Prewar Iraq Intel Faulted

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading figure in the Bush administration's march to war in
Iraq used questionable intelligence about
Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda to help justify the 2003 invasion, a
Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report on Friday.

The conclusion by former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith's office that there was a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda was inconsistent with the intelligence community's view, the Pentagon inspector general's report said.
Acting inspector general Thomas Gimble, who produced the classified report after one-year investigation, concluded Feith was authorized by senior Pentagon officials to pursue alternative intelligence analyses and his actions were lawful.
But Feith's actions were sometimes "inappropriate" because they "did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community," an unclassified two-page executive summary of the report said.

Top administration officials, including Vice President
Dick Cheney, used claims of a relationship between al Qaeda and prewar Iraq to suggest that Saddam could have had a role in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Senior officials at the time, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were dissatisfied that the
CIA assessment did not more closely link Iraq and al Qaeda.

When I first saw this article my reaction was, "well, duh!". It' s been obvious from before the war even started that the Bush administration had an agenda and was determined to SELL the invasion of Iraq to the American people. I don't know about the rest of you, but personally I find a presidental administration lying and fudging intelligence in order to start an unnecessary war reprehensible and think it sure as hell should be illegal!!