Chalabi's Bogus Intelligence

The Iraqi National Congress which Chalabi heads, "exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were 'coached' by others on what to say."

The Pentagon is still paying millions of dollars to the Iraqi National Congress.

Aides to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney, including William Luti and John Hannah, bypassed normal routes to get out the bogus claims. John Hannah is also under grand jury investigation for outing a CIA agent working to stop Al Qaeda from getting hands on nuclear material for political revenge against her husband.

The Dreyfus Report points out that Chalabi was also feeding the bogus intel to Sharon's government in Israel who passed it on to the US. Some US intel agents believe Sharon's office created the fake Niger uranium documents that Bush believed proved Saddam was about to produce nuclear weapons. Knocking out Iraq as a hostile power and getting nearby US bases in the middle east has long been an Israeli goal.

Jim Lobe points to recent statements by Gen Jay Garner, the first US administrator of Iraq, that we didn't go to war because Saddam was a threat, but so the US could set up military bases guarding North and South Iraqi oil. He also notes this remarkable statement by Chalabi: The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his group had deliberately misled the administration. ''We are heroes in error'', he said. ''As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

How do the GOP leaders feel about this bogus intelligence? "The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research was not invited by Republican leaders to testify at the annual threat hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee being held Tuesday, even though the bureau has participated in the hearing every year since it began in the early 1990s."

This bureau provided the most accurate information before the war, being especially skeptical of nuclear arms claims. As one congressional staffer put it, "At the very time when I & R seems to have been right and everyone else wrong, it's at least unusual that this year for the first time they're not invited."

The recent Director of the State Department's WMD Intelligence office has been outspoken in criticism of the administration's "systematic, across-the-board exaggeration" of the threat from Iraq and "Senior officials made statements which I can only describe as dishonest."