Bush Ignored Pre-war Intelligence and Democrats Ignore Accountability« Thread Started on May 31, 2007, 1:30pm » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bush Ignored Pre-war Intelligence and Democrats Ignore Accountabilityread at source> http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=20906The Senate Intelligence Committee issues a report on prewar predictions of post-invasion Iraq, but fails to cover how Bush ignored assessments of trouble ahead, notes David Corn. As part of its much belated inquiry into the prewar intelligence, the Senate intelligence committee released a 229-page report on Friday on the intelligence produced by US intelligence agencies on what could be expected to occur in Iraq following a US invasion. No surprise: The intelligence community foresaw the likelihood of chaos and trouble inside and outside Iraq. As the committee's report notes, before the war the top intelligence analysts of the United States government concluded that creating a stable democratic government in Iraq would be a difficult and "turbulent" challenge: • sectarian conflict could erupt in a post-invasion Iraq; • al Qaeda would view a US invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to increase and enhance its terrorist attacks; • a heightened terrorist threat would exist for several years; • the US occupation of Iraq would probably cause a rise of Islamic fundamentalism; • cause a boost in funding for terrorist groups; and, • Iran's role in the region would enlarge. Prior to the war, the experts had predicted the tough times ahead. In the book I co-wrote with Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, we reported that the intelligence community and the Pentagon had produced several estimates in early 2003 that warned about what could happen following a US invasion. In his memoirs, former CIA director George Tenet quoted from some of these intelligence assessments. And the Senate intelligence committee report reprints two such studies. The intelligence establishment blew the WMD call - partly because it failed to accept its own skeptical intelligence evaluations - but it was largely correct about what would transpire after the United States entered Iraq.