Paul Pillar, Former CIA Iraq Intelligence Coordinator, testified that the Bush Administration ignored the intelligence community's assessments. Pillar told the Senate Committee about "the non-use of intelligence and intelligence assessments in making the decision to go to war in Iraq."
"the intelligence community accessed, for example, that Iraq probably was several years away from development of a nuclear weapon. A judgment at variance with the publicly expressed view of the vice president that Saddam Hussein was fairly close to getting such a weapon."
"The estimate accessed that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction he did have against the United States or to give them to terrorists except perhaps in the extreme case in which we tried to overthrow his regime as with an invasion."
"On the issue of the Saddam regime's relations with terrorist groups, the intelligence community, in the assessments it produced on that subject, never judged that there was anything close to an alliance with al-Qaeda."
The intelligence community concluded "that there was no alliance, sponsorship or patron-client relationship between the Saddam regime and al-Qaeda."
"It also accessed that war and occupation would boost political Islam, increase sympathy for terrorists' objectives and make Iraq a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East. Clearly, little, if any of this, influenced the decision making on going to war."
See the Senate Cmte. Hearing on Iraq Pre-War Intelligence
Also see C.I.A. Warns That a U.S. Attack May Ignite Terror
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