Talk:Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence

message: I think this article's NPOV would be improved if the report's official findings were summarized more aggressively (I mean, shortened), and if the comments in the appendix to the report by John Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat, were mentioned. Rockefeller wrote in that appendix:
:Phase one of the Committee’s report on U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraq details how the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA) and the Intelligence Community as a whole ofien failed to produce accurate intelligence analysis on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist organizations.
:Regrettably, the report paints an incomplete picture of what occurred during this period of time. The Committee set out to examine ten areas of investigation relating to pre-war intelligence on Iraq and we completed only five in this report. The scope of our investigation was divided in a way so as to prevent a complete examination of all the matters within the Committee’s jurisdiction at one time.
:The central issue of how intelligence on Iraq was used or misused by Administration officials in public statements and reports was relegated to the second phase of the Committee’s investigation, along with other issues related to the intelligence activities of Pentagon policy officials, pre-war intelligence assessments about post-war Iraq, and the role played by the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, which claims to have passed “raw intelligence” and defector infomation directly to the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice President.
:As a result, the Committee’s phase one report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which Intelligence Community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public.
My (admittedly partisan, and anti-Bush) impression of the events surrounding the report's release was that Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) was able to successfully truncate the report's scope so as to de-emphasize the evidence alluded to by Rockefeller on how the Bush administration pressured the intelligence agencies. The Democrats on the committee, faced with a choice of either 1) no report being released before the 2004 election, or 2) a truncated report being released, with the damning information available in the appendix, chose the second option, and signed off on the report in its truncated form.
Given this context, the existing entry's conclusion with Roberts' statement that "Finally, the committee found no evidence that the intelligence community’s mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure." seems misleading to me.
I'm new to wikipedia editing, and while I want to live up to the dictum to be bold and just edit to fix the problem, I'm not sure I want to jump right in and make a change of that magnitude without some input from the more-experienced hands, especially given the issue's potential divisiveness. John Callender 09:41, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV issue 

message: Some New York Times articles covering this follow. For those that have been rotated into their for-pay category, I give the NYT-supplied abstract. (Login required to follow the links):
* [Senate Rejects Panel on Prewar Iraq Data] - 17 July 2003 (Senate Republicans resist establishing a panel to investigate the use of intelligence):
:ABSTRACT - Republican-led Senate defeats effort to establish bipartisan panel to examine use of intelligence in prelude to Iraq war; vote comes as Democrats press Bush administration on rationale for war as well as on long-term costs of military operation; CIA director George J Tenet is questioned for five hours behind closed doors by Senate Intelligence Committee about his agency's handling of intelligence as senior Democrats step up criticism of administration's Iraq policies; photo of Sen Jon Corzine, whose proposal for independent commission is defeated by vote of 51 to 45
* [Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence - 8 July 2004 (Early news report on Democrat's dissatisfaction with the way the report turned out):
:ABSTRACT - Bipartisan Senate report that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq is expected to sidestep question of how Bush administration used that information to make case for war; under deal reached between Republicans and Democrats, administration's role will not be addressed until Senate Intelligence Comm completes further stage of its inquiry, probably not until after Nov elections; as result, initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not White House, in assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that administration used as rationale for war; this may provide opening for Pres Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about threat posed by Iraq; Democrats will try to focus attention on issue by releasing 'additional views' to supplement bipartisan report
* [News Conference on Senate Intelligence Committee Report] - 9 July 2004 (Transcript of press conference by Roberts and Rockefeller announcing the report.)
:QUESTION: And you are now saying it was political pressure. Then why did you vote for the report?
:ROCKEFELLER: That's me. (LAUGHTER) Because there are 511 pages in the report. And the vast amount of that report, which covered basically only the prewar intelligence, basically on weapons of mass destruction, was superb. And we had major disagreements on pressure. And I felt that the definition of pressure was very narrowly drawn in the final report. And that is that, sort of, that if somebody came up to you and you were one of the analysts who had been working on WMD, and they said, Did anybody tell you that you had to change your point of view? and the answer was, No, well that was the description of pressure. That's not my description of pressure. That's a description of pressure. But another description of pressure is the total ambience of this cascade of ominous statements, which continued really up to the present, about what was going to happen or the relationship between Al Qaida and Iraq, Mohammed Atta and the rest of it.
:So, to me, pressure also can be defined by what else is in our additional views. And that is that George Tenet indicated that he was approached by analysts from the CIA. Going to the director's office? If you've ever done that, it's, sort of, intimidating. And they came to him and he said, to relieve the pressure,
:Simply don't answer the question if there is no new information. But the key phrase there is to relieve the pressure. He was agreeing, assenting to the fact that there was. The ombudsman of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose job it is for people to come to with their complaints, a veteran of many years there, said that the hammering on analysts was greater than he had seen in his 32 years of service to the Central Intelligence Agency, and he was referring to pressure. And the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Robert Kerr (ph), had a group which did analysis of this within the CIA, and he also came up with the same conclusion, that the pressure was there, it's always internal to the analysts and it was external in the whole ambience, the whole sense of what the nation was moving toward, what the policy-makers were in fact moving toward, except that we couldn't discuss that in our report.
* [A Bipartisan Report Masks Deep Divisions] - 14 July 2004 (Followup article on Democrat dissatisfaction):
:ABSTRACT - Senate Intelligence Committee issued blistering critique of prewar intelligence on Iraq unanimously, but election year partisanship has broken out, with Democrats demanding follow-up report before November on Bush administration's use of intelligence to justify invasion
I believe I saw somewhere that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence decided at some point after the 2004 election that they would not perform phase II of the investigation, in which they were going to look into how the intelligence was used by the Bush team. I've been unable to track down a source for that, however.
Again, I'm not saying the article needs to include all this detail, or give this point of view prominence. But in its current form, the article mostly just quotes Republican Senator Roberts at length, including statements that are directly contradicted by the ranking Democrat on the panel.
-- John Callender 18:15, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More sources 

