Once Wilson's July 6, 2003, article appeared, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage arranged for a copy of the memo, which had been drafted earlier detailing the Niger matter, to be forwarded to Powell, who was on his way to Africa with Bush. ...

The memo was written by the State Department's intelligence and research bureau. It outlined the history of the Niger uranium controversy and emphasized the bureau's view that there was no substance to reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. ...

After getting Armitage's request, the State Department's then-intelligence chief, Carl Ford, ordered the original memo — along with the analyst's notes about that meeting — to be sent to Powell, the former official said. Ordinarily, the memo would have been transmitted directly to Powell over the State Department's secure communications lines. But because Powell was traveling with Bush, the memo was transmitted via the White House operations center.

Because both documents were classified, it would have been necessary for someone on the plane to sign for having received them from the White House operations center, the former official said. But once someone signed for them, the document could have been passed around freely on the plane among senior officials who had security clearances.

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Los Angeles Times, published 07-17-2005

QUESTION: Yes, Mr. President. Do you regret that your State of the Union accusation that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa is now fueling charges that you and Prime Minister Blair misled the public?

BUSH: There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. And there's no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind. And so there's going to be a lot of attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I am absolutely confident in the decision I made.

QUESTION: Do you still believe they were trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa?

BUSH: Right now?

QUESTION: No, were they? The statement you made...

BUSH: One thing is for certain, he's not trying to buy anything right now. If he's alive, he's on the run. And that's to the benefit of the Iraqi people. But, look, I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program. In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon. Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence. And in 2003, after the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him. And I'm convinced the world is a much more peaceful and secure place as a result of the actions.
Press Availability with President Bush and President Mbeki of South Africa, published 07-09-2003

[Bill] Harlow, [a] former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

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Washington Post , published 07-27-2005

Q: Mr. Secretary, regarding that erroneous report last January that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Niger, does the administration owe Americans and, in fact, the world an apology for making that statement? And should the administration beat Congress to the punch by making a detailed investigation and a detailed explanation of how something so important and so wrong got into a presidential address?

SECRETARY POWELL: I think this is very overwrought and overblown and overdrawn. Intelligence reports flow in from all over. Sometimes they are results of your own intelligence agencies at work. Sometimes you get information from very capable foreign intelligence services. ...

And at the time of the President's State of the Union address, a judgment was made that that was an appropriate statement for the President to make. There was no effort or attempt on the part of the President, or anyone else in the administration, to mislead or to deceive the American people. ...

Subsequently, when we looked at it more thoroughly and when I think it's, oh, a week or two later, when I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore. It was not standing the test of time. And so I didn't use it, and we haven't used it since.
Secretary of State Powell Discusses President's Trip to Africa, published 07-10-2003

Q: Dr. Rice, there are a lot of reports, apparently overnight, that CIA people had informed the NSC well before the State of the Union that they had trouble the reference in the speech. Can you tell us specifically what your office had heard, what you had passed along to the President on that?

DR. RICE: The CIA cleared the speech. We have a clearance process that sends speeches out to relevant agencies -- in our case, the NSC, it's usually State, Defense, the CIA, sometimes the Treasury. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety.

Now, the sentence in question comes from the notion the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake. And, remember, it says, "seeking yellow cake in Africa" is there in the National Intelligence Estimate. The National Intelligence Estimate is the document the that Director of Central Intelligence publishes as the collective view of the intelligence agencies about the status of any particular issue.

That was relied on to, like many other things in the National Intelligence Estimate, relied on to write the President's speech. The CIA cleared on it. There was even some discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought. And the speech was cleared.

Now, I can tell you, if the CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, had said, take this out of the speech, it would have been gone, without question. What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.
White House Press Gaggle with Ari Fleischer and Dr. Condoleeza Rice, published 07-11-2003

Legitimate questions have arisen about how remarks on alleged Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa made it into the President’s State of the Union speech. Let me be clear about several things right up front. First, CIA approved the President’s State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my Agency. And third, the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President. ...

[Complete text of statement in link below.]
CIA Press Releases and Statements, published 07-11-2003

SNOW: Good morning.

Let's talk about the president's statement. Is it not true that the British, in fact, had an intelligence estimate that Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa?

RICE: Absolutely. And there are two things about this, Tony. First of all, it is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa. This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.

But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate. And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day, saying that they had sources other than sources that have now been called into question to back up that claim. We have no reason not to believe them.
Fox News Sunday, published 07-13-2003

"[Ambassador Joe] Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me."

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Syndicated Column by Robert Novak (Creators Syndicate, Inc), published 07-14-2003

Q: So even though there has been some question about the intelligence -- the intelligence community knowing beforehand that perhaps it wasn't, you still believe that when you gave it --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the speech that I gave was cleared by the CIA. And, look, the thing that's important to realize is that we're constantly gathering data. ...

The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.
Remarks by the President and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, published 07-14-2003

Q: Mr. President, thank you. On Iraq, what steps are being taken to ensure that questionable information, like the Africa uranium material, doesn't come to your desk and wind up in your speeches?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me first say that -- I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence. And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision.

We worked with the United Nations -- as Kofi mentioned, not all nations agreed with the decision, but we worked with the United Nations. And Saddam Hussein did not comply. And it's the same intelligence, by the way, that my predecessor used to make the decision he made in 1998.

We are in the process now of interrogating people inside of Iraq, looking at documents, exploring documents to determine the extent that -- what we can find as quickly as possible. And I believe, firmly believe, that when it's all said and done, the people of the United States and the world will realize that Saddam Hussein had a weapons program.
Remarks by the President and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, published 07-14-2003

The White House released excerpts from a classified October 2002 intelligence document that cited "compelling evidence" that Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear program before the war. Margaret Warner discusses today's White House release of previously classified information with New York Times reporter David Sanger.

"MARGARET WARNER: Today concluded a second week of controversy over the administration's pre-war intelligence and claims about Iraq's weapons program. The controversy centers on 16 now-famous words in President Bush's January 28th state of the union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." ...

Last week, the White House conceded the sentence was based on dubious intelligence, and should have been deleted from the speech. CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for that failure. On Wednesday, Tenet was called before the Senate intelligence committee to answer questions about it. Late this week, the White House mounted a counter-offensive. The president and British prime minister, Tony Blair, reappeared together yesterday, to reassert their conviction that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

And today at a off-camera briefing, the White House released previously classified intelligence findings buttressing that point. ..."

[This declassified excerpt consists of only 8, out of a total of 90-plus, pages in the original classified National Intelligence Estimate, and is called the "Key Judgements." A text version of that document is here.]
PBS - NewsHour, published 07-18-2003

The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies.

The stark differences between the public version and the then top-secret version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate raise new questions about the accuracy of the public case made for a war that's claimed the lives of more than 500 U.S. service members and thousands of Iraqis.

The two documents are replete with differences. For example, the public version declared that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and says "if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon within this decade."

But it fails to mention the dissenting view offered in the top-secret version by the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as the INR.

That view said, in part, "The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."

The alternative view further said "INR is unwilling to ... project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening."

[Text of "Key Judgements" here.]
Knight Ridder, published 02-09-2004

Bartlett: It [National Intelligence Estimate] goes on to say, although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program at the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed, December of 1998.
White House Press Briefing on Iraq WMD and SOTU Speech, published 07-22-2003

MR. HADLEY: ...When the language in the drafts of the State of the Union referred to efforts to acquire natural uranium, I should have either asked that they -- the 16 words given to that subject be stricken, or I should have alerted DCI Tenet. And had I done so, this would have avoided the whole current controversy.

And in my current position, I am the senior most official within the NSC staff, directly responsible for the substantive review and clearance of presidential speeches. The President and the National Security Advisor look to me to ensure that the substantive statements in those speeches are the ones in which the President can have confidence. And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.

The National Security Advisor also wants, Condi wants it clearly understood that she feels a personal responsibility for not recognizing the potential problem presented by those 16 words. And we both agree that in permitting the inclusion of those words, the high standards that the President sets with his speeches were not met.
White House Press Briefing on Iraq WMD and SOTU Speech, published 07-22-2003

Q: The President's defense of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice today came at a critical time. A week ago, her chief deputy, Stephen Hadley, acknowledged he had been warned by the CIA in two separate memos that the Agency would not stand by information suggesting Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. That claim made it into the President's State of the Union speech, and CIA Director George Tenet took the blame.

But with Hadley's admission, new questions emerged. If he knew about the error in advance, who else did? Was it overlooked simply because the administration was anxious to bolster the case for war?

