CIA knew well before we attacked Iraq there was no real threat

CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11 Said Iraq Posed No
Threat To U.S., Containment Was Working
by Jason Leopold

CIA Director George Tenet testified before Congress in February 2001
that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or to other
countries in the Middle East.

But immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which the Bush
administration has said Iraq is partially responsible for, the
President and his advisers were already making a case for war against
Iraq without so much as providing a shred of evidence to back up their
allegations that Iraq and its former President, Saddam Hussein, helped
al-Qaida hijackers plan the catastrophe.

It was then, after the 9-11 attacks, that intelligence reports from
the CIA radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed
no immediate threat to the U.S., to now show Iraq had a stockpile of
chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear
bomb. The Bush administration seized upon the reports to build public
support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a
preemptive strike against the country last March.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. are now investigating whether the
intelligence information gathered by the CIA was accurate or whether
the Bush administration manipulated and or exaggerated the
intelligence to make a case for war.

In just seven short months, beginning as early as February 2001, Bush
administration officials said Iraq went from being a threat only to
its own people to posing an imminent threat to the world. Indeed, in a
Feb. 12, 2001 interview with the Fox News Channel Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld said: "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the
present time."

But Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee on
Sept. 18, 2002 that Iraq is close to acquiring the materials needed to
build a nuclear bomb.

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent --
that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons,"
Rumsfeld testified before the committee, a transcript of which can be
found at http://www.useu.be/Categories/Global...sarmament.html
..

"I would not be so certain… He has, at this moment, stockpiles
chemical and biological weapons, and is pursuing nuclear weapons."

Rumsfeld never offered any evidence to support his claims, but his
dire warnings of a nuclear catastrophe caused by Saddam Hussein was
enough to convince most lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, that
Saddam's Iraq was doomed. Shortly after his remarks before the House
Armed Services Committee, Congress passed a resolution authorizing
President Bush to use "all appropriate means" to remove Saddam from
power.

However, intelligence reports released by the CIA in 2001 and 2002 and
more than 100 interviews top officials in the Bush administration,
such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, gave to various
Senate and Congressional committees and media outlets prior to 9-11
show that the U.S. never believed Saddam Hussein to be an imminent
threat other than to his own people. Moreover, the CIA reported in
February 2001 that Iraq was "probably" pursuing chemical and
biological weapons programs but that it had no direct evidence that
Iraq actually had actually obtained such weapons.

"We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period
since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs,
although given its past behavior, this type of activity must be
regarded as likely," CIA director Tenet said in a agency report to
Congress on Feb 7, 2001, which can be found at
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/...IA-2-23-01.htm.

"We assess that since the suspension of (United Nations) inspections
in December of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both
its (chemical and biological weapons) programs… without an inspection
monitoring program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq
has done so."

"Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN
at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating,"
according to the 2001 CIA report. "Having lost this on-the-ground
access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess
the current state of Iraq's WMD programs."

Ironically, in the February 2001 report, Tenet said Osama bin Laden
and his al-Qaida terrorist network remain the single greatest threat
to U.S. interests here and abroad. Tenet eerily describes in the
report a scenario that six months later would become a reality.

"Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more
technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism
measures. For example, as we have increased security around government
and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets
that provide opportunities for mass casualties. Employing increasingly
advanced devices and using strategies such as simultaneous attacks,
the number of people killed … Usama bin Ladin and his global network
of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious
threat. Since 1998, Bin Ladin has declared all U.S. citizens
legitimate targets of attack. As shown by the bombing of our embassies
in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium plots last year, he is capable of
planning multiple attacks with little or no warning," Tenet said.

However, Tenet only briefly discussed the al-Qaida threat and devoted
the bulk of his testimony on how to deal with the threat of rogue
countries such as North Korea, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Six months later,
Bin Laden was identified as the mastermind behind 9-11.

Between 1998 and early 2002, the CIA's reports on the so-called terror
threat offered no details on what types of chemical and biological
weapons that Iraq obtained.

But that changed dramatically in October 2002 when the CIA issued
another report, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...q_Oct_2002.htm,
that this time included details of Iraq's alleged vast chemical and
biological weapons.

The October 2002 CIA report into Iraq's WMD identifies sarin, mustard
gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons that the CIA claims Iraq
had been stockpiling over the years, in stark contrast to earlier
reports by Tenet that said the agency had no evidence to support such
claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he
said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq's WMD programs, the
intelligence information in the 2002 report, Tenet said, is rock
solid.

"This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence,"
Tenet said during a CIA briefing in February, a transcript of which
can be found at http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/...ats-021103.htm

"It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is
corroborated by multiple sources."

The CIA would not comment on the differing reports between 2001 and
2002 or how the agency was able to obtain such intelligence
information and corroborate it so quickly.

Still, in early 2001, while hardliners in the Bush administration were
privately discussing ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power,
Secretary of State Powell said the U.S. successfully "contained" Iraq
in the years since the first Gulf War and that because of economic
sanctions placed on the country Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.

"We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq," Powell said
during a Feb 11, 2001 interview with "Face the Nation. "We have been
able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that
might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some
controls on them… it's been quite a success for ten years…"

Moreover, during a meeting with Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign
Minister, in February 2001 on how to deal with Iraq, Powell said the
U.N., the U.S. and its allies "have succeeded in containing Saddam
Hussein and his ambitions."

Saddam's "forces are about one-third their original size. They don't
really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they
did ten years ago," Powell said during the meeting with Fischer, a
transcript of which can be found at
http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/p...y/me0222a.html

"Containment has been a successful policy, and I think we should make
sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into
compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the (Gulf) war."

Powell added that Iraq is "not threatening America."