What Bush Was Told About Iraq (Democrats on the case)

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What Bush Was Told About Iraq

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 2, 2006

Two highly classified intelligence reports delivered directly to President Bush before the Iraq war cast doubt on key public assertions made by the president, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials as justifications for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, according to records and knowledgeable sources.

The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that discussed whether Saddam's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon.

Among other things, the report stated that the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed that the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," a view disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb.

The disclosure that Bush was informed of the DOE and State dissents is the first evidence that the president himself knew of the sharp debate within the government over the aluminum tubes during the time that he, Cheney, and other members of the Cabinet were citing the tubes as clear evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Neither the president nor the vice president told the public about the disagreement among the agencies.

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Bush Administration's Iraq Claims at Odds with Pre-War Intelligence, Post-War Evidence

November 18, 2005

Click here to view the full text as a PDF.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed a wide array of weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological and chemical weapons, and that Saddam Hussein’s regime had active programs designed to produce more weapons, most notably nuclear weapons. Several intelligence analyses and assessments have indicated that, before the war, there was considerable doubt about the factual basis of the Bush Administration’s claims, and the Iraq Survey Group, the team of U.S. military and civilian experts charged with searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, never found any evidence to substantiate those claims. This document compares each of the Bush Administration’s major claims to both the intelligence available before the war began and the post-war findings of the Iraq Survey Group and others.


Last modified February 23, 2006, 10:44 AM.


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