Report on Intelligence Failure

Well, the report is in and the conclusion is that the intelligence community was "dead wrong".

To me the two most interesting conclusions are that first, all insinuations that the Administration knew there where no chemical and biological weapons but pretended otherwise to continue with the policy objective of regime change were dead wrong too. They did not know, nobody did, it was the world's greatest head fake.

Which brings me to the second point and that is that the intelligence community was wrong because if followed what was being said among Iraqi politicians and the Army. When they intercepted radio conversations of Iraqi military talking about use of chemical weapons, the intelligence services did not know that those same Iraqi soldiers were being deceived themselves. Until the very last day they believed that they will crush the invading Americans with their secret weapons which, it was intimated to them, were there.

So when some of them defected or offered information to clandestine operatives, they said the same thing. No wonder intelligence community was dead wrong, everybody was including Iraqi generals. Only the top Iraqi leadership knew and willingly threw its military into a slaughter of a war that could not have been won.

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