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Most of the judgment America's intelligence agencies made about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion were "dead wrong" and the flaws were still common across the intelligence community, a presidential commission said in a report released Thursday.
"We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the commission said, "This was a major intelligence failure."
Bush set up the commission a year ago under increasing pressure to look into the apparent US intelligence over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which the Bush administration used as a main justifications for launching the war in March 2003.
The report offers a scathing review of the Central Intelligence Agency for concluding that Saddam Hussein had secret weapons that ultimately were never found, while also taking aim at the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other agencies.
The commission said the flaws found in the intelligence community's Iraq performance "are still all too common" two years after the Iraqi war. "Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors."
The report calls for "dramatic change" among the intelligence agencies. "We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies."
(Xinhua News Agency April 1, 2005)
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