Friday, February 13, 2004

Happy Friday the 13th.

Apparently that bad luck stuff only applies to the B*** Administration:

Senate's Iraq Probe to Include Bush, Aides

...New areas of inquiry will include "whether any influence was brought to bear on anyone to shape their analysis to support policy objectives," the statement said. Sources involved in the investigation said they had turned up no evidence so far that there was such pressure, or that analysts shaded their assessments to please the White House.

The committee said it would examine the role played by a controversial intelligence unit set up secretly at the Pentagon to search for ties between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The unit in the so-called Office of Special Plans has been accused of cherry-picking data to help bolster White House claims of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties that the CIA and other agencies viewed far more skeptically.

The committee also will focus new scrutiny on the intelligence community's use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group during Saddam Hussein's regime that lobbied for years for a U.S. effort to oust the Iraqi president, and whose leaders have ties to senior members of the Bush administration. Critics say the INC has served up a stream of Iraqi defectors with exaggerated or unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons programs and other activities.

But the most significant shift for the committee is its determination to now examine "whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq" by administration figures were "substantiated by intelligence information." The statement said the committee would examine public comments and claims made not only by the current administration but by officials in the Clinton administration....

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