The Senate Buries an Investigation

(originally posted June 13, 2007)

On May 25, 2007 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence filed a report with the President Pro Tempore concerning the pre-war intelligence assessments on post-war Iraq. It seems the committee came to the following conclusions about issues clearly raised by the intelligence community:

• Democracy: Establishing a stable government would be a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.


• Terrorism: Al-Qaida would see an opportunity to accelerate its operational tempo and increase terrorist attacks during and after a US-Iraq war. The increase in terror would spike and decrease in 3 to 5 years and in this period the lines between Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups would become blurred. Softer targets, such as US citizens overseas would become more inviting targets.


• Domestic conflict: Iraq is a deeply divided society that would likely erupt in violent conflict unless an occupying power prevented it.


• Influence of Iraq’s neighbors: Neighbor’s would jockey for influence in Iraq with activities ranging from rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure to fomenting strife among Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups. Iranian leaders would try to influence the shape of post-Hussein Iraq to preserve national security and demonstrate Iran is an important regional leader.


• WMD: any action to eliminate Iraqi WMD would not cause other regional states to abandon their WMD programs or desire to develop such programs.


• Security: the Iraqi government would have to walk a fine line between dismantling the worst aspects of Saddam’s police, security and intelligence forces and retaining the capability to enforce nationwide peace.
  

And there is more… much, much more. Since these intelligence assessments were conducted pre-war and were not classified it is information that was available to all members of the House and Senate when they voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq.

So the question remains, how can people who voted for the war, such as Hilary Clinton, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd and John Kerry say they were misled by the White House? The official intelligence statements were extraordinarily accurate. This report not only supports the claims by the intelligence agencies that they were not influenced by the White House to portray the war as anything other than what it was, it actually refutes any such allegations.

And why is the Senate keeping this report under wraps, why not inform the people that their investigation proved that the intelligence corps were correct and they knew Iraq was going to be a long time commitment with the likelihood of internal strife and violence with participation from Al-Qaeda and Iraq’s neighbors?

Why is the Senate afraid to tell people Iraq is turning out exactly as the intelligence they used to authorize the war predicted it would?