Dispatches: Looking for Intel on the Intel:
"Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a burning question here is how the C.I.A. could have gotten the intelligence about Iraq so wrong.

While American inspectors have yet to wrap up their work in Iraq, there is already an enormous gap between the alarming intelligence assessments prepared before the war and the more modest weapons programs the inspectors have actually uncovered so far."

This is not a dispute among specialists but an issue that raises fundamental questions about the quality of American intelligence and its role in shaping foreign policy. A nation that has embarked on a policy of military pre-emption to neutralize new dangers requires the most reliable and accurate intelligence. It can literally be a matter of war and peace.

Regardless of when the Bush administration made up its mind that Saddam Hussein had to go, it was able to bring the country and Congress along because of intelligence assessments indicating that Iraq was making chemical and biological weapons and actively pursuing nuclear arms.

Despite the secrecy that cloaks American intelligence, much of the material that is needed to evaluate the Central Intelligence Agency's performance is readily available on the Web.

Start with the unclassified version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which circulated within the administration and was made available to lawmakers before the war. It can be found on the Web site of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has done a stellar job of compiling government reports and expert assessments on the subject. The report is posted at ceip.org.

The estimate not only asserts that Iraq had programs to develop weapons of mass destruction — or, as President Bush put it in this year's State of the Union address, "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities" — it also says that Iraq actually possessed stockpiles of chemical and germ weapons and was manufacturing more.

"We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX," said the estimate, which asserted that Iraq had stockpiled at least 100 tons of chemical agents, and as much as 500 tons, adding much of it over the previous year.

The estimate noted that there were important differences within the intelligence community over Iraq's nuclear efforts: the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research was so dubious about the nuclear claims, including the assertion that aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were for a nuclear program, that it stated a vigorous dissent.

While that view was included in the National Intelligence Estimate, the document also noted that most American intelligence organizations believed that there was compelling evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. The estimate stated that it had "high confidence" that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to U.N. resolutions."

The estimate also offered this ominous warning: "We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's W.M.D. efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts." In other words, it is probably worse than we think.

The agency says that it is now reviewing this prewar intelligence, but so far it has provided little indication that it understands where it went wrong. Its analysts still insist that their method was solid, even though it appears to have yielded some seriously wrong answers.&helliip;

http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/Iraq/declassifiedintellreport.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/international/middleeast/29CND-GORD.html?pagewanted=all&position=