Political Quotes

“The certainty that was used by the Bush administration to present this information in the fall of 2002 I think is a critical issue here. It is not completely clear at this point what all of the intelligence agencies were saying. Their information is becoming declassified and is beginning to be made public, but it is very clear what administration leaders were saying. In addition to the President, whom I already quoted also on September 26, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told reporters, ``Iraq has active development programs. Iraq has weaponized chemical and biological weapons.'' Yet a national intelligence estimate of October 2002, which was reputed to have said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, when we look at the backup material that is just being declassified, it is much more equivocal. The question is was the intelligence wrong or were the political leaders who were getting that intelligence misusing it? Were they hearing what they wanted to hear? Were they telling us what they thought we ought to hear? Were these innocent mistakes? Were they unintentionally mishandling the information, or was it more sinister?”