Senate Committee Report: Intel Community Warned the Administration Iraq Invasion Would Unleash Chaos

May 25 (LPAC)--The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released Friday a 229-page report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq. It shows that the intelligence community predicted chaos and civil war, if Iraq were invaded. The administration went ahead to achieve these results, in the face of this advice. For example, the warning was conveyed that the Iraqi Army must be kept together. Infamously, the Cheney policy dissolved the Iraqi army, throwing the nation deliberately into chaos.

The committee staff compiled its data from intelligence community analyses and from direct debriefings of intelligence officers and officials of the military, State Department and Iraq-based personnel.

The report concluded that the administration had been told the following:

** Political Islam might "take root in postwar Iraq, particularly if economic recovery were slow and foreign troops remained in the country for a long time."

** "Militant Islamists in Iraq might benefit from increases in funding and popular support and could choose to conduct terrorist attacks against US forces in Iraq."

** "Use of violence by competing factions ... Sunni against Shia ... Kurd against Arab; any against the United States -- probably would encourage terrorist groups to take advantage of a volatile security environment to launch attacks within Iraq."

** A "U.S-led defeat and occupation of Arab Iraq probably would boost proponents of political Islam."

** The Intelligence community assessed that "guaranteeing Iran a role in the negotiations on the fate of post-Saddam Iraq might persuade some Iranian officials to pursue an overt and constructive means to influence reconstruction in Iraq."

** "Responsibility for internal security" would mean "retaining the capability to enforce nationwide peace." The Iraqi Regular Army "has been relatively unpoliticized below the command level and, once purged of the security and intelligence officers embedded within it, could be used for security and law enforcement until police or a local gendarme force is established."

Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.) said, "Today's report shows that the intelligence community gave the administration plenty of warning about the difficulties we would face if the decision was made to go to war. These dire warnings were widely distributed at the highest levels of government, and it's clear that the administration didn't plan for any of them."

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), said the committee's report shows the intelligence committee "accurately predicted many aspects of the chaotic landscape that we see in Iraq today." Hagel called for the United States to work with Iran and Syria to solve the Iraq mess.