Bush retold this lie today in his speech.
Think Progress does a nice job correcting the record with specific examples of manipulations.
What The Senate Intel Commitee Found: Bush Admin Manipulated Case For War:
Essentially, the Bush administration took the intelligence that was presented to them in the classified NIE and twisted it to present a stronger case for war in the public version of the NIE. Here are some examples:
Classified NIE: “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons” of such poisons.
Classified NIE: “Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing … a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives.”
Unclassified NIE: The phrase “although we have little specific information” was deleted. Instead, the public report said, “Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents.”
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]
Unclassified NIE: The words “potentially against the U.S. homeland” are inserted at the end of the statement.
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]
Classified NIE: Stated Iraq was developing unmanned aerial vehicles “probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents.”
Unclassified NIE: A footnote in the classified version from the Air Force stating its disagreement with this claim was eliminated. The Senate Committee report stated the public NIE missed “the fact that… [the] agency with primary responsibility for technological analysis on UAV programs did not agree with the assessment.”
[Senate Intel Cmte Report]
Classified NIE: Included a reference to State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research dissenting view on whether Iraq would have a nuclear weapon this decade.
Unclassified NIE: Did not contain any mention of INR’s dissent.
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