Examining the Continuing Iraq Pre-war Intelligence Myths

US Senate Republican Policy Committee

• Critics of the Iraq war continue to reissue their assertions/charges that the President “manufactured” or “misused” intelligence to justify the war.
• In the most egregious cases, they continue to promulgate misleading critiques involving:
  • Iraq’s procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes;
  • the source code-named “Curveball”;
  • claims that Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (“INC”) tricked the United States into war; and
  • the State Department “dissent” holding that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program.
• When the facts surrounding these issues are examined, it becomes clear that it is not the President who is misrepresenting information; rather, it is the critics.
• The Department of Energy’s intelligence agency was in the minority when it assessed that the aluminum tubes were not destined for a nuclear program, and DOE still concluded, overall, that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
• Policymakers did not deliberately misuse Curveball’s information; they were never even made aware of hints that Curveball might be unreliable.
• Intelligence professionals concluded that the program by which they obtained access to information about Iraq through the INC was a valuable program. Moreover, the INC’s information was essentially irrelevant to the intelligence community’s pre-war assessments.
• The “alternative view” of the State Department’s intelligence agency, INR, was no alternative. It still concluded that Iraq was “pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons-related capabilities.”