Senator Says Pentagon Office Massaged Iraq Data

Creating an opportunity for political gain was apparently too tempting to resist, even if it has the potential side effect of undermining our troops on the ground.

A Democratic U.S. Senator on Thursday accused a senior Pentagon official of distorting intelligence information to back claims of links between Iraq and al Qaeda in the run-up to last year’s U.S.-led invasion.

A report issued by Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also questioned assertions of pre-war links between Baghdad and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who since the invasion has emerged as a leader in the anti-U.S. insurgency.

The report, compiled by the committee’s Democratic staff, criticized the Office of Special Plans, which operated under the auspices of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

It was released less than two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, in which President Bush’s handling of Iraq is a major issue.

The report said Feith’s office looked at evidence “through a different lens, one that was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

Democrats have frequently accused Feith and other hawks in the Bush administration of manipulating data supplied by the CIA and other sources to bolster the case for invading Iraq.

The 46-page report argued that Pentagon assertions of a link between al Qaeda and Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein were not supported by intelligence reports on which they were purportedly based.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, a Virginia Republican, said it was too early to draw conclusions on these issues because the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into these issues and its work was not complete.

Levin said he released the report shortly before the presidential election because Congress was working on drafting an intelligence reform bill.

Hmmm, let’s see. Two weeks before the election. A report compiled by Democratic committee staffers without the review of their GOP counterparts. Not political, my ass! The timing stinks all to Hell for the election and for the public support of our troops’ efforts in Iraq.