message: I've dug up a few more sources, and think I'm just about ready to try editing the article to address the POV issue I raised earlier. Here are some sites with information on Chairman Roberts' recent statements about "Phase 2" of the investigation being put "on the back burner":
* Woodrow Wilson Center speech by Pat Roberts (10 March 2005).
* Roberts calls for constant change in intel (10 March 2005) UPI/Washington Times article by Shaun Waterman.
* Transcript of the appearance by Pat Roberts and John Rockefeller on NBC's Meet the Press (10 April 2005).
-- John Callender 08:42, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources on Sen. Roberts' recent statements on 'Phase 2' 

message: Remind me to think twice next time before choosing to try a major rewrite of an article based on a 500-page government report. :-) Anyway, I've finished reading the report (previously I'd only read the introduction and others' summaries of it), and hope to have a revised version of the article ready to go up around the middle of next week. I'll be retaining some of the material in the current article, but instead of quoting so extensively from Chairman Pat Roberts' press release, I'll be doing more of a standard Wikipedia-style article, with coverage of the historical background of the report, the chronology of the investigation, the report's conclusions, the controversies covered in the "additional views" of the various committee members, and events related to the report that have taken place since its release. John Callender 07:27, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whew. 

message: I've gone ahead and replaced the previous version of the article with the significantly expanded one I've been working on. It's still kind of rough, but I think it's a significant improvement over the previous version. Some things it still needs:
* It needs to be shorter. I've done my best to whittle it down, but it's still on the long side.
* It could use more internal linking to other wikipedia articles, and to outside resources.
* The external links section at the end needs to be cleaned up some.
* It could use a few photos.
* I'm sure it has a fair number of misspellings, grammar mistakes, awkward language, and wiki style problems.
Please feel free to have at it and give it whatever it needs. Thanks. John Callender 05:46, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanded version 

message: I just reverted one of Kevin baas' edits, in which he changed the language about what the report said on the intelligence community's findings on Iraq's ties to terrorism. Kevin had changed it to read that the Committee found that the intelligence community's findings were "unreasonable"; I reverted the language to say it found that those findings were reasonable. See section 12 of the report. Quoting from it:
:Conclusion 90. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that Saddam Hussein was most likely to use his own intelligenceservice operatives to conduct attacks was reasonable, and turned out to be accurate.
:Conclusion 91. The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) assessment that Iraq had maintained ties to several secular Palestinian terrorist groups and with the Mujahidin e-Khalq was supported by the intelligence. The CIA was also reasonable in judging that Iraq appeared to have been reaching out to more effective terrorist groups, such as Hizballah and Hamas, and might have intended to employ such surrogates in the event of war.
:Conclusion 92. The Central Intelligence Agency’s examination of contacts, training, safehaven and operational cooperation as indicators of a possible Iraq-al-Qaida relationship was a reasonable and objective approach to the question.
:Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that ehre were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.
:Conclusion 94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectlvely assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida were the reports of training in teh use of non-conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons.
:Conclusion 95. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment on safehaven - that al-Qaida or assocaited operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern iraq in an area under Kurdish control - was reasonable.
:Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise.
Certainly there were many unreasonable uses made of the intelligence by the Bush administration. But that's a different matter. On the narrow question of what the Committee found regarding the CIA's intelligence on ties to terrorism, Kevin's edit was factually wrong. --John Callender 00:57, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "reasonable" conclusions on ties to terror 

message: I've removed the quotation from the Italian news article that described the alleged meeting between the head of the Iraqi secret service and Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, as well as the contextualizing comment added after that quotation by a subsequent editor. I've replaced both with an expanded overview of that section of the report that mentions the Italian news article, but doesn't quote from it directly. My sense is that the direct quote from the Italian article lacked sufficient context, and that especially with the use of the word "Interestingly,..." to introduce it, it amounted to a POV problem. The in-article rebuttal that was subsequently added after it helped with that, though I was bothered by the sense that the article was arguing with itself. Overall, I think I prefer the current approach, in which the article is mentioned, but only in the larger context of what the report actually said about it (to the extent we can know that, given the extensive redactions in this section). -- John Callender 18:02, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: John, I appreciate your goal that the article not seem to be arguing with itself.  I fully support that.  Some articles appear downright schizophrenic.  However, I do not understand why the quote should be removed.  The article currently reads as though it was just a meeting and no one knows the topic of discussion.  The report actually says that a "pact" was sealed.  I think, at a minimum, that word should be used/quoted in the article.  Several other newspapers printed similar stories in London, Paris and Moscow. See Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The Senate Report did not discuss those reports.  BTW, I am the one responsible for the word "Interestingly" to introduce the quote.  I tried to find something non-offensive and that was the best I could do.  I certainly would welcome a better word... or perhaps no introductory word is needed.  I do think it is interesting that the Committee found no formal relationship without ever impeaching the story in the Italian newspaper (or the other newspapers).  I also think it interesting the Committee recognized credible witnesses regarding Iraq's training of al Qaeda in CBRN but did not consider that an "established formal relationship."  It makes one wonder what is required to meet such a definition.  Can we make another attempt to include the word "pact" in the article? -RonCram 19:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

text: John, I just reread your entry and there is an error.  If you reread page 328, you will see that 1994 was the first meeting of Hijazi and Osama.  The newspaper article was published in 1998 - December, I believe. -RonCram 20:11, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Cut it out Ron.  The term "pact" is ludicrous as I pointed out in our discussion on another page.  This article from 1998 has been refuted by the updated conclusions of all intelligence agencies who looked into the issue.  The fact is that noone does know the topic of discussion of the meeting, though there are reports -- the more recent ones suggest that Hijazi asked OBL if they could work together and OBL said "no."  There is no evidence of any "pact" at all - where is the pact?  Whose signatures are on it?  Where is the evidence of money or weapons exchanges to accompany such a pact?  You say "The Senate Report did not discuss those reports" -- so why should they be on a page about the Senate Report?  You act as if it is the Senate's job to "impeach" a word quoted from an article in an Italian newspaper -- perhaps they just thought it wasn't relevant?  All you can cite is the word "pact"; do we even know in what context that word was used?  Was there any evidence of such a pact or are we going on the reporter's assertion?  This meeting took place eleven years ago -- in all that time, has there been a single example of collaboration between Saddam and al-Qaeda as a result of that meeting?  What we do know is that they never met again, and that both sides came away reporting that no relationship had been established between them.  We also know that the CIA, FBI, NSC, DIA, and numerous overseas intel agencies investigated the "link" and found none.--csloat 20:55, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

text: John, I am sorry for the confusion. The report in the Italian newspaper says the "pact was sealed," not the Senate Report.  I am sorry for my sloppy writing.  Although I do think the Italian newspaper article is interesting, I am quite willing to lose the word "Interestingly."  We do not need to discuss that further.   While reporters can make mistakes, a report in a daily newspaper like this is generally considered credible.  Nothing in the Senate Report has impeached this story in any way.  Even if the story is impeached in the future, that does not mean the Italian newspaper article is not historically interesting and possibly influential. I do not see the problem you see with quoting the newspaper.  The quote is short, clear and appears in the Senate Report. I am not sure any context for the quote is needed.  The quote seems to me to speak for itself.  Regarding the dates, you are correct in your understanding but the page reads "The CIA provided the Committee with source materials that were used in preparing the Iraqi Support for Terrorism document, including an Italian news article that said a meeting had taken place between Osama bin Laden and Iraq's director of secret services, Faruk Hijazi, in Sudan in 1994."  This will lead readers to think the story was published in 1994. In addition, readers will not know these men had meetings dating back over a four year period.  John, I am certain you can fix the dates.  I am also certain you can find a way to quote the Italian newspaper without unnecessary space spent on "context."  Or, if you like, I can try it. -RonCram 22:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ron do you have a copy of the Italian newspaper article in context?  The context is not as clear to me as it is to you, and it would be odd if there were such a pact and no other journalist, no policymaker, no intel analyst has ever suggested that such a pact exists.  Of course, you chose to ignore my other arguments above about this issue.  These men did not "have meetings dating back over a four year period" - that is blatantly false.  They had one meeting in 1994.  There was a claim that Hijazi had a meeting with someone else in 1998, but that claim has not been supported with any evidence.  Hijazi is in custody, and the information he has revealed under interrogation is considered reliable by investigators, who report that he denies the 1998 meeting took place.  He admits the '94 meeting so it's not clear why he would lie about the second one.  Every intel analysis and scholarly account of this issue that I have seen concludes that he probably did not meet in 1998.  Even if they did, no information about any "pact" has emerged; the Guardian speculates that it was for Saddam to offer bin Laden asylum, which he rejected.  Perhaps this Italian news report is "interesting", but it does not seem to belong here.--csloat 22:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: John, I apologize.  I misread your statement above regarding your understanding of the Senate Report.  I thought you and I agreed.  The Senate Report makes clear that the Italian newspaper reported the meeting took place on December 21, 1998.  (The newspaper was published on December 28, 1998.)  The Senate report then references the CIA document Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The wording is somewhat odd here but is apparently saying the Italian newspaper article mentioned that the two men first met "as early as June 1994."  This understanding of the Senate Report comports with the other published newspaper reports that the pact between Saddam and Osama was "sealed" in December 1998.  See Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.  Let me take a stab at the changes and then you judge if I have accurately represented the Report. -RonCram 22:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ron you are totally distorting the record and you know it.  We are carrying on this same debate on three pages now.  It should only take place on one.  There was no 1998 meeting as most sources agree now, and there is absolutely no evidence that any "pact" was sealed.  Of course I pointed this out just above and you ignored it, repeating the disinformation you insist on spreading.--csloat 22:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of quoted Italian news article on high-level Iraq/al-Qaeda meeting 

message: The series of edits made by a non-logged-in user over the last few days went a little far, in my view, in advancing POV. In particular, they appear to be accepting at face-value some questionable assertions in Susan Schmidt's July 9, 2003, article in the Washington Post. The argument that Joe Wilson's trip to Niger actually tended to confirm, rather than disconfirm, the Iraq/Niger uranium-purchase attempt does not seem especially credible to me. I'm aware that the argument has been made, but I think the case is weak, and is more the stuff of pro-Bush spin than of objective analysis. In light of that, using the Schmidt article's interpretation as the basis for saying that "new evidence appeared supporting such an assessment [that Saddam was attempting to obtain uranium from Niger] in November 2002" seems like a stretch to me.
Also, I thought the revised caption for the first image (of Powell speaking to the UN) went a little far in attempting to explicitly blame Tenet for the problems in the speech. Rather than get into pushing that position, I think it's probably more appropriate just to leave that out of the caption.
I'm of two minds about leaving the reference to the Schmidt article in. She seems to go pretty far in her interpretation of what the report says. If we're going to leave the reference to her article in, I think it's important to also include the link I've added after it to Josh Micah Marshall's criticism of it, which appeared on his weblog the following day. I realize that weblog postings normally aren't viewed as appropriate sources on a par with a newspaper article in a mainstream publication, but in this case I think it's justified in order to give appropriate context for the Schmidt link. Marshall at least is a Washington journalist himself, with a doctorate in history and a long history of writing on these issues in mainstream publications, so it's not like he's just some random weblogger. Still, without the Schmidt link I wouldn't be arguing for inclusion of the Marshall link.
Anyway, I'm open to discussing all these changes, if anyone (like the person who made them) feels like discussing them. -- John Callender 06:10, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toning down some POV edits 

message: Ron how many times do we have to have this discussion?  On three different pages now you insist on the discredited language of a "pact."  That was from a 1998 article in an italian newspaper and no evidence has emerged to support it.  I have thoroughly refuted this point several times on the talk pages of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and 2003 Invasion of Iraq as well as here, and you continually concede the arguments, then you wait a couple weeks and make the changes anyway.  It is frustrating.  It is difficult enough trying to actually contribute to these pages without having to stand watch against blatant distortion.  If you didn't agree with my arguments you should have refuted them rather than ignoring them and then making such changes.  There was no evidence of a pact.  If you have evidence of a pact, let's see it, and please offer a reason why Richard Clarke, Newsweek, and so many others who thought there might have been some kind of arrangement in 1998 have since changed their tune, concluding after further investigation that no evidence supported the existence of such an arrangement.  It's weird, Ron.  You seem so invested in spreading information that has been not only thoroughly refuted by the mainstream press; it has been backed off of by the Administration.  The only people still making such claims either work at the Weekly Standard or for Iranian intelligence.  I realize you keep twisting the words to highlight the poor word choice made by a translator of an italian newspaper in 1998, trying to back it up with the word "alliance" and "agreement", but none of these claims have panned out.  It is 2005 now, Ron; we know a lot more about the evidence surrounding these claims than we did in 1998 and 1999; stop trying to turn back the clock.--csloat 23:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More disinformation from RonCram 

message: csloat, you are factually wrong on almost every post.  Your insistence there is no evidence of a pact is untrue.  Richard Clarke wrote an email to Sandy Berger describing the al Shifa plant as " probably direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement."  Soon after the Clinton Administration bombed the plant.  The Sudanese government has demanded an apology claiming it was just a pharmaceutical plant but both the Clinton Administration and Bush Administration have refused because they still believe the plant was a dual use facility and was involved in chemical weapons development.  No one doubts that Iraq and al Qaeda were both connected to the plant.  In addition, credible witnesses have reported that Iraq provided al Qaeda in chemical weapons training.  Yes, we know a lot more about these claims now.  And they all hold up.  The Powell speech before the UN got good reviews from the Senate Report.  All of the information in it was well vetted and correct.  The problem, csloat, is that you have not come to terms with the facts.  Unfortunately for you, facts are stubborn things. RonCram 23:56, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ron you have not produced evidence of such a pact.  A statement from Clarke (which, by the way, he has since backed away from) in 1999 is not evidence; it is supposedly based on evidence but we still don't have any evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda had any pact.  I responded to this argument several times and you conceded these arguments.  Where are the signatures?  Where is the money trail?  Where are the weapons transfers?  Where are the credible witnesses you speak of?  We know a lot more about this it is true -- most importantly, as I said over and over again in response to this hogwash, the CIA, DIA, NSC, FBI, State Department, and more have investigated claims of cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaeda and found that there was no evidence to support them.  The Senate committee also reviewed the CIA conclusions on this and found them meritorious.  So you are wrong, the claims do not hold up.  The problem, RonCram, is that you keep asserting discredited statements from 7-8 years ago as if they were "facts," even though they have been thoroughly disputed in the intervening years.  Unfortunately for you, it is no longer 1999.  Reality is a stubborn thing.--csloat 00:09, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps Clarke backed away from his memo but neither the Clinton nor Bush Administrations have. You are fabricating when you say I have conceded your earlier arguments on this point.  That never happened.  The evidence for the pact has been told to you repeatedly.  The evidence is in the collaboration.  The Senate Report admits Iraq trained al Qaeda in chemical weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I do not understand how they can admit that and say there is no collaborative relationship, but that is what they did.  Iraq also offered safehaven to al Qaeda and Zarqawi and many others accepted it.  The credible witnesses, if you bothered to read the reports, are both Iraqi defectors and al Qaeda detainees.  These facts have been reported in newspapers around the globe, a fact you are well aware of.  csloat, you simply cannot say there is no evidence of a pact when it is all around you. RonCram 01:51, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually the Bush Administration has backed away from the claim that Saddam was behind 9-11, and has admitted that no evidence connecting them to AQ has been found (though some like Cheney seem to still believe the connection exists).  Clinton of course is not relevant here.  I am not fabricating; you have conceded these arguments or at least you stopped responding which seems to me to be a concession.  Really, I assumed you had come to your senses by now about all of this but I guess I was wrong.  You admit the Senate says there was no collaborative relationship (as has everyone else who looked at this issue) and yet you say the "evidence" of a "pact" is in the "collaboration."  Look Ron - there were communications between Saddam and AQ that went nowhere.  Collaboration did not occur.  Even if the al-Shifa thing is true (and you've given no evidence of this either), that does not amount to "collaboration" and certainly not to a "pact."  A "pact" is a formal agreement; the fact that you cannot provide any evidence (signatures?  money or weapons changing hands?  any indication of who signed it?  etc etc etc.) suggests that you are simply hanging on to a poor word choice by an Italian journalist (or his translator).  Most of the Iraqi defectors and some of the al-Qaeda detainees have been found to be not credible.  Everyone associated with the INC, as well as al-Libi of al Qaeda, is suspected of fabricating this stuff about Saddam and al Qaeda.  We can put all this information on this page as well though I don't know how many copies of the timeline from Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda we need all over wikipedia.  It appears to me that you are simply bringing this stuff up here because you lost the arguments on that page but you nevertheless insist on this distorted view of reality.  Look, if you have "evidence" let us see it.  Stop telling me the evidence is all around me, or that it is in the collaboration, which is a circular argument.  Either present it or stop this silliness.--csloat 04:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: csloat, your ability to distort the facts is amazing.  The official Bush Administration position has never been that Saddam was behind 9/11.  Some officials, such as Cheney, have voiced that opinion and continue to do so.  The official Bush position has remainded the same - that Saddam and al Qaeda had a relationship that included chemical weapons training (in Iraq and Afghanistan), chemical weapons development in Sudan and safehaven for al Qaeda in Iraq.  These facts are well-established in the Senate Report. You should not, now or in the future, believe that because I get busy with my business that I have somehow capitulated to your ideas.  Facts are stubborn things.  I have the facts on my side. RonCram 22:32, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Respectfully, Ron, you don't.  As I said, if you have "evidence of a pact," bring it to the table.  Your comments above are just not responsive to this issue.  As far as whether Bush still believed Saddam had something to do with al-Qaeda, look at the statements made by him and Condi and even Powell prior to the invasion and now afterwards.  They no longer imply he was behind 911; Powell openly says he has seen no evidence to suggest such a connection and none of them mention any "pacts" that were "sealed."  You want to believe in the conspiracy that is fine but please stop insisting it must be entertained on every wikipedia page that is even only tangentially related.--csloat 00:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More disinformation from csloat 

