[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 164 (Wednesday, November 12, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S14794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         INTELLIGENCE FAILURES

  Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an article 
entitled ``The Stovepipe'' by Seymour Hersh that appeared in a recent 
edition of The New Yorker magazine.
  The article outlines a series of disturbing intelligence failures 
within the Bush administration leading up to the war in Iraq. From 
ignoring career intelligence analysts to relying on unreliable raw 
data, the article makes the case that senior members of the Bush 
administration often ignored information that did not fit their 
preconceived view of the situation in Iraq and pushed the intelligence 
community to come up with information that would support their 
position, regardless of its accuracy. In particular, the article 
outlines the practice of ``stovepiping'' information in which 
intelligence was passed up through the administration without 
subjecting it to a thorough review by intelligence professionals.
  The bad intelligence that resulted from this process was then used to 
convince our Nation of the need to engage in a near-unilateral, pre-
emptive war in Iraq to protect the American people from what was 
described as an imminent threat from Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction.
  As a result of this go it alone approach in Iraq, the Bush 
administration has alienated much of the world, told U.S. taxpayers 
that they are financially responsible for rebuilding Iraq, and ordered 
more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops to stay in Iraq for the 
foreseeable future--yet no evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction have been found.
  Mr. President, there is no doubt that at one time Iraq possessed 
chemical weapons. We know that Saddam Hussein used these weapons during 
the Iran-Iraq war and on his own people. There is also no doubt that at 
one point Saddam Hussein pursued a nuclear weapons program. However, 
the Iraq Survey Group--the group charged with finding Iraqi weapons of 
mass destruction--has yet to turn up any proof of the huge WMD 
stockpiles and nuclear weapons program of which the Bush administration 
repeatedly told us they had evidence.
  It is clear that the world and the Iraqi people are better off 
without Saddam Hussein. He was a brutal dictator who terrorized his own 
people and destabilized the entire Middle East. I am extremely proud of 
the men and women of our Armed Forces for their actions during the war 
and the ongoing efforts to stabilize the country. Now that we are 
there, we cannot ``cut and run'' and we must provide our troops with 
the resources they need to complete their mission and to return home as 
soon as possible.
  However, I am deeply concerned that we sent our sons and daughters to 
war based largely on what turns out to be faulty intelligence. The ends 
of the war do not justify the means by which the Bush administration 
convinced the American people that this war was necessary. That is why 
I believe we need to have an independent investigation into the 
acquisition and use of intelligence leading up to the decision to go to 
war in Iraq, not as a political attack, but as a way to make sure that 
future decisions about whether or not our country goes to war based on 
the best possible intelligence.
  Mr. President, I encourage all of my colleagues to read this 
important Hersh article from The New Yorker of October 21, 2003.

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