CIA Director defends intelligence

[fishbob]

CIA Director George Tenet - republican, appointed in 1997 by Prez Clinton:

Tenet said U.S. intelligence accurately reported that Saddam's regime posed a danger. Though no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered in Iraq, he said the search isn't over.

"We are nowhere near 85 percent finished," he said, in a direct rebuttal to statements made by his former chief adviser on Iraq's weapons, David Kay.

Since Kay resigned two weeks ago, his statements that Saddam's purported weapons didn't exist at the time of the U.S. invasion have sparked an intense debate over the prewar intelligence the Bush administration used to justify the war.
.................
On chemical and biological weapons, Tenet said analysts believed that Saddam had ongoing programs and perhaps stockpiles and have found no evidence of such ongoing programs. He asserted, however, that the weapons searching teams needed more time.

Hey, wait a minute - Kay resigned because his WMD search resources were cut and cut again, and looked like they would be cut some more.

Yahoo News

 

[corplinx]

One one hand you have Kay and Bush publicly saying one thing.

On the other hand you have Tenet and Rummy saying something that on the surface seems different.

I think Bush is taking the politcally expedient stance in asking for an inquiry but he secretly thinks that some stockpile is yet to be found.

 

[shemp]

How can the CIA Director defend something he doesn't have?

 

[Crossbow]

Another interesting item is that Tenet is saying that the CIA never said that Iraq was an imminent threat, however Bush quite forcefully called Iraq an imminent threat prior to the war.

Does frat boy Bush have an intelligence source not affiliated with the CIA?

Possibly so, since he does not even read the newspapers.

 

[pgwenthold]

Another interesting item is that Tenet is saying that the CIA never said that Iraq was an imminent threat, however Bush quite forcefully called Iraq an imminent threat prior to the war.

Does frat boy Bush have an intelligence source not affiliated with the CIA?

Possibly so, since he does not even read the newspapers.

There was a report on Sixty Minutes II last night with guys from the intelligence offices who were disputing Powell's claims about the "aluminum tube" thing. They claim that the CIA had concluded in 2001 and 2002 that they were not suitable for anything nuclear. Yet, Powell claimed them to be for a isotope centrifuge. The interesting thing was they showed Powell making the claim. He said that there was some controversy over the things, but "most experts agree" that they have nuclear uses.

Unfortunately, no one has ever presented a single example of a nuclear weapons expert who thinks it could be used for isotope separation. Not one. Moreover, this has been the case pretty much from the beginning.

Where did Powell's statement that "most experts agree" it is for nuclear weapons come from? Someone, somewhere, made that statement up without any support.

Find out who did that, and you will have a start. Now, this is a simple statement, and not all that big a deal if you ask me. However, it is a blatent example where someone has changed the original expert assessment to make it sound like there was more agreement than there really was. Perhaps if you find that out, it will provide a lead to the bigger picture.

Who wrote the speech? What is the source of that claim?

 

[Cain]

I saw that 60 Minutes II segment as well. The claim supposedly came from inside the CIA. Cheney still says the trailers were mobile chemical weapons labs (an assertion initally based on CIA tests).

I always thought we would find chemical weapons of *some* kind. Now if they discover a barrel of just about anything, Bush will triumphantly raise his arms to the sky.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

One one hand you have Kay and Bush publicly saying one thing.

On the other hand you have Tenet and Rummy saying something that on the surface seems different.

I think Bush is taking the politcally expedient stance in asking for an inquiry but he secretly thinks that some stockpile is yet to be found.

Agggghhhh... Now I'm all paranoid. I can just see, a month before the election- 10 000 tonnes of AIDS gas under one of Saddam's palaces marked 'not to be disclosed to Blix'.

 

[pgwenthold]

I saw that 60 Minutes II segment as well. The claim supposedly came from inside the CIA. Cheney still says the trailers were mobile chemical weapons labs (an assertion initally based on CIA tests).

Of course, when they sent the weapons inspectors to the sites of the supposed "mobile weapons labs" they apparently found trucks filled with cobwebs.