Editorial: Familiar criticism of Iraq war

Monday, Feb. 13, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

A 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, now retired and teaching security studies at Georgetown University, is gaining public attention through an article he wrote harshly criticizing how the Bush administration handled intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war.

His words add weight to similar criticisms made in the past, such as those by Richard Clarke, who served as the White House's top adviser on counterterrorism.

Paul R. Pillar, a low-profile critic of President Bush's use of intelligence for some time, took on a much higher profile when he wrote an article for a forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, the influential journal published by the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Pillar's article and published excerpts Friday on its front page.

The newspaper said Pillar was considered the CIA's leading counterterrorism analyst, and that by the end of his career he was coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the federal intelligence community. Pillar, the Post wrote, acknowledges that the intelligence communities made several errors, but says those errors were not a factor in the decision to wage war on Iraq.

As quoted by the Post, Pillar writes in his article:

"(The Bush administration) went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level assessments on any aspect of Iraq.

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between (Bush) policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized."

Pillar also wrote that the Bush administration "repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war." Additionally, he wrote that, taken together, the intelligence reports advised avoiding war, or, "if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath."

Coming from a critic outside the administration, the article could be dismissed as more partisan politics. But coming from someone who held top positions in the CIA for 28 years, and who was so close to the intelligence gathering on Iraq, we believe it has to be taken seriously. Pillar's article is one more piece of evidence suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence - and why Congress should hold hearings on the issue.