This morning's op/ed in USA Today summarizes neatly and tells what the report didn't say:
More interesting, though, is what's missing from this new report. The report didn't attempt to connect the intelligence failures to the fateful decision they encouraged: to go to war on what proved to be false grounds.Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing column yesterday [Washington Post, registration required, no permanent link?] had links to the full unclassified part of the report[PDF] itself and much more:
If the report is taken at face value, this was all the fault of the spy agencies' blundering. The bipartisan commission found no evidence that intelligence judgments were changed because of political pressure. The commission chairs, senior federal Judge Laurence Silberman and former Virginia senator Charles Robb, reiterated that finding on Thursday.
But in a few telling paragraphs among more than 600 pages, the panel allowed that some analysts were influenced by the conventional wisdom, which said Saddam Hussein was hiding an arsenal, and "the sense that challenges to it - or even refusals to find its confirmation - would not be welcome."
Little wonder. In the months before the war, Vice President Cheney said there was "no doubt" Saddam was amassing weapons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that even "a trained ape" knew it was true. President Bush repeatedly made the case not just that war in Iraq was necessary, but that it was urgent.
That is not a climate that would lead anyone to conclude that facts still needed to be discerned. And it is one that needs change, beginning at the intelligence agencies.
Even 9/11 and the deaths of more 1,500 U.S. troops in Iraq haven't budged them from bad habits, particularly refusals to share information and encourage differing views, the commission said. The nation's new intelligence czar will need to knock heads.
For the political leadership, the task is simpler. They need only leave room for facts to get in the way of their conclusions - and use war only as a last resort.
Conclusion 26: "The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion, but the pervasive conventional wisdom that Saddam retained WMD affected the analytic process."Mr. Froomkin provided links to references to this part of the report:
The commission acknowledges this: "Many observers of the Intelligence Community have expressed concern that Intelligence Community judgments concerning Iraq's purported WMD programs may have been warped by inappropriate political pressure."
- "Senator Carl Levin, 'Buildup to War on Iraq,' Congressional Record (July 15, 2003) at pp. S9358-S9360
- Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, 'Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits,' Washington Post (June 5, 2003) at p. A1
- Nicholas D. Kristof, 'White House in Denial,' New York Times (June 13, 2003) at p. A33
- Jay Taylor, 'When Intelligence Reports Become Political Tools . . . ' Washington Post (June 29, 2003) at p. B2
- Douglas Jehl, 'After the War: Weapons Intelligence; Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife,' New York Times (Aug. 8, 2003) at p. A8
- Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, 'As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large,' Washington Post (July 10, 2004) at p. A1
- Glenn Kessler, 'Analyst Questioned Sources' Reliability; Warning Came Before Powell Report to UN,' Washington Post (July 10, 2004) at p. A9
- T. Christian Miller and Maura Reynolds, 'Question of Pressure Splits Panel,' Los Angeles Times (July 10, 2004) at p. A1
- James Risen and Douglas Jehl, 'Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence,' New York Times (June 25, 2003) at p. A11
- Robert Schlesinger, 'Bush Aides Discredit Analysts' Doubts on Trailers,' The Boston Globe (June 27, 2003) at p. A25
- Seymour M. Hersh, 'The Stovepipe,' The New Yorker (Oct. 27, 2003) at p. 77."
