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At least they admit it

by Prometheus 6
December 5, 2003 - 2:31am.
on News

Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18

JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 -- Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged.

"The failures of this war indicate weaknesses and inherent flaws within Israeli intelligence and among Israeli decision-makers," Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom wrote in an analysis for Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," wrote Brom, former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning division.

David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, declined to comment on the report.

The allegations parallel those raised in the United States and Britain. Officials have combed Iraq and interrogated former authorities for months, but have turned up little evidence to support the prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs.

"In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows," the report said. "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."

The report added, "A critical question to be answered is whether governmental bodies falsely manipulated the intelligence information in order to gain support for their decision to go to war in Iraq, while the real reasons for this decision were obfuscated or concealed."

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Submitted by phelps (not verified) on December 5, 2003 - 12:50pm.

Why is the idea that the intel was manipulated by Iraq being dismissed a priori? They held power for 30 years with in incompetent military; they had to be good at something.

Submitted by P6 (not verified) on December 5, 2003 - 4:50pm.

I'm tempted to refer you to Tel Aviv University for that one. But don't you remember that Saddam Hussein was complaining for YEARS about the inspections going on after (he said) he'd proven he had no such weapons anymore? That the continued inspections were just an effort to dominate and humiliate his regime on the world stage?

Submitted by Al-Muhajabah (not verified) on December 6, 2003 - 2:33am.

If the intel was manipulated by Iraq, but all three of Israel, the UK, and the U.S. weren't able to figure this out, it still says something pretty damning about the intelligence services in this country.Lest we forget, the real point here is that the intel was false or misleading and we pre-emptively invaded another country because of it. In your opinion, this might be for the best after all, but one of these days it's not going to be.