Brokaw seems to be on Bush's payroll... He really talked as if it was not an established fact that Cheney and Bush and company cooked the intelligence books on Iraq...
Here's some evidence from 2002. Note that the sources are highly placed insiders, and these are from reputable publications:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676Houston Chronicle
Oct. 8, 2002, 10:47AM
Some administration officials expressing misgivings on IraqBy WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight-Ridder Tribune News
WASHINGTON -- While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.
These officials charge that
administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.
They charge that
the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary."Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews.
No one who was interviewed disagreed.
<more>
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.htmlThe Pentagon Muzzles the CIADevising bad intelligence to promote bad policy
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 12.16.02
The American Prospect
Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war. These morsels sometimes go directly to the president.
The war over intelligence is a critical part of a broader offensive by the party of war within the Bush administration against virtually the entire expert Middle East establishment in the United States -- including State Department, Pentagon and CIA area specialists and leading military officers.
<snip>
But the sharpest battle is over the CIA.
"There is tremendous pressure on to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted," says Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. What's unfolding is a campaign by well-placed hawks to undermine the CIA's ability to provide objective, unbiased intelligence to the White House.<more>
Someone needs to get this out. Or maybe the strategy is to wait a bit more, until the real campaign is on, and then the CIA guys will come out and say, yes, indeed, books were cooked...
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