Here to answer these, and other, questions, is National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Welcome, Dr. Rice.

DR. RICE: Thank you, nice to be with you.

Q: So the first question becomes the ones I just posed. Did you know, or should you have known that the information that went into the President's State of the Union speech regarding the purchase, or the efforts to purchase uranium in Niger, or from Africa, another country in Africa -- did you know that that information was not correct?

DR. RICE: When the line was put into the President's State of the Union address and cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency, when I read the line, I thought it was completely credible and that, in fact, it was backed by the Agency.

What happened here is that we're really talking about two different processes. The State of the Union was put together, the speech went out for clearance. But the speech that the President had given in Cincinnati in October had also been sent out for clearance and --

Q: That's the speech where he made the case for war?

DR. RICE: Well, this is one of the speeches in which he made the case for war. And in that speech, a line had been there about the uranium issue and Saddam Hussein seeking uranium in Africa. And Director Tenet had called Steve Hadley and he told him, in no specifics, he told him, I don't think you should put that in the President's speech because we don't want to make the President his own fact witness. Both Steve and Director Tenet remember the conversation in that way.

What we learned later, and I did not know at the time and certainly did not know until just before Steve Hadley went out to say what he said last week, was that the Director had also sent over to the White House a set of clearance comments that explained why he wanted this out of the speech. I can tell you, I either didn't see the memo, I don't remember seeing the memo -- the fact is, it was a set of clearance comments, it was three-and-a-half months before the State of the Union. And we're going to try to have a process now in which we don't have to depend on people's memories to link what was taken out of the speech in Cincinnati with what was put into the speech at the State of the Union.

Q: Should you have seen the memo?

DR. RICE: Well, the memo came over. It was a clearance memo, it had a set of comments about the speech. It had already been taken out of the speech, from my point of view and from the point of view of Steve Hadley. Steve Hadley runs the clearance process. And when Director Tenet says, take something out of a speech, we take it out, we don't really even ask for an explanation. If the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, is not going to stand by something, if he doesn't think that he has confidence in it, we're not going to put that into a presidential speech. We have no desire to have the President use information that is anything but the information in which we have the best confidence, the greatest confidence.

And so when Director Tenet said, take it out of the speech, I think people simply took it out of the speech and didn't think any more about why we had taken it out of the speech.

Q: Do you feel any personal failure or responsibility for not having seen this memo and flagged it to anybody else who was working on this speech?

DR. RICE: Well, I certainly a personal responsibility for this entire episode. The President of the United States has every right to believe that what he is saying in his speeches is of the highest confidence of his staff -- that's why we go through a clearance process, that's why the process is so rigorous.

In this one case, the process did not work. We did have a clearance from the agency, but, frankly, looking back, perhaps we should have remembered that it was taken out of the Cincinnati speech. We simply didn't.

And what I have assured the President, and what I want to assure myself, is that our future processes will be ones in which we double check to make sure that something has not been taken out of a speech, in which perhaps we get an affirmative answer from the principals that they, in fact, will stand behind an element of a speech as important as the State of the Union.

But what I feel really most responsible for is that this has detracted from the very strong case that the President has been making. There are people who want to say that somehow the President's case was not strong, the intelligence case was not strong. I've read a lot of intelligence cases over my almost 20 years now in this field, and this was a very strong case. The Director of Central Intelligence put together a National Intelligence Estimate, that's a disciplined document in which he takes the views of all of the various agencies and then delivers a consensus view to the President.

Q: But a disciplined document which concluded, in many ways, that there wasn't enough of a case to be made on this nuclear option.

DR. RICE: No. In fact, when the judgments -- the key judgments in the NIE are quite the opposite from that. It says, for instance, that left unchecked Saddam Hussein would possibly have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade. I don't know what the President of the United States is supposed to do with that, except to say, I have to have a policy prescription for dealing with that circumstance.

Five of the six intelligence agencies believed that he had an active program of reconstitution of his nuclear weapons program. And one has to remember that this is against the context of someone who had in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, been proven to be much closer to a nuclear weapon than the International Atomic Energy Agency had thought. He had been seeking nuclear weapons for a long time, this didn't happen in a vacuum.

In that context, judgments by the intelligence community that he was reconstituting his programs, that he had an active procurement network, that he was gathering together nuclear scientists, that he had several designs for a nuclear weapon and that, left unchecked, he might be able to have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade -- that's the judgment on which the President was going, and not the question of whether or not he was trying to acquire yellow cake in Africa.

Q: James Schlesinger, who, as you know, served in several previous administrations, and was at one point at least, Pentagon Secretary, he said on this program last week that George Tenet was forced to fall on his sword. If that's the case, do you regret that?

DR. RICE: Director Tenet, George Tenet said what he believed. And that is that his Agency cleared the speech, that he was responsible for the clearance process of his Agency. That's what George Tenet said. And he was describing a process by which we clear Presidential speeches. And that is that we go both to the experts to clear specific parts, and we go to the principal to say, do you clear this speech?

But George Tenet, like all of us, would never want to see anything in a presidential speech in which the Director of Central Intelligence doesn't confidence.

And so of course I feel responsible for this. It should not have happened to the President. And I'm doing everything that I can to try and make sure that it won't happen again. We needed to make a connection between a set of clearance comments that were sent to us -- on many matters, by the way, not just clearance comments on this specific issue, but on many matters -- clearance comments that were sent to us in October, and this line appearing in the State of the Union.

What we have to do is to go back and make certain that we don't have to depend on someone's memory in order to make that connection. But I want to say, again, Gwen, the thing that is concerning here is that the intelligence case against Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction is a broad and deep case for multiple sources over 12 years, from many different intelligence agencies, from the United Nations, itself, from the United Nations inspectors.

And we are now in Iraq in a way that we will be able to find out precisely what the case was here with his weapons of mass destruction program. It's going to take some time. A very able former inspector, David Kaye, has an army of -- he'd probably object to that, he probably doesn't have enough resources -- but he has a lot of people in Iraq who are going through miles of -- literally, miles of documents who are interviewing --

Q: The President --

DR. RICE: We will know precisely what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Q: Let me ask you about David Kaye, because the President said today that he met with David Kaye yesterday.

DR. RICE: Yes.

Q Did he provide him with any new information about the search for weapons of mass destruction?

DR. RICE: What the President said to David Kaye is, take your time; do this in a comprehensive way; do this in a way that makes the case, that looks at all of the evidence, and then tells us the truth about this program.

What David Kaye did say to me and to others is that this is a program that was built for deception over many, many years. Saddam Hussein was under weapons inspections for a period of time, he was under sanctions. He got to be very good at making certain that no one would be able to uncover the truth of his programs.

And so it's not surprising that it's going to take some time to really put this picture together. And the thing that the President most wanted David Kaye to know is that we are patient in finding that out.

Q: So David Kaye did not bring the President new information about new discoveries at that meeting yesterday?

DR. RICE: David Kaye is going to put this together in a way that is coherent. I think that there is a danger in taking a little piece of evidence here, a little piece of evidence there. He is a very respected and capable weapons inspector. He knows how to read the Iraqi programs.

And what he will do is to take these many, many documents, he'll also interview people. If you remember, back at the time of the Hans Blix mission, we wanted very much to have scientists interviewed outside of Iraq, because we knew that people would not talk openly in this totalitarian country in which people's tongues were cut out for dissent.

We now have an opportunity to interview these people. But even now, it is taking some time for people to get accustomed to the fact that they can be interviewed, and their families will not be harmed. But we will put this case together.

What we knew going into the war was that this man was a threat. He had weapons of mass destruction. He had used them before. He was continuing to try to improve his weapons programs. He was sitting astride one of the most volatile regions in the world, a region out of which the ideologies of hatred had come that led people to slam airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington. Something had to be done about that threat. And the President was not prepared to simply allow this brutal dictator with dangerous weapons to continue to destabilize the Middle East.

Q: And what you said going into the war, using very stark language, I believe you were the one who said that you couldn't afford to stand by and watch a -- looking for a smoking gun which could become a mushroom cloud.

You made only -- not only this case about the potential for purchasing uranium yellow cake from Niger, you also said that there were aluminum tube purchases, which indicated that the reconstitution of the nuclear program be underway. You also said there were satellite photos that showed that buildings were being rebuilt in places where there had been a nuclear program before.

Taken together, this was all to make the point that Saddam Hussein was possibly on the verge of reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Is that, in retrospect, supportable?

