Intel report to be used against McCain

Senate Democrats on Thursday left little doubt they will use reports criticizing the Bush administration for its handling of pre-war intelligence against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

To Democrats, the Intelligence Committee reports represent part of a series of events that should sway voters against McCain, who supports maintaining the U.S. mission in Iraq.

{mosads}“There’s this drip-drip-drip, one thing after another after another,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. “It’s a constant reality of the misinformation that got us into the war and the bad judgments that have kept us in the war.”

But Republicans rushed to McCain’s defense, noting that his military background and status as a POW during the Vietnam War means he is more likely to avoid the mistakes Bush made, or those Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the presumptive Democratic nominee, could make.

“If John McCain were president and the nation was considering a military operation, we couldn’t have a better person in the country cross-examining the intelligence officers,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

Republican aides tried to paint Democrats as hypocrites Thursday, noting they made many statements similar to the Bush administration in the months leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) was among those quoted in October 2002 saying that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was “working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.”

The first of Thursday’s reports examined whether statements from administration officials were backed by intelligence, while the second “details inappropriate, sensitive intelligence activities conducted by the DoD’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, without the knowledge of the intelligence community or the State Department.”

McCain was not the Democrats’ primary target Thursday.

Rockefeller joined fellow Senate Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island in saying the reports show President Bush and others deliberately shaded or ignored facts in favor of rushing the country into war.

“The tragic fact is … the administration was too often careless with its words, including in some cases making presentations that were not substantiated by the available intelligence — or worse, directly contradicted by the available intelligence,” Rockefeller said. “The administration went well beyond what the intelligence community knew and what it believed.”

Rockefeller said Democrats would not formally prosecute the point against the administration because doing so would automatically shut down relations between the legislative and executive branches.

White House press secretary Dana Perino downplayed the findings, telling reporters they partially vindicate the administration on some points but otherwise simply rehash old claims that the administration has already acknowledged.

“This has been a subject that has been gone over many, many, many times, and I don’t know of anything that’s particularly new in it,” Perino said. “We’ve answered that and that we had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that and we’ve taken measures to fix it.”

Two Republicans, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, sided with Democrats in voting 10-5 for the reports during committee deliberation. But other Republican committee members pushed back against Democrats by saying the committee’s report itself was actually “flawed, incomplete and irrelevant.”

Ranking Republican Kit Bond of Missouri called it “political theater … that makes partisan points but isn’t grounded in fact.” Meanwhile, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Orrin Hatch of Utah said the GOP was largely left out of the process.

At the same time, Bond and the other GOP senators acknowledged that the intelligence relied on by the administration was incorrect.

“We worked hard to straighten out the intelligence,” Bond said. “I have never defended the intelligence. That was wrong.”

Still, Bond said Bush and his officials never conspired to misuse the information, and that the committee’s report to the contrary was only intended as a campaign tool for Democrats.

 “I don’t know why they’re trying to run against the Bush administration. Maybe they think it’s good,” Bond said. “But unfortunately it denigrates the process of intelligence collection, analysis and oversight and that’s why it’s a very shabby example of how partisan politics can be misused in the intelligence community.”

Hagel and Snowe offered a different view in a joint statement: “We expect future administrations to learn from this comprehensive review and avoid making similar mistakes. While the process by which the committee drafted and approved the reports could have been significantly improved, their release is important, if long overdue.”

Thursday’s report on executive statements focused on five speeches by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in late 2002 and early 2003, as well as a variety of statements to the media. The report’s conclusions said those statements were “generally substantiated” by U.S. intelligence, but did not convey “substantial disagreements” or different interpretations that many officials had at the time. Some speeches and statements were backed up, but others, such as claims of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, were not.

The second report focused on a special group within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy that was tasked with gathering intelligence on Iran and Iraq.