"The report was an inventory of what U.S. intelligence knew—or more importantly didn’t know—about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Its assessment was blunt: “We’ve struggled to estimate the unknowns. ... We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program.”
Myers already knew about the report. The Joint Staff’s director for intelligence had prepared it, but Rumsfeld’s urgent tone said a great deal about how seriously the head of the Defense Department viewed the report’s potential to undermine the Bush administration’s case for war. But he never shared the eight-page report with key members of the administration such as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell or top officials at the CIA, according to multiple sources at the State Department, White House and CIA who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. Instead, the report disappeared, and with it a potentially powerful counter-narrative to the administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons posed a grave threat to the U.S. and its allies, which was beginning to gain traction in major news outlets, led by the New York Times.
While the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iraq was at the heart of the administration's case for war, the JCS report conceded: “Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”" Politico
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530#ixzz40pNX4o5G
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I missed this in Politico last month, but a kindly friend who likes to be known as "Bigfoot Six" brought it to my attention. A .pdf of a scan of the document can be found at the links below.
The J-2 section of the JCS staff is a bit of a bureaucratic fiction. There are a few officers on the Joint Staff who are called the "J-2 Section" (intelligence directorate - including the USAF two star who signed this report) but DIA manages the function and does all the real work.
The basic story here is that Rumsfeld asked the J-2 in September 2002 what we (the US) did not know about Iraqi WMD programs. DIA labored and produced the enclosed report that said clearly that although they (J-2/DIA) had many assumptions about Iraqi WMD, the authors knew precious little about the actual programs.
This was not a desired response and Rummy sent the paper to General Richard Myers, USAF (then chairman of the JCS) covered by a rather panicky sounding note.
So, pilgrims, the BS about the "go to war decision" having been based on bad intelligence is just that, BS.
I don't think Bush 43 lied to the American people. I think he was bull-dozed by the neocons like most Americans.
Interestingly, this document was released and declassified in 2011 and was at some point in the "Rumsfeld Archive." That is Rummy's "how great I am" archive. The funny little running horse stamp is from the Rumsfeld Archive.
Seems like there ought to be a criminal conspiracy charge available for what Rumsfeld and Myers did and also did not do about this.
Once again the brave boys and girls at DIA deserved our gratitude for the risk they took in writing this document. pl
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2697361/Myers-J2-Memo.pdf
It's surely no longer a surprise or a secret that the intelligence was 'fixed' to support the policy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo
'C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
Posted by: cynic | 25 February 2016 at 06:40 AM