Kucinich, former intelligence officials question Bush administration
Originally published in the Mercury News.
Posted on Tue, Jul. 15, 2003
Kucinich, former intelligence officials question Bush administration
MALIA RULON
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and two former intelligence officials denounced the Bush administration Tuesday for its use of intelligence before the Iraq war.
Andrew Wilkie, formerly a senior analyst with the Office of National Assessments - Australia's top intelligence agency - said the world was sold a war based on inaccurate information.
"In that time, I saw not a single piece of critical hard intelligence to substantiate the claim of any cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida," Wilkie said.
Wilkie resigned from the agency on March 11 because he didn't agree with the way intelligence was used to justify his country's support for the war in Iraq.
"I feel strongly that the whole Iraq mess has been characterized by a systematic misuse of intelligence, of twisting of the truth, of picking and choosing only those bits of information or intelligence that suits our government's purposes, and from time to time instances of downright dishonesty," he said.
In the 1980s, 27-year senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern used to prepare and deliver a daily briefing of intelligence issues to the president, vice president and the secretaries of state and defense. Now, the agency's director, George Tenet, accompanies many briefings, McGovern said.
"In my day, we did our analysis among ourselves. We knew what the requirements were, we knew what the interests were on the part of the policy-makers, but thank you very much, we didn't need any policy makers at the table to tell us how to shape the analysis," he said.
Kucinich, a Democratic candidate for president, said the Bush administration's backpedaling on a State of the Union claim that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons is "profoundly embarrassing to this nation."
"The administration made a deliberate attempt to influence the opinion of the American people by convincing them that if the United States did not act immediately, the United States would be in imminent danger," Kucinich said.
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