[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 125 (Friday, September 29, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10637-S10639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




A LESSON IN CHERRY-PICKING AND POLITICIZING OUR NATION'S INTELLIGENCE: 
                     THE TERRORISM NIE DECLASSIFIED

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, with the President's recent 
declassification of the Key Judgments of the April National 
Intelligence Estimate, NIE, on Terrorism, the American public can get 
from the Democrats an object lesson in perfect irony.
  For years, the Democrats have accused the Bush administration of 
cherry-picking intelligence to lead the country to war in Iraq. Yet 
here they are cherry-picking intelligence out of this report to make a 
media circus right before the upcoming election.
  First, let me define what I mean by ``cherry-picking.'' This refers 
to a selective use of intelligence to make a politically persuasive 
argument. It is a

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deliberate misrepresentation of a larger, often ambiguous body of 
intelligence reporting.
  From my perspective, the Democrats' politicization of our Nation's 
intelligence is not a pretty picture. NIEs are the top-line product of 
the entire intelligence community.
  They are supposed to be regarded as serious, substantive, consensus 
analysis for top policymakers. NIEs are one of thousands of 
intelligence products we review on the Intelligence Committee. I am on 
that committee, first ranking on that committee on the Republican side.
  Please recall that the Democrats accused the Republicans and the Bush 
administration of cherry-picking intelligence prior to the Iraq war.
  The Senate Select Intelligence Committee's comprehensive review of 
the prewar Iraq intelligence was concluded in July 2004 and made 
available to the public in a detailed 500-page report. It was 
unanimously supported by Democrats and Republicans of the committee. It 
was thorough. It pulled no punches. It was highly critical of the 
systematic failure of our intelligence on Iraq. Our faulty 
intelligence, as the world knows, was similar to the faulty 
intelligence of all of our allied partners.
  The committee's report clearly shows, however, that there was no 
cherry-picking of intelligence because nearly all of the intelligence 
was bad, and there was no finished intelligence that contradicted the 
faulty conclusions our intelligence community reached before the war.
  Recall also that the Democrats have regularly charged the Bush 
administration with politicizing intelligence, implying that 
intelligence was manipulated for political reasons. For example, they 
suggested that Vice President Cheney's visit to the Central 
Intelligence Agency prior to the Iraq war pressured analysts toward 
particular conclusions. The July 2004 report, which was based on 
hundreds of hours of interviews with all these analysts, concluded that 
no such politicization took place. The intelligence was lousy, but it 
wasn't cooked.
  Now comes the latest little circus by many Democrats and many in the 
media in a prepared campaign to manipulate a fragment of a leaked 
classified document.
  Putting aside for the moment the underlying question of whether the 
Iraq war made us safer--a point I will address shortly--the Democrats 
claimed over the weekend and earlier this week that the NIE proved 
their point that the Iraq war had made the terrorists stronger and 
therefore the United States more vulnerable.
  Here are the sentences they quoted as proof:

       We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation 
     of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist 
     success there would inspire more fighters to continue the 
     struggle elsewhere.
       The Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for 
     jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in 
     the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global 
     jihadist movement.

  This is the sentence the Democrats quoted as proof of their critique 
of the Iraq war.
  Let us be honest: The sentence is true. But let us be even more 
honest--and this is distinctly where the Democrats are being 
deliberately dishonest--the sentence is out of context and ignores 
other parts of the NIE, such as the very next sentence, which reads:

       Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be 
     perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be 
     inspired to carry on the fight.

  Can we be honest and admit this sentence is true as well? And can we 
recognize that the only way we prove this second sentence is to sustain 
the fight in Iraq until we have achieved security and stability that 
can be maintained by the Iraqis themselves?
  This has been a classic exercise in spin, cherry-picking, and 
politicization of intelligence, and it stinks.
  The Democrats spun this story all weekend, knowing that responsible 
members of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress could 
not respond without participating in leaking a classified document. The 
Democrats cherry-picked sentences and deliberately used them out of 
context. They conducted this exercise for purposes of supporting their 
antiwar agenda, in an example of egregious politicization of this 
Nation's valuable intelligence process.
  As my colleague on the Intelligence Committee, Senator Bond, has 
said:

       It is time to hit the baloney button.

  We are conducting a war different from any in our Nation's history. 
One of the unique aspects of this war against global terrorism is the 
unprecedented reliance we place on our intelligence community.
  As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I am dedicated to 
supporting this function of our foreign policy, even when that has 
included criticizing systematic failures in collection and analysis, as 
we did with our phase I report released in July 2004. Every day, we see 
examples that the intelligence community's capabilities have improved 
as a result of the lesson learned from that review. Republicans like 
myself have criticized the intelligence community with the focus on 
improving it and have done our best to support it in its vital function 
in this war in which we are engaged today.

  As we have just seen, Democrats cook this Nation's intelligence, 
callously undermining its importance and function. To win a war, you 
need will, but you also need function.
  ``Is the U.S. safer as a result of our invasion of Iraq?'' is a 
central policy question, one that could have been more honestly 
addressed without an exercise in cherry-picking and cooking 
intelligence.
  I always thought that if you have to address an argument dishonestly, 
your position must be weak.
  Are we safer as a result of our invasion of Iraq? There is the 
assessment of the war situation now and the strategic answer. The NIE 
is correct that the Iraq war has opened the battlefront for the global 
jihadists in Iraq. We knew this before the NIE was published last 
April, of course. And we read that last April. I have seen no Bush 
administration official deny this. In fact, General Abizaid in 
Washington last week was blunt about this: We are battling these 
jihadists in Iraq today. And when we defeat them, that defeat will be 
felt throughout the global jihadist movement.
  If we follow some Democrats' advice to withdraw, we will give the 
global jihad movement another Somalia. Our withdrawal from Somalia in 
1993 gave bin Laden his first propaganda point. He concluded that the 
Americans are weak, vulnerable, and easily defeated.
  As far as strategic assessment, I believe the Iraq war has made us 
safer.
  On September 20, 2001, the President addressed the Congress, the 
Nation, and the world in his first major policy address after the 
attacks of September 11. He articulated a new antiterrorism policy, one 
that had not existed up to that point, one that had not been put in 
place under the previous administration.
  From that point on, President Bush said we would go after all terror 
groups within global reach; we would no longer wait for them to attack 
us. The President put all nations that harbor terrorist organizations 
on notice. Iraq was one of these nations. Iraq did not support al-Qaida 
and was not involved in 9/11, but it had a decades' long history of 
supporting terrorists, a view no one in Congress disputed.
  The rationale for Iraq has been criticized and exposed, but one fact 
remains clear: When we took down the Saddam regime, from that day on, 
no regime in the world could conclude that they could harbor terrorists 
without risking consequences. By invading and deposing Saddam, we 
demonstrated to the world our resolve. Had we not done so, based on the 
empty threats and actions of previous administrations, nations 
entertaining terror links could doubt our resolve. From the day we 
acted to take down Saddam, we showed the world our intent behind our 
words. Today, no Nation can doubt this. And in this very real sense, 
America has been made safer. We need to finish the job in Iraq.
  As I have said, that requires the functions of our foreign policy 
apparatus to be fully supported--diplomacy, military, economic, and 
intelligence. I am dedicated to providing this support, positively but 
not uncritically. We also need will. After last weekend's episode of 
cooking intelligence for political purposes, I question what such an 
exercise is intended to achieve when it comes to maintaining our will.

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