Missouri Senator Bond today blamed the Clinton Administration for intelligence failures concerning WMD in Iraq.
The whole article is here:
http://www.ky3.com/newsdetailed.asp?id=7852
SPRINGFIELD -- The United States' pre-war intelligence on Iraq was dead wrong, according to the president's Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite the report, Missouri's senior U.S. senator says the decision to go to war was still the right one.
Bond is a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence. In an interview here on Thursday, Bond said the bad intelligence came from an archaic system based on assumptions rather than thorough analysis and human intelligence. He also placed much of the blame on the Clinton administration.
The commission's report says the harm done to American credibility will take years to undo.
"The intelligence community had not challenged its own assumptions, did not provide the caveats they should have about some of their sources," said Bond.
The senator notes that the commission cleared the Bush administration of manipulating the intelligence for political purposes. He took a shot at the Democrats.
"The Clinton administration cut the intel budget by 20 percent. The Director of Intelligence got rid of spies -- human intelligence that we badly needed in the war against terror," said Bond.
(There are still those willing to point out, however, that though most of the world believed that WMD existed in Iraq, they didn't feel the need to bomb in there and take over.)
"An expert on terrorism, Southwest Missouri State University political science professor Mehrdad Haghayeghi, says many Democrats and even some Republicans never would have voted for the war if the president hadn't hyped the threat.
"Traditionally, intelligence is the foundation for policymaking. In this case, unfortunately, the Bush administration had devised the policy of intervention in Iraq and looked for intelligence that fit that policy," said Haghayeghi."
Will we ever see the day when all of Bush's failures are not blamed on Clinton? Jeebus.