon design effort, we judge that continued procurement of dual-use nuclear-related items, key personnel assigned to nuclear weapon-capable sites, construction at nuclear facilities, and Saddam’s interactions with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission all indicate that Saddam has not abandoned the nuclear weapon program.”

The DOE disagreed with the CIA’s conclusions about the aluminum tubes, but said that Saddam’s meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, and possible attempts to acquire materials from Niger, meant that Iraq might be reconstituting its program, but that the evidence was not conclusive. The INR disagreed. It also agreed with the DOE that the aluminum tubes were rocket casings. The National Ground Intelligence Center, an Army unit, agreed with the CIA.

Even with all this, a DIA report said it would be 5-7 years to produce enough fissile material for a weapon, or less if the fissile material could be obtained from another country, but said that there was no evidence that Iraq was trying to do that.

With this recitation, how is it that the Committee thinks Cheney’s statements were in general supported by the views of the intelligence agencies.

The next speech is Bush’s address to the UN on September 12, 2002. He claims that Iraq has an on-going nuclear weapons program. He cites the aluminum tubes, concealment of information about the pre-Gulf War program, and meetings between Saddam and Iraqi nuclear scientists. He said that Iraq possessed some of the intellectual capital and physical infrastructure necessary for a program, and said that if he got some fissile material, it could build a nuclear weapon in one year.

The Committee has already discussed the aluminum tubes, and the meetings with Iraqi scientists. The intelligence community did not think concealing information about pre-Gulf War nuclear programs was evidence for a reconstituted nuclear program.

The Committee also notes that the consensus of the intelligence community on the state of the Iraqi program was not changed at the date of this speech, although it points out that there was some change during the period.

But George Bush was supported by the evidence.

The next speech is the Mushroom Cloud speech of October 7, 2002. It included the usual stuff, but the phrasing is stronger. He asserts that the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

The Committee discusses the October 2002 NIE, in which all agencies but State/INR agree that Iraq was reconstituting its program. Footnote 24 says: Committee staff were also permitted to view a one-page summary of the NIE, which was prepared for the President. This one-page summary stated that “INR judges that the evidence indicates, at most, a limited Irqaqi nuclear reconstitution effort.” 11/172 It further says that the time frame hasn’t changed: 5 years or so, unless they get fissile material from someone else.

But the committee concludes that Bush was supported by the intelligence community.

Then we have the State of the Union address of January 29, 2003. Bush says that Iraq pursued nuclear weapons even while weapons inspectors were in Iraq. He repeated the aluminum tube issue, and he uttered the lying 16 words: “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The first point is absolutely contradicted by the actual intelligence. All agencies assessed that IAEA and UNSCOM had succeeded in destroying the nuclear program. No one thought that Saddam was able to work on nuclear weapons while the inspectors were there. At this point, it wasn’t unanimous that the program had been reconstituted at all, and it was still thought that even if it had it would take 5-7 years to produce a weapon.

The second point had no merit. The third has been discussed to death elsewhere, and no one could have believed it at that point. The NIE said “claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious.”

The last speech is Powell’s speech at the UN, February 5, 2003. Powell talks about the aluminum tubes, and other dual-use equipment. State/INR and the DOE had not changed their positions on these issues. The others assessed that the dual-use equipment was for a nuclear program. That equipment is magnets and high-speed balancing machines. Apparently the INR was able to think of some other use for the equipment.

There follows a list of even stronger statements that were untrue or not supported by the intelligence community.

And ta-da, here is the conclusion:

Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

I think that the material is weakened to get Hagel and Snowe on board. In their additional views, they say “On balance, these reports contain critical information that should unequivocally be publicly released, enabling the public to formulate their own conclusions. They also point to importance of one of the most aggravating things in the report: the notion that the Administration had additional information from other agencies. 100/172

Eriposte seems well researched and has a lot of links to source documents, and I think it is a good place to start looking.