DR. RICE: It's absolutely supportable. And listen to the list that you just gave. What this was, was a description of his procurement network. We knew that he had, as Colin Powell talked about in his presentation at the United Nations, an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There's a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group -- magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.

Q: That's something the International Atomic Energy Agency did not agree with.

DR. RICE: Well, the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, the consensus view of the American intelligence agency, was that given the specifications, given that they had -- this had been Saddam Hussein's kind of personal network, given the expense that they had gone to get these tubes, that they were, most likely, for this use. But there were other elements, as well, facilities that were being rebuilt.

It was a case that said, he is trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year. But the question was that if it was possible that he might have one by the end of the decade, and if it was possible, as the National Intelligence Estimate said, that if he acquired fissile material, it might be far sooner than that, was it a threat that you could allow to sit unanswered? And I'd just like to say one other thing, the nuclear case, yes, was an issue, but there was also a very robust biological weapons issue.

Biological weapons are also extremely dangerous, as we found with just a small amount of anthrax on Capitol Hill and at various news outlets in the United States. There was the fear that he might be able to use chemical weapons. This was a bad regime, an extremely tyrannical regime with a history of using weapons of mass destruction, with a 12-year history of everybody in the international community -- including three administrations of the United States -- President Bush, the first President Bush; President Clinton; and President Bush, the current President Bush -- believing that he had weapons of mass destruction. And when you look at that picture, and you look at this picture in the Middle East, this incredibly volatile region, and you look at his ambitions, Saddam Hussein's ambitions for power in the Middle East that were demonstrated in what he did in Iran and what he would later do in Kuwait, this was a threat that had been out there too long. And as the President said today, we wanted the international community to deal with it.
PBS - NewsHour, published 07-30-2003

GWEN IFILL: And what you said, going into the war, using very stark language, I believe you were the one who said that you couldn't afford to stand by and watch a, looking for a smoking gun which could become a mushroom cloud. You made not only this case about the potential for purchasing uranium, yellow cake, from Niger, you also said that there were aluminum tube purchases, which indicated that the reconstitution of the nuclear program might be underway.

You also said there were satellite photos that showed that buildings were being rebuilt in places where there had been a nuclear program before. Taken together, this was all to make the point that Saddam Hussein was possibly on the verge of reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Is that, in retrospect, supportable?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It's absolutely supportable, and listen to the list that you just gave. What this was, was a description of his procurement network. We knew that he had, as Colin Powell talked about in his presentation at the United Nations, an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There's a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear supplies group: Magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.
PBS - NewsHour, published 07-30-2003

Lord Hutton, the judge investigating the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly, has opened his inquiry by setting out the key issues and listing the witnesses he wants to call. ...

He then outlined the remit of the inquiry, which he said was to examine "quickly and fairly" the circumstances surrounding the death of the government scientist, who worked for the Ministry of Defence. ...

Dr Kelly was found dead almost two weeks ago [July 18, 2003] in woods near his Oxfordshire home, with a knife and a packet of painkillers nearby. ...

Dr Kelly was at the centre of a major rift between the government and the BBC over claims about Iraq's weapons capability.

He appeared before a committee of MPs investigating the government's reasons for going to war with Iraq just a few days before he died.

He told the committee that he did not believe he was the main source for a BBC report alleging the government had "sexed-up" a dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

[BBC News profile of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly. For a BBC in-depth review of the Hutton Inquiry, click here. See January 28, 2004 for links and documents to conclusion of Inquiry.]
BBC News, published 08-01-2003

Now, I don't want to leave this podium without addressing something that has aroused a great deal of concern here and in my country, and that is the fact that we have not yet found enough evidence of Saddam Hussein's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. We will. I have absolute confidence about that. Indeed, the fact that it has taken us this long to find the evidence is a chilling reminder that these programs are far too easy to move, and I believe far too easy to hide.

Consider, for example, that UNSCOM was only able to confirm the existence of a biological warfare program that Saddam Hussein claimed not to have after years of inspections, because a high level defector walked in and gave them the evidence. Dr David Kay was part of the original UN inspection team, and today he is back in Iraq working for us, continuing the search. He's making solid progress in finding the evidence of Saddam Hussein's WMD program. But he's also finding that deception and concealment were an extensive and embedded part of the program perfected over the course of two decades. It's going to take some time to find not just the weapons, but the equipment and the people and the materials that made up this program.

President Bush has made it crystal clear that we don't intend to stay in Iraq any longer than is necessary, but I will make it crystal clear to you today that we are not going to leave until we find and destroy Iraq's capability to produce biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Remarks to Asia Society Forum, Sydney, Australia, published 08-13-2003

Madrid - The invasion of Iraq was planned a long time in advance, and the United States and Britain are not primarily concerned with finding any banned weapons of mass destruction, the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said in an interview on Wednesday.

"There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to the (weapons) inspections," Blix told Spanish daily El Pais.

"I now believe that finding weapons of mass destruction has been relegated, I would say, to fourth place, which is why the United States and Britain are now waging war on Iraq. ...

But I don't know - you ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they did to try and demonstrate that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons, like the fake contract with Niger," he explained.

That was a reference to US allegations - later denied - that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from the west African state of Niger. ...

Blix said the war, which on Wednesday entered its 21st day, was "a very high price to pay in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country" when the threat of weapons proliferation could have been contained by UN inspections.
News24 - Africa, published 09-04-2003

Nearly two years ago, following deadly attacks on our country, we began a systematic campaign against terrorism. These months have been a time of new responsibilities, and sacrifice, and national resolve and great progress. ...

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.
President Addresses the Nation, published 09-07-2003

MR. RUSSERT: If they were wrong, Mr. Vice President, shouldn’t we have a wholesale investigation into the intelligence failure that they predicted...

VICE PRES. CHENEY: What failure?

MR. RUSSERT: That Saddam had biological, chemical and is developing a nuclear program.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: My guess is in the end, they’ll be proven right, Tim. On the intelligence business, first of all, it’s intelligence. There are judgments involved in all of this. But we’ve got, I think, some very able people in the intelligence business that review the material here. This was a crucial subject. It was extensively covered for years. We’re very good at it. As I say, the British just revalidated their claim. So I’m not sure what the argument is about here. I think in the final analysis, we will find that the Iraqis did have a robust program.
NBC - Meet the Press, published 09-13-2003

This was a dangerous regime that had used weapons of mass destruction, that was still pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and that had large unaccounted for stockpiles. That is a position that was credible at the time. It is a position that is credible now. And now we're able to do what the U.N. inspectors had hoped to be able to do under Resolution 1441, were actually never permitted to do because Saddam Hussein was still in power and intimidating people and keeping people from telling the truth. So the President will simply note that we have an effort underway to hunt this down. And, yes, I think we will we find that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction can be accounted for, and we'll know the truth.
Rice Briefs Press on President's trip to United Nations, published 09-22-2003

The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world.
Bush Addresses United Nations General Assembly, published 09-23-2003

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law. ...

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. ...

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. ...
Washington Post, published 09-28-2003

NEW YORK Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, responding to a strong charge in a column by Frank Rich in The New York Times’ today, said there was nothing improper about waiting 12 hours to “preserve all materials” after being informed by the Justice Department in 2003 that it was launching an investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA agent.

Gonzales told Bob Schieffer on the CBS show “Face the Nation” that he had been given permission by the Justice Department to hold off overnight if he saw fit, which he did. But he did tell one man that night: Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions Sunday about whether Card passed that information to top Bush aide Karl Rove or anyone else, giving them advance notice to prepare for the investigation, the Associated Press reported after Gonzales' revelation.

[Note to reader: For additional information regarding "CIA Leak Case", go to
dKospedia OR Wikipedia]
Editor and Publisher, published 07-24-2005

Q: Do you think that the Justice Department can conduct an impartial investigation, considering the political ramifications of the CIA leak, and why wouldn't a special counsel be better?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

And so I welcome the investigation. I -- I'm absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job. There's a special division of career Justice Department officials who are tasked with doing this kind of work; they have done this kind of work before in Washington this year. I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative.

I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.
President Discusses Job Creation With Business Leaders, published 09-30-2003

Iraq, obviously there, we had to go use force as well, too. And the reason we had to do Iraq, if you hark back and think about that link between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was the place where we were most fearful that that was most likely to occur, because in Iraq we've had a government -- not only was it one of the worst dictatorships in modern times, but had oftentimes hosted terrorists in the past -- the Abu Nidal organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, suicide -- payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel and Palestine, but also an established relationship with the al Qaeda organization, and, without question, had previously had and used weapons of mass destruction -- chemical weapons against the Iranians and against the Kurds.

