Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Department officials prepared pre-war intelligence reports that may have exaggerated links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the Pentagon inspector general said today.
Two offices set up under then-Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith before the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq produced reports that formed the basis for the administration's key pre- war claim that Saddam Hussein might provide weapons of mass destruction to the terrorist group.
``While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions in our opinion were inappropriate'' because they didn't ``clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community,'' Inspector General Thomas Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Feith's operation produced what amounted to ``an alternative analysis,'' prepared ``without the knowledge of the intelligence community,'' that was used ``to back a decision to go to war,'' said committee chairman Carl Levin. ``This is devastating.''
The committee today released only the two-page executive summary of Gimble's review, which was prepared at the request of Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
--------------------------
A community usually refers to a group of people who interact and share certain things as a group.
No comments:
Post a Comment