Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;
Unfortunately, none of this was true.
Which then leads us to the next issue that Rice was hammered about this morning - The 16 Words.
Back in 2003 Rice said on This Week:
The Intelligence Community did not know, at least at levels that got to us (in the White House), that their were serious questions about this report
And today on This Week:
Stephanopolous: But that statement wasn't true. You and Stephen Hadley received a memo in October of 2002 that indicated that there were serious questions [ about the 16 words report].
On both shows, Rice stuck to her talking points.
This has been one of the most investigation issues...
The information was included in the NIE...
Both the Robb-Silbermann Commission and the Select Senate Commitee have addressed this...
I have answered these questions [of Rep Waxman] with hundreds of pages of documents and with several letters...
I answered these questions at my confirmation hearing...
Maybe we [Hadley and I] should have remembered [to keep the 16 words out after the Cincinatti speach], but we didn't
In point of fact neither the Robb-Silberman Commission or the Senate Select Commitee investigation had the authority to address the question of how the Bush Administration used, manipulated and/or ignored the intelligence it was provided.
The Robb-Silbermann commission essentially blames the Intelligence Community for Bush's 16 word mistake.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
