WASHINGTON: The commission of inquiry set up by President George Bush to probe the charges of misjudgment on the part of U.S. intelligence agencies on Iraq, has categorically ruled that the U.S. intelligence was "dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction".
In a damning report just released, the commission found that the pre-war claims that Iraq had a stockpile of biological weapons were based on statements by a defector codenamed "Curveball", who has at times been defined as "crazy" by U.S. intelligence agents themselves and "a congenital liar" by some of his very own friends.
The commission said in spite of huge funding for intelligence systems after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the country's 15 intelligence services were still "often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about".
The 601-page report, compiled after more than a year of investigations, castigated the claims of American intelligence system and found that there are serious shortcomings still in the operations of the country's spy agencies.
"This was a major intelligence failure," it concluded.
At one point it said: "Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors."
The commission, better known as the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, appointed in the wake of bitter criticism that the U.S. intelligence had failed in Iraq, and headed by a judge of the U.S. appeals court, Laurence Silberman, and Democratic senator from Virginia, Charles Robb, recommended substantial overhaul of the intelligence system.
After accepting the report from Judge Silberman and Senator Robb in the Executive Office Building of the White House, President Bush told journalists: "The central conclusion is one that I share: America's intelligence community needs fundamental change."
And he immediately promised action on the commission's 74 recommendations and directed Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend to review the findings.
"We will correct what needs to be fixed, and build on what the commission calls solid intelligence successes," said the President.
The commission, in a separate letter to the President, came down heavily on the CIA and the FBI, describing these national agencies as remaining "too comfortable with a 'business as usual' approach to intelligence gathering."
There is, however no direct blame on the President or Vice President Dick Cheney.
The defector, whose identity has never been made public and on whose revelations the intelligence agencies based their recommendations, was found to have been not even in Iraq at the time when he had claimed he had participated in the biological weapons work. These so-called revelations and the evident lack of credibility of his claims form the crux of the report, which underlines in no small measures the failures of the U.S. intelligence system.
It summarized the situation thus: "Worse than having no human sources is being seduced by a human source who is telling lies.".
However, in a post 911 USA, isn't it still better to be be safe, rather than very sorry indeed?
