Bush ignored CIA advice on Iraq
In an article in the next edition of the bimonthly journal, Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, has become the highest-ranking CIA official from the prewar period to accuse the White House of manipulating the intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
The allegations contradict the findings of two official inquiries into the intelligence debacle, which have largely blamed the CIA and absolved the administration. They also emerged on the day it was reported that Lewis Libby, a former aide to Vice-President Dick Cheney, had told a grand jury that he had been "ordered" by "his superiors" to leak classified WMD information to the press to bolster the case for going to war.
The White House made no direct response to Mr Pillar's claims. Mr Pillar said the White House had simply ignored intelligence that did not conform with its intention to invade. "It went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq." The "broadly held" intelligence assessment, he said, was that the best way to deal with the weapons problem was through an aggressive inspections programme to supplement the sanctions already in place.
"If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war - or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath."