Bogus Intelligence: The Same Officials Who Pushed the Iraq War Are Now Stirring Up Anti-Russia Hysteria

By Washington's Blog
Global Research, January 07, 2017
Washington's Blog 6 January 2016
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The main U.S. intelligence official pushing claims that Russia hacked the Democratic party is James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence.

But Clapper was responsible for a lot of the bogus intelligence which led to the Iraq war.  Newsweek reported in 2010:

President Obama’s nomination of Pentagon intelligence chief James Clapper as intelligence czar could reignite the Bush-era debate over how and why agencies overstated Saddam Hussein’s weapons-of-mass-destruction arsenal before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Clapper played an important role in that estimate; from 2001 to 2006 he headed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon unit responsible for interpreting spy-satellite photos and other technically gathered intelligence like air particles and soil samples. And now the conservative Washington Times is reviving the argument, reporting that in Clapper’s judgment the Iraqi dictator evaded the post-invasion WMD search by hiding at least part of the arsenal across the border in shortly before the invasion.

Clapper himself told Congress yesterday that his “fingerprints” were all over the Iraq intelligence estimate.

The architect of the NSA’s global surveillance system (Bill Binney) and a 27-year CIA veteran who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to both Democratic and Republican presidents and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Ray McGovern) wrote yesterday:

Mr. Clapper has admitted giving Congress on March 12, 2013, false testimony regarding the extent of NSA collection of data on Americans. Four months later, after the Edward Snowden revelations, Mr. Clapper apologized to the Senate for testimony he admitted was “clearly erroneous.” That he is a survivor was already apparent by the way he landed on his feet after the intelligence debacle on Iraq.

Mr. Clapper was a key player in facilitating the fraudulent intelligence. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put Mr. Clapper in charge of the analysis of satellite imagery, the best source for pinpointing the location of weapons of mass destruction — if any.

When Pentagon favorites like Iraqi émigré Ahmed Chalabi plied U.S. intelligence with spurious “evidence” on WMD in Iraq, Mr. Clapper was in position to suppress the findings of any imagery analyst who might have the temerity to report, for example, that the Iraqi “chemical weapons facility” for which Mr. Chalabi provided the geographic coordinates was nothing of the kind. Mr. Clapper preferred to go by the Rumsfeldian dictum: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

***

A year after the war began, Mr. Chalabi told the media, “We are heroes in error. As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful.” By that time it was clear there were no WMD in Iraq. When Mr. Clapper was asked to explain, he opined, without adducing any evidence, that they probably were moved into Syria.

Similarly, Newsweek called Lindsey Graham:

One of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq War ….

John McCain was another of the main Iraq war boosters.

Now Graham is calling for throwing “rocks, not pebbles” at Russia.

And McCain is alleging that Russia hacked the U.S. … and that it constitutes an act of war.

The same thing is true of the mainstream media: the same numbskulls who championed the Iraq war are now stirring up anti-Russian hysteria.
Articles by: Washington's Blog

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