CUP OF JO...

But, yes, please Mr. Bush, continue to blame our U.S. agencies for your deficiencies...um, to be more clear...brainless inadequacies. (This is what we get for hiring a flunky & cocaine addict as president) We had every reason to go after Bin Laden, but absolutely NO reason to go after Iraq. Feel your embarrassment. Shame on you! I love presenting how dead wrong you are...emphasize all the wronged dead people. May God forgive you, because I certainly don't.- Johanna

U.S. Was 'Dead Wrong' in Prewar Assessments, Commission Says

By DAVID JOHNSTONand SCOTT SHANE

Published: March 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, March 31 - A report made public this morning concludes that American intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in almost all of their prewar assessments about the state of unconventional weapons in Iraq, and that on issues of this importance "we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude."

It adds, "The harm done to American credibility by our all too public intelligence failures in Iraq will take years to undo."

The report concludes that while many other nations believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, "in the end, it was the United States that put its credibility on the line, making this one of the most public - and most damaging - intelligence failures in recent American history."
The failure was in large part the result of analytical shortcomings, the report adds, saying "intelligence analysts were too wedded to their assumptions about Saddam's intentions," referring to the ousted Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein."

But in the end the agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, collected too little for the "analysts to analyze, and much of what they did collect was either worthless or misleading."

The failures the commission found in Iraq are not repeated everywhere, the report says, but "flaws we found in the intelligence community's Iraq performance are still too common," the report declares.

It adds: "We must use the lessons from those failings, and from our successes as well, to improve our intelligence for the future, and do so with a sense of urgency."

The report also contends that the government has failed to respond to the dire threat posed by unconventional weapons with the urgency and national purpose displayed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"It's now been three and a half years since the Sept. 11 attacks," the report says in a section titled "Change and Resistance to Change." "A lot can be accomplished in that time."

"Three and a half years after Dec. 7, 1941, the United States had built and equipped an army and navy that had crossed two oceans, the English Channel and the Rhine; it had already won Germany's surrender and was two months from vanquishing Japan," the report continues.

The report of the presidential commission led by Laurence H. Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former Democratic governor and senator from Virginia, gives a grim account of the spy agencies' capabilities, despite a steady increase in the intelligence budget since 2001, to $40 billion a year from roughly $30 billion a year.

The report, the latest of several scathing assessments of intelligence failures, recommends dozens of major changes at the 15 intelligence agencies. But even before its public release, officials at some intelligence agencies privately expressed fatigue and scant enthusiasm for further reshuffling, noting the agencies have been in a continuous state of flux since the September 2001 attacks.

The succession of reports designed to fix blame for botched intelligence on the attacks and Iraqi weapons has generated some wariness and cynicism at the agencies.

"We've been spending so much time reorganizing, we haven't had time to see if the changes we've already made have worked," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

The nine-member Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was appointed by President Bush a year ago. The members met Wednesday at commission offices in Arlington, Va., to review the report and plan its presentation to the president on Thursday.

One official who has seen the entire report said the unclassified version totals about 600 pages, including appendixes. The classified version contains fewer than 100 additional pages, he said, but includes the only detailed discussion of current threats like nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

The report includes a detailed analysis of the shortcomings of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons and an active nuclear program. It also contains before-and-after assessments of intelligence on Afghanistan and Libya, since American specialists now have access to those countries and can compare what weapons were expected and what were found.

The report, which focuses its main criticism on the Central Intelligence Agency, proposes the creation of an antiproliferation center to gauge the threat posed by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It calls for specific changes at agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is urged to create a more independent intelligence unit inside its existing structure.

Publicly, White House officials have said that the administration will embrace the report. But the officials who do the day-to-day work of intelligence said the report was being released at a chaotic time when they were still struggling to build the new organizations established by intelligence laws enacted late last year in response to earlier critiques.

John D. Negroponte, who last was ambassador to Iraq, has been appointed by President Bush as the first director of national intelligence but is only scheduled for Senate confirmation in two weeks. The new law gives him sweeping authority over the intelligence agencies, but how much control he will have in practice over fiercely independent, often competing agencies is uncertain.
Intelligence officials are still negotiating over which personnel from the C.I.A. might move to Mr. Negroponte's new operation, a delicate question that one former intelligence official says is comparable to "the partition of India, with the attendant communal violence." The intelligence reorganization adopted last year gives Mr. Negroponte a staff of 500, with an additional 150 people available to be temporarily assigned by all intelligence agencies. The C.I.A., which is expected to bear the brunt of the commission's criticism, has lost about 20 senior managers since Porter J. Goss replaced George J. Tenet as director last year, with some forced out and others taking advantage of the change in leadership to retire. Mr. Tenet's tenure was so long - more than seven years - that about 40 percent of C.I.A. employees had never worked under anyone else until Mr. Goss arrived.

A similar transition is about to occur at the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on foreign communications and is the country's biggest intelligence agency by work force and budget. The longest-serving director of N.S.A., Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, is departing to become Mr. Negroponte's deputy after overseeing six years of rapid change at the agency.