The Lies That Led Us To Wage Wars

Former CIA Director George Tenet's promise of a "slam dunk" in providing the intelligence required to justify the war with Iraq was not only a pack of intentional lies and misrepresentations, it was also taken out of context.

So what did Tenet really mean when he told President Bush, "It's a slam dunk?" We were misled to believe that Tenet was saying he could produce accurate, reliable, hard intelligence and that it would be a "slam dunk" to present and prove it.

The part we didn't hear, and it is important to understand, is what Bush said to Tenet prior to that statement. Tenet had already briefed Bush on the intelligence he had. It was weak, unreliable and frequently only substantiated by one source. The president was "unimpressed" by the presentation and pressed Tenet saying his information would not "convince Joe Public" and then asked, "This is the best we've got?"

It was then that Tenet replied, "It's a slam dunk." It was then that Tenet promised Bush he would bend the intelligence and provide what was needed to convince Joe Public. He was telling Bush not to worry, he would take care of it. And he did.

The hard intelligence was molded, manipulated and fabricated to fit Bush's preconceived war plan. Tenet, for his part, opted to become a political advocate for Bush's propaganda rather than a protector of the intelligence community.

Office of Special Plans (OSP)

Instead, a rogue Office of Special Plans was created and opened in the Pentagon. It took the hard intelligence from the CIA and others, and transformed it to what the administration wanted it to say. Tenet further ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP. He knew the information Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were giving out was false, but did nothing to disclose it.

The OSP was kept so secret even CIA senior intelligence officers did not know about it. The OSP was cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president.

Fixed Intelligence

Some examples of this fabricated intelligence:

1. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

2. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - George W. Bush, January 28, 2003

3. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W. Bush, March 17, 2003

4. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." - Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003

5. "Saddam possesses enough anthrax and potentially enough technology to send unmanned aircraft on spray attacks that could wipe out a third of the West Coast." - U.S. Rep Mike Rogers, March 16, 2003

6. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - Condoleezza Rice, September 8, 2002

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), is an excellent first-hand source concerning manipulated OSP intelligence because she saw it happening. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon. Her writings provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch a preventive war. She states, " ... the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the 'Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States' agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact." (http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html, http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski-arch.html)

In another article she states, " ... They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002.

The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress." (http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php)

Downing Street Memo

Now, more than two years later, shocking documents proving the facts for war were "fixed" are still being covered up. The Downing Street Memo, written eight months prior to the invasion of Iraq, and other related documents showing the intelligence was fixed, is now the smoking gun. The Times of London printed this explosive document May 1, 2005. But it wasn't until Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent visit when he was asked about it, that it got any headwind here in the states. It is slowly receiving more and more attention here at home. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html)

The memo reveals: