The CIA knew the depense department knew of Iraqi insurgency--but did nothing: "the U.S. intelligence community ... steadfastly has resisted serious attempts to exploit and release the information captured in postwar Iraq.".

• Author: Hayes, Stephen F.
• Position: The World Today - Speech

I WOULD LIKE TO EXAMINE the fundamental misconception about the Iraqi war--particularly among the elite--and consider what it says about the U.S.'s conduct during the global war on terror and our prospects for winning. For five years, beginning just days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, one question has dominated the national debate: Is Iraq part of the war on terror or a distraction from it? This was front and center prior to the 2002 elections when Congress voted by heavy margins to authorize war. It was a central issue in the 2004 presidential campaign and, in a sense, it was one of the primary issues in the 2006 congressional elections. Yet, as much as this is the fulcrum of the national debate on U.S. foreign and defense policy over the last hall-decade, few people have addressed it seriously.

War opponents have taken to making claims that are demonstrably false. Rep. John R Murtha (D.-Pa.), a leading critic of the Iraqi War, appeared on "Meet the Press," telling host Tim Russet: "There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there. None. There was no connection with Al Qaeda. There was no connection with terrorism in Iraq itself." Before that, a John Kerry campaign spokesman stated, "Iraq and terrorism had nothing to do with one another. Zero." Network television anchors tell us the same thing. A high-profile Washington Post columnist described Iraq's connections to terrorism as "fictive." On and on it goes.

The Bush Administration has neglected to respond to these challenges. What is the truth about Iraq and terrorism? Why doesn't the public hear about it? Why does it matter? In the months and years before the Iraqi invasion, the U.S. intelligence community--with a few notable exceptions--believed that secularist Iraqis never would work with radicals like Osama bin Laden, and that fundamentalists never would cooperate with an infidel like Saddam Hussein. On what did they base these opinions? Apparently, not much.

Before 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community never penetrated the senior leadership of either Iraq or Al Qaeda--two of America's most dangerous and determined enemies. Think about that. Journalist Bob Woodward interviewed the head of the Iraqi operations group at the CIA, who told him that CIA reporting sources inside Iraq before the war were thin. How thin? "I can count them on one hand," he maintained, "and still pick my nose."

CIA needs to focus

In July 2004, a report from the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded: "The Central Intelligence Agency did not have a focused human intelligence collection strategy targeting Iraq's links to terrorism until 2002. The CIA had no [redacted] sources on the ground in Iraq reporting specifically on terrorism." That same report quoted an unnamed intelligence community official who made this breathtaking admission: "I don't think we were really focused on the [counterterrorism] side, because we weren't concerned about the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] going out and proactively conducting terrorist attacks. It wasn't until we realized that there was the possibility of going to war that we had to get a handle on that."

Again, think about that. Saddam Hussein claimed that the Mother of All Battles, as he called the Gulf War, never ended. His government harbored several of the world's most notorious terrorists--Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal among them. Within days of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, his government facilitated the escape from U.S. authorities of the Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for that bombing...