US agents ignored doubts on Iraqi arms | Sydney Morning Herald

[Ediacara]

US agents ignored doubts on Iraqi arms

March 8, 2004

In the two years before the war on Iraq, US intelligence agencies dismissed reports from Iraqi scientists, defectors and other informants who said Saddam Hussein did not possess illicit weapons, officials say.

The reports, which ran contrary to the conclusions of the intelligence agencies and the Bush Administration, were not acknowledged publicly by top government officials before the invasion last March.

The agencies and the Administration cited only informants who supported the view that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a main justification for going to war.

The first public hint of the reports came in a speech on Friday by Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, she said "indications" were emerging from the panel's inquiry into prewar intelligence that "potential sources may have been dismissed because they were telling us something we didn't want to believe: that Iraq had no active WMD programs".

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[indepat]

1. When your mind is already made up, you don't want it cluttered with facts

[jbfam4]

2. Will this be reported by the US media?

How much more proof do the American people need to know that this was a war of choice........immoral and unjust. This administration has blood on it's hands.