C.I.A. Smacks White House

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Alternate Brain comments on some interesting news: the CIA is lashing back at the Bush administration for not heeding their predictions on a post-invasion struggle between Iraq’s various ethnic groups:

A newly released report published by the CIA rebukes the Bush administration for not paying enough attention to prewar intelligence that predicted the factional rivalries now threatening to split Iraq.

Policymakers worried more about making the case for the war, particularly the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, than planning for the aftermath, the report says.

Well, we already new that the Bush administration dropped the ball when it came to post-war Iraq. What makes this new report interesting is that it further reveals how the administration picked and chose which bits of intelligence it found relevant.

As the USA Today story notes:

In an ironic twist, the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right.

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