That Senate report saying (in effect) Bush lied

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has summarized the appropriate incredulity that should be brought to bear on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report (warning: that's a large .pdf file) on the handling of intelligence information in the Bush administration's public statements.

I was curious about the content of the report so I figured I'd dig into it some and offer commentary.

The report goes on for pages listing administration statements, then purports to look into whether or not the statements had the support of the available intelligence. That portion starts on page 6 of the .pdf file.

For some reason the .pdf is protected from cut & paste, so I'll either have to copy images like the one above or transcribe the portions I wish to quote.

The Senate report proceeds to present information that might be taken by a careless reader to contradict Cheney's statement, such as the following (page 8): "According to a DIA report, the intelligence community continued to assess that it would take five to seven years to indigenously produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon." Note "indigenously."

The report then jumps to a statement from the president parallel to that of the vice-president (page 8-9):

(U) In the president's address to the United Nations General Assembly, he stated that Iraq continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and indicated that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. Specifically, he referred to Iraqi efforts to purchase aluminum tubes, Iraqi efforts to conceal information about its pre-Gulf War nuclear program, and meetings between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists. He noted that Iraq possessed some of the intellectual capital and physical infrastructure that would be necessary for a nuclear weapons program, and said that if Iraq could "acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."

The Senate report then repeats the process described following the Cheney statement, without drawing conclusions about the president's remarks, though the final paragraph indicates that the intelligence community concurred (page 9) with the president's statement that Iraq could have built a nuclear weapon within a year given fissile material with which to work.

(U) In the president's speech on Iraq in Cincinnati, he stated that the Iraqi regime was "seeking nuclear weapons", and attempting to "purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges". He also said that Iraq was "rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past", and that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

(U) The president also repeated his statement that if the Iraqi regime came to possess highly enriched uranium, "it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." Additionally, he suggested that there was clear evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon, declaring that "facing clear evidence of the peril we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." He concluded that "we could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence."

Again the report provides a number of paragraphs that do not contradict the president.

(U) In the president's 2003 State of the Union Address, he stated that Iraq had pursued nuclear weapons even while weapons inspectors were in Iraq. He also said that the Iraqi regime had attempted to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used in a nuclear program, and that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The report notes that the consensus view in the intelligence community did not believe that Iraq started reconstituting its nuclear program until after UNSCOM inspectors left the country--but that does not directly address any Iraqi attempts to preserve and/or advance its program while inspectors were present.

On to Colin Powell:

(U) In the Secretary of State's February 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council, he stated that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and argued that Iraq had not abandoned its pre-Gulf War weapons program. He specifically referred to Iraqi attempts to procure dual-use technologies, including aluminum tubes, magnets, and high-speed balancing machines.

(U) The Secretary of State said that "most U.S. experts" believed that the aluminum tubes were intended to be part of a nuclear weapons program, and acknowledged that "other experts", as well as the Iraqi government, had argued that the tubes were intended for use in conventional rocket programs.

The comments following in the report reiterate points already made, and make special note of the fact that Powell did not use the British report of Iraq trying to procure yellowcake uranium nor the reconstruction at past potential nuclear-related facilities in his address (page 12).

The report then includes quite a number of quotation of Vice President Cheney, including one that references "irrefutable evidence" of a reconstituted nuclear program.

And then we get to the committee's conclusions:

(U) Conclusion 1: Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

That conclusion reflects a naive view of actionable intelligence, the type of naive view that paralyzes a nation until it is too late in the face of a threat. Case in point, U.S. intelligence far underestimated Iraqi capabilities at the time of the Gulf War, as the subsequent inspections brought to light. Hussein had been far more advanced with his nuclear program than we suspected. Firm proof is the exception rather than the rule in the intelligence game. It is more likely that the majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee knows that, but is playing this as a shameful political game.

Subsequent to the "Conclusion 1" the report offers a set of postwar findings, including the incredible claim (referenced to a 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report) that there was no evidence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from a foreign source since 1991 (page 16). Why isn't it well known in the committee that Joe Wilson's Niger trips did, in fact, uncover that type of evidence in the form of a government official's statement that he understood that an Iraqi delegation had come to discuss the acquisition of uranium?

This section of the report offers little other than obscure insinuations that the intelligence was misrepresented. The best example of a misleading statement appears to come from Cheney in a speech that the committee did not identify as a key speech respecting the case for the Iraq War.

The next section is "Biological Weapons," which will keep for later.

Addendum:

Power Line now has an excellent post on the report.

Ironically, the Committee’s report itself consists of serious distortions and misrepresentations. In addition, leading Senate Democrats, with access to the same intelligence information the administration relied on, made the same kind of claims (or more sweeping ones) that the Committee now deems “exaggerated.” One of those Democrats is the chairman of the Committee, Senator Rockefeller. Not surprisingly, the Committee majority declined to include in its report the prewar statements of Senate Dems.

Paul Mirengoff goes on to point out that Democrats made statements far more misleading than that of the administration despite the presence of dissenting opinions in the NIE available to members of Congress.