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Iraq'd: "Get Your Hand Out of my Pocket"
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 23, 2004 05:55pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - New Republic, The |
| News Date | Monday, February 23, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | GET YOUR HAND OUT OF MY POCKET: As Michael Massing recently observed in The New York Review of Books, Knight-Ridder journalists John Walcott, Warren Strobel, and Jonathan Landay have brought us some of the most thorough and penetrating reporting on U.S. intelligence failures and intelligence manipulation on Iraq. On Saturday, they struck again. The trio revealed that the Pentagon has set aside as much as $4 million this year for intelligence collection from the Iraqi National Congress. Yes, that's the same INC that provided the Bush administration with dubious intelligence during the build-up to the war about Saddam's WMD programs and ties to Al Qaeda. Professional U.S. intelligence analysts considered much of the intelligence poor--as a recent DIA report confirms--but the INC had voracious consumers in the Pentagon and vice president's office, as Knight Ridder documents (again):
The INC's Information Collection Program started in 2001 and was "designed to collect, analyze and disseminate information" from inside Iraq, according to a letter the group sent in June 2002 to the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Some of the INC's information alleged that Saddam was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program, which was destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War, and was stockpiling banned chemical and biological weapons, according to the letter. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Knight Ridder, said the information went directly to "U.S. government recipients" who included William Luti, a senior official in Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's office, and John Hannah, a top national security aide to Cheney. The letter appeared to contradict denials made last year by top Pentagon officials that they were receiving intelligence on Iraq that bypassed established channels and vetting procedures. |
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