ex-CIA agent:: administration lied, has harmed intel community and US Interests

TOMPAINE.com - Case Closed -- Like Vice President Dick Cheney last July, Tenet set out to defend the indefensible—the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that got it so wrong about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. I remember thinking last summer, Why would Cheney choose to cite conclusions that had already been thrown into great doubt? Listening to Tenet do the same thing six months later—and after Kay’s findings—added to my puzzlement.

Their focus on last fall’s NIE, "Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" (the very title got it wrong) seemed at first self-defeating. Then I realized that this focus serves to obscure the fact that the decision for war predated the estimate by several months. That decision was made, at the latest, by spring 2002.

That there was no NIE before that decision speaks volumes. Clearly, those around the president who were bent on war with Iraq did not want an honest assessment of the dubious "threat" it posed. Indeed, honest intelligence had already infected both Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to the point that they had declared publicly in 2001 that Iraq had been contained and that it posed no threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States.