CIA 'wildly inconsistent' about policing Iraq claims

White House exaggerations on Iraq's alleged WMD often went unchallenged.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

USA Today reports that Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet acknowledged Tuesday before the US Senate Armed Services Committee that the CIA was "wildly inconsistent" about policing White House statements on Iraq before the invasion last year. Under questioning from Senate Democrats, Mr. Tenet said that he was "too busy" to check every public utterance by Bush administration officials, but said he had no major problems with the case the White House made before going to war in Iraq.

US Senator Ted Kennedy (D) of Mass. called into question the sharp difference between CIA statements that there was no imminent threat from Iraq and comments from President Bush about the "grave" and "unique and urgent" threat posed by that nation.

"You can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" Kennedy said. "If you're saying that there was no immediate threat and you hear either the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense using that super-heated rhetoric, we have to ask, what is your responsibility?" Tenet replied, "I have a responsibility. I lived up to my responsibility." Tenet said that when he was aware that a senior administration official exaggerated the Iraqi threat, he took action internally.

Knight-Ridder reported Tuesday, however, that Tenant did reject recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program. Tenet also told the committee that he had spoken privately to Mr. Cheney about his recent comments that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a biological weapons program. Tenet said no conclusions have been reached about the trailers.

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