SCHAKOWSKY: BUSH ADMINISTRATION MISSTATEMENT OF THE DAY PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE

July 12, 2004
Press Release

JULY 9, 2004

SCHAKOWSKY: BUSH ADMINISTRATION MISSTATEMENT OF THE DAY -
PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued "The Bush Administration Misstatement of the Day" on pre-war intelligence.

Commenting today on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report which "found that the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported by intelligence," President Bush said:

I appreciate the Senate's work. And I'll tell you why. Because one of the key ingredients to winning the war on terror is to make sure that our intelligence agencies provide the best and possible intelligence to the chief executive -- to the executive branch, as well as to the legislative branch. And so the idea that the Senate has taken a hard look to find out where the intelligence-gathering services went short is good and positive.
However, the findings of the report "do not exonerate the Bush administration, which bears ultimate responsibility for exaggerating the Iraqi threat and for discarding the UN inspections that had effectively contained Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs," according to the Arms Control Association.

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said that the report ignores the fact "that raw intelligence from unreliable sources was fed to the White House," and the fact "the president and his advisors ignored evidence contradicting the worst-case assessments of Iraq's weapons capabilities." He added: "Intelligence is meant to inform government decision-making, not to be invoked or discarded selectively to justify predetermined political decisions. The unjustified claims of the Bush administration on Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities have severely damaged the credibility of the U.S. government and the U.S. intelligence community."

And according to Greg Thielmann, who retired in September 2002 as director of the Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research: "The Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided."