A bipartisan US Senate report to be issued today that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, congressional officials said Wednesday. But Democrats are maneuvering to raise the issue in separate statements.
Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, the officials said, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and al-Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.
The effect may be to provide an opening for US President George W. Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the CIA and its departing chief, George Tenet, rather than Bush and his top aides.
Still, Democrats will try to focus attention on the issue by releasing as many as a half-dozen "additional views" to supplement the bipartisan report.
"How the administration used the intelligence was very troubling," Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said in an interview this week. "They took a flawed set of intelligence reports and converted it into a rationale for going to war."
The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused their criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.
The plan to release the Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq today was announced Wednesday by the committee. Congressional officials said the CIA had agreed that most of the report could be made public.
The public version of the report will include more than 80 percent of a classified, 410-page version approved unanimously by the committee, the officials said. A review by the CIA that was completed last month recommended that nearly half of the report be classified. But the panel's Republican and Democratic leaders objected strongly, and they won concessions during negotiations that were completed over the weekend.
The February agreement to divide the inquiry into two parts reflected what both Republicans and Democrats on the committee portrayed as a grudging compromise. Until then, Senator Pat Roberts, the top Republican on the panel, had insisted that the question of how the administration used the intelligence exceeded the committee's scope. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat, had insisted that the initial inquiry, focusing on the intelligence agencies, be expanded to include the question of whether public statements by government officials had been substantiated by intelligence information.
Both sides say they are committed to completing the second stage of the inquiry as soon as possible. But the committee also plans to begin work on recommendations for broader changes in intelligence agencies to address the shortcomings detailed in the report, leaving little time in an election year to complete an inquiry that would focus on the Bush administration and would almost certainly splinter along party lines.
The Senate report, the result of more than a year's work by the panel's staff, is the first of three to be issued this summer that are expected to be damning of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The presidential commission on the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to release its final report this month, while Charles Duelfer, who is heading what has been an unsuccessful effort to find illicit weapons in Iraq, is expected to report next month or in September.
Roberts, the committee chairman, said last week that the 120 conclusions spelled out in the report "literally beg for changes within the intelligence community."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique