"Pillar coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year and has had a 28-year distinguished career in intelligence."
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=401223 Editorial: Was this sale a con job? >From the Journal Sentinel Posted: Feb. 13, 2006 Paul Pillar's bombshell last week that the administration cherry-picked the intelligence it used to justify its invasion of Iraq will likely be chalked up as just more partisan chatter. It doesn't wash. Pillar coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year and has had a 28-year distinguished career in intelligence. His words illustrate once again the need for the Senate Intelligence Committee to complete and release its inquiry into whether the Bush White House manipulated intelligence to make the case for war. The committee had promised two phases of its investigation. The first, released in mid-2004, showed just how flawed the intelligence was, a point with which Pillar concurs. But the second phase is long past due. It was to probe whether the administration manipulated what intelligence there was to sell the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and direct links to al-Qaida. To Pillar, at least, the jury's in. Yes, the intelligence was flawed, Pillar said, but it didn't matter. "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," he said. The administration, he added, didn't heed the consensus of the intelligence community that Hussein could be contained short of war. No, the administration likely did not directly pressure intelligence analysts to provide it with the ammo needed to make the case for imminent threat. The pressure, Pillar said, amounted to the administration signaling its intentions and asking the same questions over and over until it got the answers it sought. The pressure was subtle but no less effective. Pillar's account is in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs. An early version is on the periodical's Web site at www.foreignaffairs.org Partisan infighting is likely why the second phase of the Intelligence Committee's report is overdue. Pillar recommends that Congress avoid the infighting by forming an entity patterned after the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office to monitor the "intelligence-policy relationship." It's a worthy proposal. In the interim, however, the American public needs to know whether the Senate Intelligence Committee can rise above partisanship to tell the unvarnished truth about the selling of a war. >From the Feb. 14, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
