Representative Press Blog

Reposted:
The Problem Was Not "Faulty Intelligence," the Problem Was Dishonestly Selecting And Omitting Intelligence

"when the Bush administration began gearing up for war with Iraq in 2002, it found that selective citation of Kamel's testimony could be very helpful in making its case. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an August 2002 speech (8/26/02) that the Iraqi regime had been "very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continued "to pursue the nuclear program they began many years ago." To back this up these claims, Cheney added, "We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law"—a reference to Kamel.

In a Chicago Tribune op-ed (9/10/02), former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team Scott Ritter pointed out that Cheney had left out a critical part of Kamel's story:

Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a U.N. special commission, Hussein Kamel reiterated his main point - that nothing was left. "All chemical weapons were destroyed," he said. "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed."

Nevertheless, the administration continued to selectively use Kamel's disclosures to bolster its case that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of banned weapons. "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX," then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his February 5, 2003 speech to the U.N. "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Powell did not note that Kamel had also reported that this nerve gas, along with all other such weapons, had been destroyed years earlier (Extra!, 5-6/03)." - Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop' Star defector Hussein Kamel said weapons were destroyed

(Above was originally posted by me at 2/18/2006 04:41:00 AM Oddly, I don't see this post when I look at the Feb archive or my blog edit entries, it isn't there so I decided to repost it. Linking to it still works: http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/02/problem-was-not-faulty-inteligence.html )