http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp?from=pubdate This new study details what the U.S. and international intelligence communities understood about Iraq's weapons programs before the war and outlines policy reforms to improve threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, strengthen the UN weapons inspection process, and avoid politicization of the intelligence process. The report distills a massive amount of data into side-by-side comparisons of pre-war intelligence, the official presentation of that intelligence, and what is now known about Iraq's programs. Here is a CNN story about Mr.Powel's response to the findings of the study http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/08/sprj.nirq.wmd.report/index.html Here are some highlights of the conclusions that this study reaches Iraq’s WMD programs represented a long-term threat that could not be ignored. They did not, however, pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region, or to global security. It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden, or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity before, during, or after the major combat period of the war. Prior to 2002, the intelligence community appears to have overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq but had a generally accurate picture of the nuclear and missile programs. The dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), together with the creation of an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon and other steps, suggest that the intelligence community began to be unduly influenced by policymakers’ views sometime in 2002. There was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam’s government and Al Qaeda. There was no evidence to support the claim that Iraq would have transferred WMD to Al Qaeda and much evidence to counter it. Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence failures noted above, by: Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single "WMD threat.” The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. Insisting without evidence—yet treating as a given truth—that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements. Misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire. The UN inspection process appears to have been much more successful than recognized before the war. Nine months of exhaustive searches by the U.S. and coalition forces suggest that inspectors were actually in the process of finding what was there. Thus, the choice was never between war and doing nothing about Iraq’s WMD. Considering all the costs and benefits, there were at least two options clearly preferable to a war undertaken without international support: allowing the UNMOVIC/IAEA inspections to continue until obstructed or completed, or imposing a tougher program of “coercive inspections” backed by a specially designed international force.
