Following the July 9 release of the findings of a yearlong inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the panel's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, said Congress might not have approved the Iraq war, if lawmakers had known the truth.

The committee's top Democrat said he had no doubt: The resolution authorizing war would not have got the sweeping approval it did if the threat had been correctly understood.

The report, which was highly critical of departing Director George Tenet, said the CIA kept key information from its and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

"In short, we went to war in Iraq based on false claims," said the committee's top Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. He said the Senate would not have authorized that war with three-quarters of lawmakers approving "if we had known what we know now."

The Japan Times Weekly: July 17, 2004
(C) All rights reserved