The Propaganda Campaign Dissected

Q. "But you understand the differences they're making, that they think that the claims -- understanding that the intelligence was wrong -- but that the claims went far beyond what the intelligence community was giving the White House, and that it ignored significant dissent within the intelligence community -- the White House."

Perino: "That dissent, amongst experts within the intelligence community at some levels, did not reach the President. The process that I just talked about, in terms of how we've improved the process, would hopefully make sure that now that we have this different levels of confidence, so that the President now knows if there is dissent amongst them. And that is all now coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence -- Mike McConnell in this case.

"So we've fixed the problems, in terms of the intelligence, but no one lied. And I think that's sort of the point of all this."

The committee's main but not exclusive focus was on five major policy speeches: Vice President Cheney's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention on Aug. 26, 2002; Bush's address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 12, 2002; Bush's speech in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002 (which, ironically, appears on the White House Web site under a banner proclaiming "denial and deception"); Bush's State of the Union message on Jan. 28, 2003; and former secretary of state Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.

The Coverage

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane write in the New York Times: "A long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq's weapons programs and Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda. . . .

"That some Bush administration claims about the Iraqi threat turned out to be false is hardly new. But the report, based on a detailed review of public statements by Mr. Bush and other officials, was the most comprehensive effort to date to assess whether policy makers systematically painted a more dire picture about Iraq than was justified by the available intelligence.

"The 170-page report accuses Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials of repeatedly overstating the Iraqi threat in the emotional aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its findings were endorsed by all eight committee Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska."

Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus write in The Washington Post: "President Bush and top administration officials repeatedly exaggerated what they knew about Iraq's weapons and its ties to terrorist groups as the White House pressed its case for war against Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee said yesterday in a long-awaited report."

Jonathan S. Landay writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The committee found that the administration's warnings that former dictator Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden, a highly inflammatory assertion in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida attacks, weren't substantiated by U.S. intelligence reports. In fact, it said, U.S. intelligence agencies were telling the White House that while there'd been sporadic contacts over a decade, there was no operational cooperation between Iraq and al Qaida, the report said. . . .

"Cheney's assertions that Mohammad Atta, the chief Sept. 11 hijacker, had met months before the attack with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech capital, Prague, were also unsubstantiated, the inquiry found.

"The committee said that Bush and Cheney 'failed to reflect concerns and uncertainties' expressed in intelligence analyses that questioned administration assertions that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and warned that American forces could face violent resistance."

Greg Miller writes for the Los Angeles Times: "The report on the Bush administration's case for war, 170 pages long, reads like a catalog of erroneous claims. The document represents the most detailed assessment to date of whether those assertions were backed by classified intelligence reports available to senior officials at the time."