In the United States, a full-scale Congressional inquiry has been ordered on the use and possible abuse of intelligence information on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The inquiry will include public hearings which will be televised live.

The CIA is reported to be prepared to co-operate fully.

This is the first serious domestic pressure on the Bush administration to give a detailed explanation of its pre-war claims about weapons of mass destruction.

The inquiries are being conducted by the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees.


They are to hold a joint public hearing later in the month.

Official testimony

It is likely that senior officials such as the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, will be asked to attend.

Senator John Warner, the chairman of the armed services panel, said he had ordered the inquiry because of the depth and seriousness of the issue.

Mr Warner said he had been assured by the CIA director, George Tenet, that all the statements made by the administration on the subject and all the underlying intelligence supporting those statements would be supplied to the committee.

<SNIP


http://billmon.org/ (The Article)

Now they will pay for them:


BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.

Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added.

<snip>

Ritter and other intelligence sources say Operation Rockingham and MI6 were supplying skewed information to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which, Tony Blair has told the Commons, was behind the intelligence dossiers that the government published to convince the parliament and the people of the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sources in both the British and US intelligence community are now equating the JIC with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the US Pentagon. The OSP was set up by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to gather intelligence which would prove the case for war.

In a staggering attack on the OSP, former CIA officer Larry Johnson told the Sunday Herald the OSP was 'dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace', adding that it 'lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam'.





WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE . . .
. . . when first we practice to deceive!

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
**** Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George W. Bush
Speech to UN General Assembly
September 12, 2002


We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
January 9, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
George W. Bush
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
February 5, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
George W. Bush
Radio Address
February 8, 2003

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
Remarks to UN Security Council
March 7, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher
Press Briefing
March 21, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks
Press Conference
March 22, 2003

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman
Washington Post, p. A27
March 23, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
Press Briefing
March 22, 2003

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld
ABC Interview
March 30, 2003

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan
Washington Post op-ed
April 9, 2003

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.
Ari Fleischer
Press Briefing
April 10, 2003

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush
NBC Interview
April 24, 2003

There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Press Briefing
April 25, 2003

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 3, 2003

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell
Remarks to Reporters
May 4, 2003

We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
Fox News Interview
May 4, 2003

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush
Remarks to Reporters
May 6, 2003

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice
Reuters Interview
May 12, 2003


For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz
Vanity Fair interview
May 28, 2003www.sundayherald.com/34491 (The Article)

tigre35, this is an impressive lay-out of statements made by the Bush Administration and others who smothered the media with reports of WMD in Iraq. I wonder what families who've lost (and are still losing) loved ones in this war are thinking now. I heard this morning on the news that Bush has chastised Condoleeza and Fleischer for not doing better jobs of either covering this up or getting more accurate information. This is going to be very interesting.

Welcome to the Forums :wave: and I look forward to reading your others threads.

Peace!

Maybe, I'll stay.




"Condoleeza and Fleischer"


Dead men walking. They'll be thrown to the wolves first. But, this reaches MUCH higher. People are going to jail of this.


Peace

Maybe, instead of doing time at a federal country club, they should do their time in an Iraqi prison.