message: The Senate Report has an interesting discussion on pressure on analysts.  Phase 2 of the review will be coming out shortly.  In the meantime, I have added a short section that is a nice seque into the discussion of pressure on analysts.  I believe what I have written is relevant, interesting and readable. RonCram 16:51, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am fine with including this but I think it is important to also balance it with the available information, as the previous version of the page did.  Ron wants to add only one side of the story.  I am saying, both sides of the story are already available on the appropriate page, so they shouldn't be here at all, but if you want to add it here, the information should not be one-sided, especially when the Senate concluded the opposite of that side.--csloat 17:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Senate concluded no untoward pressure on analysts existed. I fail to see how what I wrote or what I quoted disagrees with the Senate conclusion. RonCram 17:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry - that point was actually meant to respond to the overall POV that you have been pushing here.  It applies above, but not to this argument.--csloat 17:23, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introducing the Discussion of Pressure on Analysts 

message: I'm not familiar enough with this article to add this myself, but the 9/21/01 PDB was one of the documents that Bush refused to show to this Senate Committee, and it pretty clearly shows the intel community's view of the supposed link to al-Qaeda was expressed early on to the Admin, and that the SSCI did not get an opportunity to look at this info:  -csloat 01:24, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a brief mention of the Waas article on the 9/21 PDB to the part of the article that discussed the chronology of the investigation, where it previously mentioned that the Committee had requested, and been denied, access to the PDBs. Given all the back-and-forth lately in the "ties to terroism" section, I guess I'm leery of trying to incorporate it there. At the risk of inciting further mayhem, I guess I'd take the position that it's at least conceptually similar to the infamous Italian magazine article on the "pact"--only peripherally significant to an article on the Committee's report, and probably more directly applicable to the Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda article. I also didn't want to get too far out in terms of highlighting the implications of the 9/21 PDB, since at this point it's only unnamed sources in the Waas article, as far as I can tell, that have characterized its contents. --John Callender 06:45, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't mean to bring it up in the "ties to terrorism" part either -- independent of what it says, what is relevant here, methinks, is that the committee asked for this document and the Bush administration denied the request.--csloat 10:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where to put the 9/21 PDB info? 

message: Twice, now, I've reverted an edit that consisted only of deleting one reference from the end of the article: Prewar Intelligence Flawed; Senators Disagree on 'Political Pressure'. It's an article by Susan Jones, who is credited as "morning editor" of CNSNews.com.
The first time it was deleted, the editor (from a non-logged-in IP address, but one with a fairly lengthy edit history apparently consistent with use by a single user) provided no edit summary. This time he or she did provide an edit summary, saying, "cns=yellow journalism".
I don't think the article itself is especially biased. Having read up on CNSNews.com, I understand that it has a conservative political agenda, but I don't think that justifies removing the link to this article. It provides important detail about public statements that were being made by committee members at the time of the report's release. Anyway, I've added a mention of the conservative nature of the publication to the link, and added a link to the Cybercast News Service Wikipedia page; I think that provides sufficient context to help readers evaluate the information for themselves.
If the user who's been deleting the link wants to discuss reasons for removing it here, that might help me understand where he/she is coming from. Thanks. --John Callender 04:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Susan Jones article in CNSNews.com 

message: This information should find its way into the article at some point.-csloat 06:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: senators want more info declassified

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080516071522/http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm to http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050506052027/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7369843/site/newsweek/ to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7369843/site/newsweek/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060513050245/http://www.hillnews.com:80/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/042506/news4.html to http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/042506/news4.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 10:25, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified