President pledges changes after getting scathing assessment (A WMD wrap)

President pledges changes after getting scathing assessment

By Mark Silva
Washington Bureau
Published April 1, 2005


WASHINGTON -- Confronting two large-scale intelligence failures during his tenure, the Sept. 11 attacks and the misreading of Saddam Hussein's arsenal, President Bush has largely escaped voters' wrath by convincing the public he is a man of action who is moving quickly to tackle any problems.

Bush took this tack again Thursday, accepting a presidential commission's damning report on the intelligence community and emphasizing how much he already has done to reorganize intelligence agencies since Sept. 11, 2001. He also promised to keep seeking the "fundamental change" demanded by the commission.

The president tried to identify himself with the commission, portraying his actions and those of the panel as part of one strong push for change. Bush, noting that he created the commission and named its co-chairmen, said he shared the group's call for an overhaul, and added that he's already taken steps "consistent with the commission's recommendations."

Dysfunction persists

Bush has long refused to assign specific blame for intelligence failures to himself or top aides. What is not clear is whether Americans will accept this in the face of this latest, unusually scathing report. The commission made it clear that the dysfunction afflicting U.S. intelligence before the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks persists, concluding bluntly that "today's intelligence community is not a `community' in any meaningful sense."

The commission noted deep in its 600-page report that many previous investigations of U.S. intelligence-gathering have pointed out the flaws. "This commission is not the first to recognize these shortcomings," the report observed. "We trod a well-worn path."
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Yet the president's commission maintains that the new intelligence director's powers are vague and that Bush's plan to have nominee John Negroponte deliver the daily presidential briefing is a waste of Negroponte's time.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0504010188apr01,1,2904225.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-curveball1apr01,0,959265.story?coll=la-home-headlines

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-intel1apr01,0,1593904.story?coll=la-home-headlines

The Washington Post's Walter Pincus and Peter Baker detail the "withering" criticism of the presidential commission that investigated pre-Iraq war intelligence, which, concerned that the same failures could plague estimates of Iran and North Korea's weapons capabilities, offered 74 recommendations to change the intelligence community from "an . . . apparatus plagued by turf battles, wedded to old assumptions and mired in unimaginative thinking." White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said changes would begin to be apparent in two weeks

Data on Iraqi Arms Flawed, Panel Says
Intelligence Commission Outlines 74 Fixes for Bureaucracy

By Walter Pincus and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A01

U.S. intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in their prewar assessments of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and today know "disturbingly little" about the capabilities and intentions of other potential adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, a presidential commission reported yesterday.

While praising intelligence successes in Libya and Pakistan, the commission's report offered a withering critique of the government's collection of information leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, calling its data "either worthless or misleading" and its analysis "riddled with errors." That resulted in one of the "most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history."

The 692-page report to President Bush determined that many of the problems that led to the Iraq breakdown have not been fixed, and warned that they may be undercutting the quality of current U.S. evaluations of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons development. To avoid a repeat performance, the commission produced a set of 74 recommendations intended to "transform" a sprawling intelligence bureaucracy that it described as "fragmented, loosely managed and poorly coordinated."

The report presents the most extensive examination to date of how the United States came to believe that Saddam Hussein was harboring secret weapons of mass destruction, leading to a war that toppled a dictator but turned up no such weapons. The report depicted an intelligence apparatus plagued by turf battles, wedded to old assumptions and mired in unimaginative thinking.

Yet while unstinting in its appraisal of intelligence agencies, the panel that Bush appointed under pressure in February 2004 said it was "not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the faulty information to make perhaps the most critical decision of his presidency. As he accepted the report yesterday, Bush offered no thoughts about relying on flawed intelligence to launch a war and took no questions from reporters. <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15184-2005Mar31.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-curveball1apr01,0,959265.story?coll=la-home-headlines

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-intel1apr01,0,1593904.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"not authorized" to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the faulty information to make perhaps the most critical decision of his presidency.

A hell of a line that main stream media is ignoring as it quotes another area of the report that says political pressure did not change field reports, per the writers of those reports.

What a wuss. He truly is pathetic.

Any commision NOT AUTHORIZED to examine the administration's handling of the available intelligence -- or the pressure exerted on the intelligence community to come up with the right answers -- is a commision that is NOT CREDIBLE.

What about Cheney's unprecedented visits to low-level CIA analysts?

Can anybody say OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS? When the CIA wasn't giving sufficient weight to the lies of Ahmed Chalabi's INC exiles, the neocons set up the OSP in the Pentagon to stovepipe unfiltered "intelligence" to the White House.

About a year ago Rumsfeld was interviewed on Meet The Press, and before Russert asked the first question I remarked that if he didn't bring up the OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS, the interview was a sham.

It was a sham, and so is the entire MSM in letting Bush and his neocon junta pretend to be the VICTIMS of bad intelligence. They are the PERPETRATORS, and should be paying the price politically and criminally.

This latest "report" makes that commission an accomplice in covering up impeachable, imprisonable crimes.

And even if he meant it, so what? He already got his invasion.

Face it ..many of the sheeple are really fascits in white..
when bush says the New England states are unpatriotic..the flag wavers will believe..many New Englanders LOVE bush..

support the troops magnetsI wonder how many SUVers have military srvice or have kids in military???

My spin is not many!!