CIA and Iraq: Prelude to Invasion
Before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by the allied forces ofGreat Britain and the United States, there was a large and comprehensivepolitical outpouring of information and material justifying the pendinginvasion by both American and British sources. One of the most vocalagencies in this prelude to war was America's Central Intelligence Agency(CIA). In October 2002, the CIA released a multi-page report discussing"Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," which went on to detail thevarious reasons why Iraq was a threat to the United States and the world.In concurrence with the report, CIA Director George Tenet spoke withvarious news agencies and reporters, outlining the CIA findings, whichincluded the following justifications for the impeding attack: Al Qaeda is working on "multiple-attack plans" and putting cells in place to carry them out. Terrorists could attack U.S. nuclear plants or chemical industry sites using conventional means "to cause widespread toxic or radiological damage." Iran continues to support terrorist groups and has sent arms to Palestinian terrorists and the group Hezbollah. "Tehran also has fail
The lack of weapons ofmass destruction in Iraq after the war is in direct contrast to the CIA'swarnings, and is coming under fire from many groups who opposed the war,and now believe the CIA helped inflate the situation. Wolfowitz" (Miller and Drogin, 2002). Ifthere are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it seems almost certainthey are somewhere, and in time, they will be discovered. Thereports issued by the CIA clearly show a detailed analysis of country thatwas hiding something, and a country not to be trusted. Before the allied invasion of Iraq, the CIA had several options opento them to infiltrate the country and perhaps incite the Iraqis to revoltagainst their government, and in fact, covert CIA operands were in Iraqbefore and during the war. Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul D. The report reads, Iraq's efforts to procure tens of thousands of proscribed high- strength aluminum tubes are of significant concern. Expanded efforts to collect intelligence within the Iraqi government, military, security service, and overall population where pockets of intense anti- Hussein sentiment have been detected. After the Gulf War in 1991, inspectors found many weapons of massdestruction, and it is well known that Iraqis used chemical weapons on someof our ground troops and on many of their own people in the Northernprovinces of Iraq after the war. "But, however, taken as a whole, and culminating with the events of September the 11th, they present a disturbing series of intelligence shortfalls that I believe expose some serious problems in the structure of and approaches taken by our intelligence community" ("CIA chief warns of," 2002, p. The CIA used many of these tools to try to avoid a military conflict, butthey were not successful, and they were equally unsuccessful in locatingSaddam Hussein's whereabouts. With the gift of hindsight, it is easy to see many of the CIA'sclaims have proven false or at least misguided. SaddamHussein's military dogged the inspectors, and generally, Iraq gave theimpression they were hiding something, and just because no weapons have yetbeen found, there are still thousands of places in Iraq where the weaponscould be hidden. These tubes, it turns out, were not purchased at all, and the intelligencesurrounding them, coming from British sources, was totally false, whichwould lead the reader to wonder about the validity of the remaining reportand its sources. A01), and this wasdiscussed in the report issued by the CIA in late 2002.
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