For all of those reasons it was vitally important that we deal with the threat in Iraq, as well, too. One of the interesting things -- and this is a bit of sidelight maybe, but I think it's important that people understand this, we've had this whole debate over, well, maybe Saddam didn't really have WMD. Maybe he was just bluffing, that somebody cooked the books and came up with this notion that the Iraqi government had invested in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Well, first of all, of course, the intelligence community in the United States going back many years, including into the prior administration, concluded that he did, indeed, have programs for chemical, biological and nuclear programs -- nuclear weapons.
Remarks by the Vice President at a Luncheon for Congressman Jim Gerlach, published 10-03-2003

September 11th made clear our enemies' goals, and provided painful experience of how far they are willing to go to achieve them. From their own boasts, we know that they would not hesitate to use the world's most terrible weapons to bring devastation to our shores. In fact, they would welcome it. This threat is potentially so catastrophic -- and can arrive with so little warning, by means that are untraceable -- that it cannot be contained.

We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th attacks. Yet the possibility remained that he might use his weapons of mass destruction or that terrorists might acquire such weapons from his regime, to mount a future attack far beyond the scale of 9/11. This terrible prospect could not be ignored or wished away.
Remarks to the National Security Affairs to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, published 10-08-2003

Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror. It was crucial that we enforce the U.N. Security Council resolutions. Now, having liberated that country, it is crucial that we keep our word to the Iraqi people, helping them to build a secure country and a democratic government. And we will do so. ...

If Saddam Hussein were in power today, there would still be active terror camps in Iraq, the regime would still be allowing terrorist leaders into the country and this ally of terrorists would still have a hidden biological weapons program capable of producing deadly agents on short notice.
The Heritage Foundation, published 10-10-2003

War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al-Qaida and "galvanised its will" by increasing radical passions among Muslims, an authoritative think-tank said yesterday. The warning, echoing earlier ones by MI5 and MI6, was made in the annual report of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance.

It said US claims after the invasion of Iraq that al-Qaida was on the run, and that the "war on terror" had turned the corner, were "over-confident". John Chipman, the institute's director, warned that the full effect of the war might never be known, because of the chaos it had left behind. ...

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee reported last month that Tony Blair was warned by his intelligence chiefs on the eve of war that an invasion of Iraq would increase the danger of terrorist attacks.

It disclosed that in February, a month before the invasion, Whitehall's joint intelligence committee said that "al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq". ...
The Guardian, published 10-16-2003

I have to -- I have to disagree strongly with Senator Kennedy. The American people were not told lie after lie after lie. The American people were told that we have a dangerous situation in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was ignoring 12 years of UN resolutions, that he had and was developing weapons of mass destruction, and I think Dr. Kay's report certainly suggests that there are programs for the development of weapons of mass destruction. We're still looking to see what stocks may be there, but let there be no doubt about what Saddam Hussein's intentions always were. He had weapons of mass destruction, he has used weapons of mass destruction, and the President determined that it was not a risk the world should have to face any longer.
CBS - Face the Nation, published 10-19-2003

This administration and the last administration and several other countries all agreed that they had chemical and biological weapons and that they had programs relating to nuclear weapons that they were reconstituting -- not that they had nuclear weapons -- no one said that. It was believed then -- we know they did have them, because they used chemical weapons against their own people, so it's not like it's a surprise that those programs existed. Furthermore, the debate in the United Nations wasn't about whether or not Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. The debate in the United Nations was about whether or not he was willing to declare what he had. And everyone agreed that that declaration was a fraudulent declaration -- even those that voted against the resolution agreed with that. So it seems to me that the thing to do is to wait, let the Iraqi survey group, David Kay and his team, continue their work. You're not going to find things by accident in a country the size of California.

The only way you are going to find them is by capturing people who know about them and interrogate them and find out what they think they know as to where these weapons are and what the programs were.
Dept of Defense Transcript - NBC 'Meet the Press', published 11-02-2003

Q. However, bin Laden is at large, and Saddam Hussein. How close are you to finding these people?

The President. No, first of all, I wouldn't--I think that your--let me answer your question this way. We will find them. Okay? Yes, we're not pulling out until the job is done. Period.

Q. And that includes finding those two?

The President. Yes, that's part of it. But even bigger is a free and democratic society. That is the mission. And again, I'd repeat--I know I'm sounding like a broken record to you. I just want you to get a sense for how strongly I feel for the mission we are on.
Roundtable Interview of the President by British Print Journalists, published 11-14-2003

...In the Pentagon’s scenario, the responsibility of managing Iraq would quickly be handed off to exiles, led by Chalabi—allowing the U.S. to retain control without having to commit more troops and invest a lot of money. “There was a desire by some in the Vice-President’s office and the Pentagon to cut and run from Iraq and leave it up to Chalabi to run it,” a senior Administration official told me. “The idea was to put our guy in there and he was going to be so compliant that he’d recognize Israel and all the problems in the Middle East would be solved. He would be our man in Baghdad. Everything would be hunky-dory.” The planning was so wishful that it bordered on self-deception. “It isn’t pragmatism, it isn’t Realpolitik, it isn’t conservatism, it isn’t liberalism,” the official said. “It’s theology.” [...]
New Yorker, published 11-24-2003

Today, the United States Government raised the national threat level from an Elevated to High risk of terrorist attack -- or as more commonly known, from a Yellow Code to an Orange Code. ...

The strategic indicators, including al-Qaida's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, are perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th, 2001.

The information we have indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will either rival, or exceed, the attacks that occurred in New York and the Pentagon and the fields of Pennsylvania nearly two years ago.

[This High (Orange) Threat level remains in effect until Jan. 9, 2004 when it was lowered to Elevated (Yellow)]
Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, published 12-21-2003

Three weeks ago, the United States Government raised the national threat level from an "Elevated" to a "High" risk of terrorist attack - or as it's more commonly known - from Code Yellow to Code Orange.

Today, based on a careful review of the available intelligence, we have lowered the threat level to Yellow. We are still concerned about the continued threats, but the threat conditions that we've been following have diminished. With the passing of the holidays and many large gatherings that occurred during this time, we have made the decision to come down to Yellow.

[This Elevated (Yellow) Threat level remains in effect until Aug. 1, 2004 when it was then raised to High (Orange) which lasted for 98 days - the longest duration since the inception of the HSAS threat codes.]
Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, published 01-09-2004

With the latest casualties, 501 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, including 346 in hostile action. Most of those deaths have come since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations May 1.

Keyword: Death toll

[Note to reader: This casualty count is 10 months after the day the Iraq War began, and a little more than 8 months after May 1, 2003 - the "end of major combat operations". Latest casualty count, with specifics, may be obtained at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
CNN - World, published 01-19-2004

Having broken the Baathist regime, we face a remnant of violent Saddam supporters. Men who ran away from our troops in battle are now dispersed and attack from the shadows. These killers, joined by foreign terrorists, are a serious, continuing danger. Yet we're making progress against them. The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell. ...
President - State of the Union Address, published 01-20-2004

The President made no mention of the failure so far to locate nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

Bush: We are seeking all the facts. Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.

True, former UN weapons inspector David Kay, now heading the US effort to locate Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons, did report last October that he had uncovered "dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002."

But Kay also told the House and Senate intelligence committees:

We have not yet found stocks of weapons... We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW (biological weapons) production effort. ... Multiple sources (say) that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW (chemical warfare) program after 1991. ... (and) to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material. ... (and) no detainee has admitted any actual knowledge of plans for unconventional warheads for any current or planned ballistic missile.

[President Bush's State of the Union Address here.]
FactCheck.org, published 01-20-2004

Secretary of State Colin Powell says there is "no hard evidence" to suggest that Iraqi stocks of weapons of mass destruction were hidden in neighboring Syria before the U.S. and coalition forces attacked last year.

While being interviewed by a reporter for WPHT radio in Philadelphia January 21, Powell was asked about critics of the administration who contend that the inability to find WMD in Iraq means the United States should not have attacked that country. In his response, Powell said Saddam Hussein's regime had used WMD in the past and appeared ready to develop WMD in the future.

"Why we haven't found stocks, we can't answer that," Powell said. "We're still looking. Is it because they were destroyed, as they knew we were coming or something else happened to them? I don't know."

With regard to the suggestion that Iraq's WMD may have "ended up in Syria," Powell said, "that is always a possibility, but I have seen no hard evidence to suggest that is the case, that suddenly there were no weapons found in Iraq because they were all in Syria. I don't know why the Syrians would do that, frankly: why it would be in their interest. They didn't have that kind of relationship with Iraq."

[Note to reader: Link goes to transcript of press conference. For the summary shown above please go here]
State Dept - Transcript of interview on WPHT Radio, Philadelphia, published 01-21-2004

David Kay, Special Advisor for Strategy regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs will be stepping down and succeeded by Charles A. Duelfer. The announcement was made on January 23 by the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet.

Tenet praised Kay for his "extraordinary service under dangerous and difficult circumstances," calling him "a model private citizen who willingly lent his unique expertise to his government in a time of need," according to a Central Intelligence Agency press release.

Duelfer is currently a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and served as Deputy Executive Chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) from 1993 until its termination in 2000. As special advisor, he will be based in Iraq and in charge of directing the overall approach for the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
State Dept - Washington File, published 01-23-2004

The White House January 26 said the removal from power of Iraq's Saddam Hussein justified the Iraq war regardless of whether Hussein's regime possessed banned weapons.

"[T]he President made the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The world is a safer and better place, and America is more secure because of the actions that we took," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters.

He said the Iraq Survey Group, a U.S.-led group of intelligence and military experts looking for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, should continue the search despite comments from its former leader, David Kay, that no stockpiles probably exist.
Press Gaggle with Scott McClellan, published 01-26-2004

Q: On the question of Iraq, two issues. First, you've been using the phrase, "gathering threat" and "grave danger," which obviously are words that the President, himself, used many times before the war. You have not used the word "imminent threat." And the essence of Dr. Kay's comments recently would suggest that there was no way for there to be an imminent threat.

Does the President now believe that, in fact, while the threat was gathering, while the threat may have been grave, that, in fact, it was not imminent?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we've said all along that it was a grave and gathering threat. And that in a post-September 11th world, you must confront gathering threats before it's too late.

I think some in the media have chosen to use the word "imminent." Those were not words --

Q: The President himself never used that word?

MR. McCLELLAN: Those were not words we used. We used "grave and gathering threat." We made it very clear that it was a gathering threat, that it's important to confront gathering threats in this post-September 11th world, because of the new dangers and new threats that we face.

Q: So then under your interpretation, if you're not using the word "imminent" and the President didn't use it, this was not a preemptive attack, this was a preventative war? Is that the White House position?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, again, September 11th taught us that we must confront gathering threats before it's too late. Saddam Hussein -- Saddam Hussein had ample opportunity to come clean.

Q: I hear you, Scott. But there's a definitional difference. "Preemptive" has to do with imminent threats. "Preventative" has to do with non-imminent threats.

MR. McCLELLAN: He was a gathering threat, and it was important that we confront that threat. I don't know that I necessarily agree with your distinctions that you're making there.

[For use of the words "imminent threat" see the entry for 2/10/03 in Press Briefing - Ari Fleisher and the answer Dan Bartlett gave in response to that question in a 1/26/03 interview on CNN's - Late Edition]
White House Press Briefing - Scott McClellan, published 01-27-2004

Washington -- Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee January 28 that he was unable to find substantive evidence that the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or had an active weapons development program.

Kay said during questioning, "we simply have no evidence" Iraq had large or small stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons as late as 2002. "We've got evidence that they certainly could have produced small amounts, but we've not discovered evidence of the stockpiles." ...

"Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here," Kay said of intelligence estimates indicating Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program. "I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there."
State Dept - Washington File, published 01-28-2004

Today, Wednesday January 28 2004, Lord Hutton published his findings from the inquiry into the events surrounding the death of government scientist David Kelly. Dr Kelly was found dead after being named as the source for a controversial BBC report which claimed that the government had interfered in the wording of intelligence dossiers about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

[Note to reader: For brief background information please visit Wikipedia, the Hutton Inquiry website and a Guardian Special Report.]
The Guardian, published 01-28-2004

President Bush told reporters February 2 that he will form an independent, bipartisan commission to study intelligence on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the world, but he said he wants to meet first at the White House with David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG).

Kay resigned from that position recently and testified before the U.S. Congress that he does not think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 Iraq war.

Bush said "first of all, I don't know all the facts. ...

The president said he wants to look at "what the Iraqi Survey group has found" but also "at our war against proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, kind of in a broader context. And so I'm putting together an independent, bipartisan commission to analyze where we stand, what we can do better as we fight this war against terror.
State Dept - Washington File, published 02-02-2004

Secretary of State Colin Powell has defended the decision to invade Iraq and overthrow its former leader Saddam Hussein on the grounds that Hussein and his regime had the capability and the intent to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

In his February 2 interview with the Washington Post editorial board, Powell said the former Iraqi regime had personnel capable of developing the weapons, laboratories and facilities for their production, and was developing longer-range missiles capable of delivering WMD.

"With respect to intent, Saddam Hussein and his regime clearly had the intent. They never lost it," said Powell.

[Complete interview available at link below]
State Dept - Washington File, published 02-03-2004

The inquiry into intelligence about Iraq's weapons capability will look at the accuracy of information given to the government, Jack Straw has said.

The probe will look at discrepancies between information ahead of the war and what has been discovered since Iraq's occupation, he told MPs.

The foreign secretary said in a Commons statement that privy councillors will make up the committee of inquiry.

Chairing it will be former top civil servant Lord Butler of Brockwell.

[Note to reader: Butler Review/Report background information from Wikipedia. The Butler Review concluded on July 14, 2004 and can be found in PDF form here. Additional related articles and links can be found at The Scotsman.]
BBC News, published 02-03-2004

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told congressional committees that coalition weapons inspectors searching Iraq for biological and chemical weapons need more time to reach final conclusions about whether the weapons existed before a U.S.-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein. ...

Rumsfeld offered numerous reasons why weapons of mass destruction have not been uncovered in Iraq:

-- Biological, chemical and nuclear weapons may not have existed before the start of the war.

-- Iraq may have transferred WMD to one or more other countries.

-- The weapons may have been destroyed at the outset of the war.

-- The weapons were dispersed and hidden throughout the country.

-- Iraq may have possessed small quantities of biological or chemical agents, and had the ability to build up its stockpiles rapidly, but it may take considerably longer to find that out.

-- Saddam Hussein was fooling everyone and actually possessed no WMD.

Rumsfeld said he believes the weapons may still be hidden in Iraq.
Testimony before the Senate and House Armed Services Committee, published 02-04-2004

CIA Director George Tenet says that the Iraq Survey Group is continuing to search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that "despite some published statements, we are nowhere near 85 percent finished."

Tenet spoke about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at Georgetown University in Washington February 5. He said that his judgment about aspects of Iraq's WMD and delivery systems programs, while still provisional, is that "when the facts on Iraq are all in, we will be neither completely right nor completely wrong."

"By definition," Tenet said, "intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny, we work to reveal."

[Complete transcript of remarks as prepared for delivery at Georgetown University at link below]
State Dept - Washington File, published 02-05-2004

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, reported that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons programs and activities in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and was a gathering threat to the world. Dr. Kay also stated that some pre-war intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed. We are determined to figure out why.
White House Press Briefing Room, published 02-06-2004

The Bush administration's prewar assertion that Saddam Hussein had a fleet of mobile labs that could produce bioweapons rested largely on information from an Iraqi defector working with another government who was never interviewed by U.S. intelligence officers, according to current and former senior intelligence officials and congressional experts who have studied classified documents. [...]

U.S. intelligence officials now describe as hasty and premature the May 28 public claim by the CIA and the DIA that two semitrailers discovered in Iraq in April were most likely part of the bioweapons fleet. [...]

By January, Kay had reassessed the matter, saying publicly that the "intelligence consensus" was that the semitrailers probably were for making hydrogen, not biological agents.

Administration officials continued to describe the threat posed by Hussein's mobile biological-weapons facilities. [...]
Washington Post, published 03-05-2004

It occurred on March 24, 2004. The setting: The 60th annual black-tie dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association (with many print journalists there as guests) at the Hilton. On the menu: surf and turf. Attendance: 1500. The main speaker: President George W. Bush, one year into the Iraq war, with 500 Americans already dead.

Now you may recall what happened. President Bush, as usual at such gatherings of journalists, poked fun at himself. Great leeway is granted to presidents (and their spouses) at such events, allowing them to offer somewhat tasteless or even off-color barbs. Audiences love to laugh along with, rather than at, a president, for a change. It's all in good fun, except when it's in bad fun, such as on that night in March 2004.

That night, in the middle of his stand-up routine before the (perhaps tipsy) journos, Bush showed on a screen behind him some candid on-the-job photos of himself. One featured him gazing out a window, as Bush narrated, smiling: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.” According to the transcript this was greeted with “laughter and applause.”

A few seconds later, he was shown looking under papers, behind drapes, and even under his desk, with this narration: “Nope, no weapons over there” (met with more “laughter and applause”), and then “Maybe under here?” (just “laughter” this time). Still searching, he settled for finding a photo revealing the Skull and Bones secret signal.
Editor and Publisher, published 06-18-2005

...Zinni has been a critic of the Iraq war since before the invasion and served briefly as a special envoy for President Bush. He wrote that he was moved to speak out by "false rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military."

"In the lead-up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption," he wrote. " . . . If there is a center that can hold this mess together, I don't know what it is. Civil war could break out at any time. Resources are needed; a strategy is needed; and a plan is needed." [...]
Washington Post, published 03-24-2004

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that evidence he submitted to the United Nations to justify war on Iraq may have been wrong.

In February last year he told the UN Security Council that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories for making biological weapons.

On Friday he conceded that information "appears not to be...that solid."

The claim failed to persuade the Security Council to back the war, but helped sway US public opinion. ...

Mr Powell referred to several intelligence sources on the trailers during his Security Council speech, but at least two have been questioned in recent weeks.

News organisations have reported that US intelligence officials considered one source unreliable even before Mr Powell's speech.

The Los Angeles Times also alleged that another source had been widely discredited and was never even interviewed by US officials.
BBC News, published 04-03-2004

Exluding forces deployed in direct support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, there are probably about 200,000 military personnel in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. There are probably about 425 aircraft of all types. The number of troops deployed in the area fluctuates on a daily basis as new forces surge into the region and some units begin to return to the United States.

As of early March 2004 over 114,000 US personnel and over 23,000 coalition personnel from 35 nations were deployed in Iraq. Over 26,000 US and Coalition personnel were deployed in Kuwait, providing logistical support to Operation Iraqi Freedom. As of mid-April 2004 the number of troops in the Central Command Area of Responsibility was officially estimated at between 200,00 and 225,000 total. Inside the Horn of Africa there were around 1,200 that dedicate or focus themselves on the Horn of Africa. In Afghanistan there were around 20,000.
GlobalSecurity.org, published 08-2005

Zinni says Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy. And he was saying it before the U.S. invasion. In the months leading up to the war, while still Middle East envoy, Zinni carried the message to Congress: “This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don’t feel it needs to be done now.”

But he wasn’t the only former military leader with doubts about the invasion of Iraq. Former General and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Centcom Commander Norman Schwarzkopf, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark, and former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki all voiced their reservations.

Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn’t want – but it was a war the civilians wanted.
CBS - 60 Minutes, published 05-24-2004

The CIA has decided to keep almost entirely secret the controversial October 2002 CIA intelligence estimate about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that is the subject of today's Senate Intelligence Committee report, according to the CIA's June 1, 2004 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive.

The CIA's response..., consisting almost entirely of whited-out pages. Only 14 of the 93 pages provided actually contained text, and all of the text except for the two title pages and the two pages listing National Intelligence Council members had previously been released in July 2003. At that time, CIA responded to the first round of controversy over the Niger yellowcake story by declassifying the "Key Findings" section of the estimate and a few additional paragraphs.

The CIA's censorship of the estimate mirrors its apparent treatment of the Senate's own report. The Senate Intelligence Committee had previously noted, in a 17 June 2004 press release, that "The Committee is extremely disappointed by the CIA's excessive redactions to the report."

[Link to redacted 10/2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 833kb PDF report here or at the webpage below.]
The National Security Archive, published 07-09-2004

Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative. ...

This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush explained his action by saying, "This is a criminal matter. It's a serious matter," but he gave no further specifics. White House officials, too, would not say exactly what prompted Bush to seek the outside advice, or whether he had been asked to appear before the grand jury.

Nonetheless, Bush's action, in itself, says a great deal. In this column, I will analyze what its implications may be.

[Additional article from the Washington Times]
FindLaw.com - Column by John W. Dean, published 06-04-2004

A hearing details the transfer of $2.4 billion in $100 bills to Baghdad in 2004 and the billions more sent before. U.S. oversight is questioned.

It weighed 28 tons and took up as much room as 74 washing machines. It was $2.4 billion in $100 bills, and Baghdad needed it ASAP.

The initial request from U.S. officials in charge of Iraq required the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to decide whether it could open its vault on a Sunday, a day banks aren't usually open.

"Just when you think you've seen it all," read one e-mail from an exasperated Fed official.

"Pocket change," said another e-mail.

Then, when the shipment date changed, officials had to scramble to line up U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes to hold the money. They did, and the $2,401,600,000 was delivered to Baghdad on June 22, 2004.

It was the largest one-time cash transfer in the history of the New York Fed.
Los Angeles Times, published 06-22-2005

President Bush was interviewed for more than an hour yesterday by a special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA officer last summer.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald and several assistants questioned the president for about 70 minutes in the Oval Office yesterday morning. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the substance of the interview but said Bush, who was accompanied by a private lawyer, was not placed under oath. ...

"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, adding that Bush was "pleased to do his part" to aid the probe.

"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States, and he has said on more than one occasion that if anyone -- inside or outside the government -- has information that can help the investigators get to the bottom of this, they should provide that information to the officials in charge." ...

Bush retained a private lawyer, James E. Sharp, for the interview. Sharp did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
Washington Post, published 06-25-2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government Monday, speeding up the move by two days in an apparent bid to surprise insurgents who may have tried to sabotage the step toward self rule.

Legal documents handing over sovereignty were handed over by U.S. governor L. Paul Bremer to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in a small ceremony attended by about a half dozen Iraqi and coalition officials in the heavily guarded Green Zone.

"This is a historical day," Allawi said during the ceremony. "We feel we are capable of controlling the security situation."

[Additional information may be found at the US State Department website.]
Associated Press, published 06-28-2004

A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20 b[illio]n (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects. ...

Christian Aid, in a report today, claims that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to an interim administration in Iraq this week, is in flagrant breach of the UN security council resolution which gave it control of the country's oil revenues.

Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, stated that the money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people and independently audited, but an auditor was appointed only in April.

The charity quoted an unnamed UN diplomat as saying: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the development fund. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."
The Guardian, published 06-28-2004

July 7, 2004 report on Phase I of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence review of prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities. Since Phase I was only concerned with the quality and analysis of the intelligence, this report does not address how that intelligence was used or whether the administration's public statements were an accurate reflection of it.

[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase One Conclusions available here (PDF)]

National Security Archive with explanations and documents relating to "intelligence" in the lead-up to war available here]
George Washington University National Security Archives , published 07-07-2004

Conclusion 72. Much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect.

Conclusion 74. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should have alerted Secretary Powell to the problems with the biological weapons-related sources cited in the speech concerning Iraq's alleged mobile biological weapons program.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents9 on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.

Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

Conclusion 14. The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policymakers that it had sent someone to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador's findings.

Conclusion 15. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Directorate of Operations should have taken precautions not to discuss the credibility of reporting with a potential source when it arranged a meeting with the former ambassador and Intelligence Community analysts.

Conclusion 16. The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 27. After reviewing all of the intelligence provided by the Intelligence Community and additional information requested by the Committee, the Committee believes that the judgment in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, was not supported by the intelligence. The Committee agrees with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) alternative view that the available intelligence "does not add up to a compelling case for reconstitution."

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 48. The assessment in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that, "[W]e judge that all key aspects - research & development, production, and weaponization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War" is not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 58. The statement in the key judgments of the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that "Baghdad has . . . chemical weapons" overstated both what was known about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings and what intelligence analysts judged about Iraq's chemical weapons holdings.

Conclusion 59. The judgment in the October 2002 Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was expanding its chemical industry primarily to support chemical weapons production overstated both what was known about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry and what intelligence analysts judged about expansion of Iraq's chemical industry.

Conclusion 61. The Intelligence Community's assessment that "Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons and possibly as much as 500 metric tons of chemical weapons agents much of it added in the last year," was an analytical judgment and not based on intelligence reporting that indicated the existence of an Iraqi chemical weapons stockpile of this size.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 65. The Intelligence Community assessment that Iraq retains a small force of Scud-type ballistic missiles was reasonable based on the information provided to the Committee. The estimate that Iraq retained "up to a few dozen Scud-variant missiles," was clearly explained in the body of the National Intelligence Estimate to be an assessment based "on no direct evidence" and was explained in the key judgments to be based on "gaps in Iraqi accounting to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCON)."

