My priors include all the agencies (the Intelligence Community, arguably the deep state) having ulterior political and personal motives. Does noone remember the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax that the CIA cooked up for GWB?
I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.
The CIA did not cook up the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax. Paul Wolfowitz had to create an entirely new intelligence agency with hand-picked analysts to get that result, because the existing agencies refused to make that claim.
According to Iraq general, WMD were moved to Syria about 6 month prior to invasion, then Syrian government used them against rebels.
HANNITY: So he had them.
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: Where were they? And were they moved and where?
SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...
HANNITY: You know for a fact he moved these weapons to Syria?
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: How do you know that?
SADA: I know it because I have got the captains of the Iraqi airway that were my friends, and they told me these weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria.
BECKEL: How did he move them, general? How were they moved?
SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” George W Bush.
We went into Iraq because the White House latched on to insufficient and contested intel of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq (the yellowcake and the aluminum tubes). It wasn’t about some rusted old artillery rounds with chemical weapons in them.
Seriously, I remember the Bush admin going after the wife of a CIA operative by leaking her identity after he spoke out about the war intel being bullshit. As someone who was following the Iraq war from the left side and pretty disgusted by it it definitely seemed like it was being pushed hardest by the GOP with anti-war information coming out of the CIA or even military. Granted leakers don't represent the opinions of an agency but this narrative that the CIA was the real villain (not that they aren't) that hoodwinked the poor GOP strikes me revisionist whitewashing.
> I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.
There were a lot of indications that it was wrong even at the time, like the inspectors’ reports. We knew about the unreliability of the dodgy dossier and how baseless Khidir Hamza was. The satellite evidence was sketchy and the rest was contradictory. Al-Qaeda was also not there and we also knew that. Let’s not rewrite history: there is no certainty in intelligence, but anyone not in the CIA’s pocket knew it was most likely wrong, a far cry from what you need to legitimately attack a country.
I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.