Iraq: White House denies 'vague intelligence' claim

The Bush administration has hit back at accusations by leaders of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee that the United States went to war in Iraq on the basis of outdated and vague intelligence.

Senior US officials said that premise would have assumed a dramatic change in behaviour by Saddam Hussein – the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction since the departure of United Nations inspectors in 1998.

“I just don’t think that was plausible,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Fox News yesterday.

From Bush down, US officials made the case that war was necessary to remove the Iraqi president because of Iraq’s stockpiles of illegal arms, including chemical weapons capable of use against approaching American soldiers.

But leaders of the House intelligence panel said in a letter last week to CIA Director George Tenet that those claims resulted largely from fragmentary and circumstantial evidence filled with uncertainties. The Washington Post reported yesterday on the letter from Reps Porter Goss and Jane Harman, the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the committee.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow denied the allegations, saying: “The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd.”

Six months after the war began, and three months after the administration sent a CIA team led by former United Nations chief inspector David Kay to search, neither US troops nor Kay’s inspectors have reported finding weapons of mass destruction.

The letter reportedly cited “significant deficiencies” in the intelligence agencies’ ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq after UN weapons inspectors left in 1998. Instead, the letter said, the agencies relied on ”past assessments” and “some new ‘piecemeal’ intelligence” that went largely unchallenged.

“There was enrichment of the intelligence from 1998 over the period leading up to the war,” Rice said. “Nothing pointed to a reversal of Saddam Hussein’s very active efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to have very good programmes in weapons of mass destruction. It was very clear that this had continued and that it was a gathering danger.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Saddam’s use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians – 5,000 died – to put down unrest in 1988.

“Now, if you want to believe that he suddenly gave up that weapon and had no further interest in those sorts of weapons, whether it be chemical, biological, or nuclear, then I think you’re – it’s a bit naive to believe that,” Powell said on ABC’s This Week.

He said from 1998 until early this year, UN inspectors were unavailable in Iraq to draw on “and our intelligence community had to do the best they could. And I think they did a pretty good job”.

Meanwhile, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hollywood chanting slogans and holding signs as part of a worldwide protest against the occupation of Iraq.

Similar rallies were held yesterday in Boston and San Francisco, and followed international protests on Saturday in Dublin, London, Athens, Paris and other cities.