Conclusion 68. The Intelligence Community assessment in the key judgments section of the National Intelligence Estimate that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents" overstated both what was known about the mission of Iraq's small UAVs and what intelligence analysts judged about the likely mission of Iraq's small UAVs. The Air Force footnote which indicated that biological weapons (BW) delivery was a possible, though unlikely, mission more accurately reflected the body of intelligence reporting. Conclusion 70. The Intelligence Community's assessment that Iraq's procurement of United States specific mapping software for its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) "strongly suggests that Iraq is investigating the use of these UAVs for missions targeting the United States" was not supported by the intelligence provided to the Committee.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 78. The Intelligence Community depended too heavily on defectors and foreign government services to obtain human intelligence (HUMINT) information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Because the Intelligence Community did not have direct access to many of these sources, it was exceedingly difficult to determine source credibility

Conclusion 80. Even after the departure of United Nations (UN) inspectors, placement of human intelligence (HUMINT) agents and development of unilateral sources inside Iraq were not top priorities for the Intelligence Community.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 99. Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaida.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship

Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise

Conclusion 97. The Central Intelligence Agency's judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach - al-Qaida - to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks.

[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

C. White Paper Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 85. The Intelligence Community's elimination of the caveats from the unclassified White Paper misrepresented their judgments to the public which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments.

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(U) Conclusion 86. The names of agencies which had dissenting opinions in the classified National Intelligence Estimate were not included in the unclassified white paper and in the case of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the dissenting opinion was excluded completely. In both cases in which there were dissenting opinions, the dissenting agencies were widely regarded as the primary subject matter experts on the issues in question. Excluding the names of the agencies provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of the debate within the Intelligence Community regarding these issues.

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(U) Conclusion 87. The key judgment in the unclassified October 2002 White Paper on Iraq's potential to deliver biological agents conveyed a level of threat to the United States homeland inconsistent with the classified National Intelligence Estimate.

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[Scan of report document available here (PDF)]

HTML Website version of complete report here.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published 07-09-2004

... Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday the former foreign secretary Robin Cook said the suggestion that there had been a "global" intelligence failure was "garbage"

"Nobody except Washington and London thought that Saddam was such a threat that we had immediately to go to war," he said.

"The intelligence agencies were then left in a position of having to find evidence to support a conclusion."

"The governments had made up their mind that Saddam had weapons and must be a threat, they had made up their mind they were going to go to war.

"The intelligence agencies were then left in a position of having to find evidence to support a conclusion."

Mr Cook said John Scarlett had told him before the war that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction that could be fired over long distances at strategic cities.

"I still find it perplexing why Number 10 came to a different conclusion. [...]"
BBC, published 07-10-2004

A British intelligence inquiry reported today that the country's prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons capabilities had "serious flaws" and were partially based on "unreliable" sources, but the report found no evidence of deliberate distortion on the part of the Blair government. Ray Suarez discusses the report and its political implications for Prime Minister Tony Blair with Nile Gardiner, a visiting fellow in Anglo-American security policy at the Heritage Foundation, and Lionel Barber, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times.

RAY SUAREZ: The intelligence the British government used to lead the country to war with Iraq last year was "seriously flawed," but not distorted. That's the conclusion of the Butler Report, one of four British inquiries into intelligence failures. Lord Butler released the report at a news conference today in London. It echoed the findings of a similar report released just last week by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

LORD BUTLER: Language in the dossier, and used by the prime minister, may have left readers with the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence than was the case. It was a serious weakness that the joint Intelligence Committee's warnings on the limitation of the intelligence were not made sufficiently clear in the dossier.

[Note to reader: Complete interview available at the link below. Butler Review/Report background information from Wikipedia. The Butler Review in PDF form here. Additional related articles and links can be found at The Scotsman.]
PBS - NewsHour, published 07-14-2004

President Bush has told you, and I have reiterated the promise, that when we have specific credible information, that we will share it. Now this afternoon, we do have new and unusually specific information about where al-Qaeda would like to attack. And as a result, today, the United States Government is raising the threat level to Code Orange for the financial services sector in New York City, Northern New Jersey and Washington, DC. ...

Now this is the first time we have chosen to use the Homeland Security Advisory System in such a targeted way. Compared to previous threat reporting, these intelligence reports have provided a level of detail that is very specific. The quality of this intelligence, based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information.

Now while we are providing you with this immediate information, we will also continue to update you as the situation unfolds. As of now, this is what we know: reports indicate that al-Qaeda is targeting several specific buildings, including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the District of Columbia; Prudential Financial in Northern New Jersey; and Citigroup buildings and the New York Stock Exchange in New York.

[This is the last time the High (Orange) code was used, and which lasted for a period of 98 days until November 10, 2004]
Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge , published 08-01-2004

..."And let me just say this to you: Knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq. We still would have gone to make our country more secure. He had the capability of making weapons. He had terrorist ties." ...
President's Remarks on Intelligence Reform, published 08-02-2004

Meanwhile, the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the March, 2003 U.S.-led invasion reached 1,000 Tuesday. White House spokesman Scott McClellan says those killed made "the ultimate sacrifice." He said the best way to remember them, as well as the victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks, is to press ahead with the war on terror.

keywords: Death toll, troop, troops, casualties

[Latest casualty count, with specifics, may be obtained at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
Voice of America, published 09-07-2004

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.
Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: "Yes, if you wish."

He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal." [...]
The Guardian, published 09-16-2004

..But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. ...

General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida.
The Guardian, published 09-16-2004

...What this amounts to, writes Dr. Hoffman in a recent RAND paper, is "the failure not only to recognize the incipient conditions for insurgency, but also to ignore its nascent manifestations and arrest its growth before it is able to gain initial traction and in turn momentum."

With the insurgency apparently gaining traction and momentum, such criticisms now are coming from prominent Republicans in Congress. "The lack of planning is apparent," Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana said last week. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) Nebraska, a decorated infantry squad leader in Vietnam, says the recently announced shifting of reconstruction funds to security is "an acknowledgment that we are in deep trouble."

Classified British documents, reported in the Daily Telegraph newspaper over the weekend, warned a year before the invasion of Iraq that even if a democratic government could be created there, "it would require the US and others to commit to nation-building for many years" and that this would "entail a substantial international security force." [...]
Christian Science Monitor, published 09-20-2004

Just how bad are things in Iraq? Since just last week it has seen hundreds of deaths, suicide bombings, beheadings, yet more people kidnapped.

When I visited Basra exactly one year ago it was safe enough to stay in town on our own.

This time, we wouldn't dream of doing that. The chances of being kidnapped are too great. [...]
BBC, published 09-21-2004

"The problem of discerning WMD in Iraq is highlighted by the prewar misapprehensions of weapons, which were not there. Distant technical analysts mistakenly identified evidence and drew incorrect conclusions. There is also the potential of the obverse problem. Observers may have evidence before them and not recognize it because of unfamiliarity with the subject. Often ISG found no evidence of one thing or another. It may be that a more accurate formulation might be we recognized no evidence. This is a fundamental conundrum in assessing alien circumstances."

[If the link to the CIA website below does not work, please click here. Also: A searchable outlined transcript of this report (also known as the Duelfer Report) is available here.]
Central Intelligence Agency - Duelfer Report, published 09-30-2004

The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat."

The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein's weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq.

[Note to reader: Further information is available from the University of Michigan's Documents Center here]
Washington Post, published 10-06-2004

THE PRESIDENT: Chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there. ...

Based on all the information we have today, I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison. He retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction. And he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies. ...

The Duelfer report makes clear that much of the accumulated body of 12 years of our intelligence and that of our allies was wrong, and we must find out why and correct the flaws. The Silberman-Robb commission is now at work to do just that, and its work is important and essential. At a time of many threats in the world, the intelligence on which the President and members of Congress base their decisions must be better -- and it will be.

I look forward to the Intelligence Reform Commission's recommendations, and we will act on them to improve our intelligence, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
State Dept - Washington File, published 10-07-2004

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) released a report today of an inquiry he initiated on June 27, 2003 and conducted by the SASC Minority Staff. The report focuses on 1) the establishment of a non-Intelligence Community source of intelligence analysis in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and 2) the extent to which policy makers utilized that alternative source rather than the analyses produced by the Intelligence Community with regard to the issue of any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda before the Iraq war.

