CIA’s Bad Intelligence

Former arms inspector David Kay is now backing his assertion that Saddam Hussein’s so-called weapons of mass destruction probably did not exist by blaming it all on bad intelligence (“Iraq Weapons Data Flawed, Congress Told,” Jan. 29).

“We were all wrong,” Kay says, and then goes on to suggest that we now have to investigate our own intelligence community -- and the CIA, under the leadership of the once-honest George Tenet, simply knuckles under.

If I were to believe this latest line of stonewalling, I would have to assume that (1) all our military operations are wild stabs in the dark and (2) if only we had known the truth, we wouldn’t have had to invade Iraq.

What baloney. We all know the Bush administration was looking for a good reason to dethrone Saddam Hussein since day one and that U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix was closer to the truth all along than all of our politicians who tried so hard to discredit him.

The only thing more disturbing than the shameless arrogance of President Bush and his crew is the sheer number of Americans who simply believe what they are told in hopes of watching the Super Bowl undisturbed by unnecessary thinking. We are headed down a dangerous road indeed.

Bob Loza

Burbank

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Kay’s report to Congress as well as Britain’s findings against the BBC (“Inquiry Clears Blair of Charges on Iraq,” Jan. 29) prove that neither the Blair nor Bush administrations lied about their reasons for enforcing U.N. Resolution 1441.

Any more claims by the Democratic hopefuls will prove them the liars.

Don Ruh

La Quinta

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When the CIA saw the script for Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech, the White House was asked to remove references to Iraq’s weapons programs because the CIA knew that the evidence was shaky at best. In particular, the document purporting to show that Hussein had tried to buy nuclear materiel was widely known to be fraudulent.

This isn’t what White House officials wanted to hear, so they strong-armed the CIA into vetting the intelligence and went ahead with what they knew to be unsubstantiated evidence of weapons programs.

This isn’t a failure of the intelligence community. It’s a failure of leadership at the highest level.

John Wolfenden

Sherman Oaks

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Kay, like all the others in the Bush administration, continues to point the finger of blame at the CIA.

Add to that the unpardonable sin of this administration’s outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Add to that Vice President Dick Cheney’s insistence that the flatbed trailers found in Iraq are evidence of a mobile weapons lab in spite of massive intelligence to the contrary (Jan. 23).

I doubt that the CIA will take these insults lying down. We may very well see a spectacle on par with the Army-McCarthy hearings as congressional supporters of our military and intelligence community take on Bush over his misuse of intelligence to mount a preordained war to topple Hussein.

Kevin B. Powell

Long Beach