The report demonstrates how intelligence relating to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was exaggerated by high ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the Administration's decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the Intelligence Community did not make a sufficiently compelling case. The Intelligence Community's analysis of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship as a relatively weak one was as definitive as reliable reporting would permit, and their conclusions were subsequently supported by the 9/11 Commission and the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq.

Senator Levin believes that the professional objectivity and independence required in the assessment of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship were compromised to support the policy goal of removing Saddam Hussein. He hopes that this report will help to bring about corrective legislation, including better Congressional oversight of intelligence assessments, which was strongly recommended by the 9/11 Commission and is a pending issue in the Intelligence reform bills before Congress.
Office of Senator Carl Levin - Press Release, published 10-21-2004

WASHINGTON - The Bush Administration did not adequately prepare for the post-war period in Iraq, the nation's top military officers told Congress Wednesday.

The four chiefs of the armed services testified to the House Armed Services Committee that while they had adequately planned for combat operations, as evidenced by the quick advance to Baghdad, the U.S. government as a whole failed to put enough effort into planning for the peace.

The military role is limited, or should be limited, in post-combat periods to security operations, they said. The lion's share of reconstruction and nation building should have been taken up by other agencies in the government.

"If I had to go back and do it again, I would spend a great deal more time thinking about phase four; in other words, the stability, security, reconstruction part of that," said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee.
United Press International, published 11-18-2004

It is not as grim a milestone as the number dead and wounded, but Pentagon officials say the latest accounting of dollars spent on the war in Iraq now exceeds $100 billion, CBS News National Security correspondent David Martin reports.

That's about double the cost the White House predicted before the first U.S. soldier entered Iraq.

But no one expected the world's most powerful military to be run ragged by an insurgency of perhaps 12,000 fighters armed with nothing more sophisticated than rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The cost has gone up each year and is expected to go up again next year when the Pentagon estimates it will need another $100 billion for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
CBS News, published 12-14-2004

Q: Just one more. What I was getting at is looking forward -- when it comes to Iraq, North Korea, and the President -- this President stands up and says, they've got weapons programs, they've got weapons of mass destruction, isn't it the case that there will be many people in the world who will say, how can we believe him? And how does he deal with that?

MR. McCLELLAN: He's going to continue working with the international community to confront the threats that we face. ...

Q: Scott, this is an important political question that you're not really addressing squarely, which is, can this President or a future President go to a Tony Blair or a leader of Spain and say, we believe something is happening and you need to join us in a preemptive show of force? Has this experience not totally wiped out that possibility for political action in the future?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all -- a couple of things -- we're working together in a number of areas to confront threats that the international community faces. We're working together to confront threats in places like North Korea and Iran. The President is pursuing diplomatic solutions in close consultation with other countries. ...

Q: I'm talking about preemptive military action.

MR. McCLELLAN: Right. And that's the last option that you always want to pursue. But the President is going to continue working closely with our friends and allies to confront the threats that we face --

Q: How can he do it again --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we continue to take steps to improve our intelligence. That's what the President is going to do. ...

Q: Even if the information is wrong?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- that's why the President is also working to strengthen the United Nations and make it more effective. ... It was a very unique threat that we faced in terms of Iraq. ...

Q: Secretary Rumsfeld said you go -- infamously, he said, "you go to war with the Army that you have." Well, this administration went to war, when it went to war, based on information that proved to be incorrect. Does the President now regret the timing of this? Does he feel that the war effort and its aftermath and the post-immediate war conflict phase was undermined by that timetable and intelligence that was wrong?

MR. McCLELLAN: Based on what we know today, the President would have taken the same action, because this is about protecting the American people. As I said --

Q At the very same time, he would have done it on the same timetable?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- this is about advancing freedom and democracy in a dangerous region of the world. ...

Q: Scott, are you saying that the President -- it's the President's view that the WMD situation has not hurt United States credibility around the world?

MR. McCLELLAN: Ed, what I'm saying is what the President has previously said, because we've been through this issue before, when Charles Duelfer issued the comprehensive report. ...

Q: So if the information is wrong, is there no consequence?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

Q: If the information about WMDs is wrong, as we all agree now, is there no consequence?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let's separate out here -- there's the issue of Iraq and the decision to go into Iraq, and the President has previously spoken to that: It was the right decision to go in and remove Saddam Hussein from power. ... And I also think that there is a good understanding that by advancing freedom in the Middle East, that we are making the world a better place and that we're making America more secure. That's where the President's focus is. His focus is on helping to support those in the region who want to move forward on building democratic institutions in places like Iraq, in places like the Palestinian areas. ...
White House Press Briefing - Scott McClellan, published 01-12-2005

(Pentagon, Bremer dispute inspector general's report)

An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds.

"Severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used," the report said.

"The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

The $8.8 billion was reported to have been spent on salaries, operating and capital expenditures, and reconstruction projects between October 2003 and June 2004, Bowen's report concluded.
CNN - World, published 01-31-2005

A grim milestone was passed in Iraq today when a US Marine was killed in action south of Baghdad - the 1,500th American soldier to lose his life since the invasion.

...Iraqbodycount.net, an independent website which relies on credible media reports of deaths, puts the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion at up to 18,395 - although it says many other deaths may have gone unreported. A statistical study in the medical journal the Lancet estimated that Iraqi civilian deaths could be as high as 198,000.

keywords: troop, troops, casualties

[Latest casualty count, with specifics, may be obtained at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
Times - UK, published 03-03-2005

Recently, we learned that Osama bin Laden has urged the terrorist Zarqawi to form a group to conduct attacks outside Iraq, including here in the United States. We're on a constant hunt for bin Laden. We're keeping the pressure on him, keeping him in hiding. ...

Bin Laden's message is a telling reminder that al Qaeda still hopes to attack us on our own soil. Stopping them is the greatest challenge of our day.
Remarks by the President in Washington DC, published 03-03-2005

Our unanimous report is based on a lengthy investigation, during which we interviewed hundreds of experts from inside and outside the Intelligence Community and reviewed thousands of documents. Our report offers 74 recommendations for improving the U.S. Intelligence Community (all but a handful of which we believe can be implemented without statutory change). But among these recommendations a few points merit special emphasis.

We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.
Presidential Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the US Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, published 03-31-2005

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled. [...]

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' [...]
USA Today, published 05-10-2005

GWEN IFILL: I have to ask you about something which is finally, belatedly, getting some attention here, and got a great deal of attention in Britain and that's the so-called "Downing Street Memo," which surfaced as a memo that was very critical of the Iraq War. [...]

What do you make of that memo? Did you know about it?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: Basically, the case that people are making, that somehow we'd taken the decision to invade, you know, irrespective of what Iraq did, it's simply not correct. [...]
PBS - The NewsHour, published 06-07-2005

The vice president said he expected the war would end during President Bush's second term, which ends in 2009.

"I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
CNN - Larry King, published 06-20-2005

One of the most important battlefronts in this war on terror is Iraq. Terrorists have converged on Iraq. See, they're coming into Iraq because they fear the march of freedom. Their most prominent leader is a Jordanian named Zarqawi, who has declared his allegiance with Osama bin Laden. The ranks of these folks are filled with foreign fighters who come from places like Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran and Egypt and Sudan and Yemen and Libya. ...

The stakes in Iraq could not be higher.
President Addresses Military Families, Discusses War on Terror, published 08-24-2005

The military announced the deaths Tuesday of five U.S. soldiers in three separate roadside bomb explosions, pushing the number of U.S. fatalities since March 2003 past the 1,900 mark. [...]

The diplomat killed in the attack was not named, but was described as a diplomatic security agent.

The incident marked the third U.S. diplomat killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Diplomatic Security Agent Edward Seitz died in an October 2004 mortar attack on a U.S. base near Baghdad International Airport. And last November, James Mollen, a U.S. special adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, was shot to death near the capital's fortified Green Zone.

keywords: troop, troops, casualties

[Latest casualty count, with specifics, may be obtained at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
Washington Post, published 09-20-2005

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - The U.S. military announced the death of an American soldier wounded in Iraq on Tuesday, bringing to 2,000 the number of American service members killed since the war started in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Earlier, the military announced the deaths of two Marines in fighting with insurgents last week in a village west of Baghdad.

Just before the toll hit 2,000, President Bush warned the nation to brace for an even higher casualty count as the mission there has more work remaining to be successful.

keywords: troop, troops, casualties

[Latest casualty count, with specifics, may be obtained at Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
Associated Press, published 10-25-2005