(Saddam had incentive to pretend he had WMD. He certainly didn't want Iran to know he didn't. He obviously didn't want inspectors inside his government buildings. But Bush and his team used Saddam's behavior as evidence he was hiding WMD, rather than the fact that he was hiding the lack of WMD.)
Once the CIA realized that war was inevitable, it went into cover-your-ass-mode and said Saddam might have chemical weapons so that US soldiers wouldn't go into Iraq with insufficient protection in-case there were chemical weapons after all.
Bush was unwilling to listen to counter-naratives. If Condi Rice or, more likely, Colin Powell had been willing to say "I don't think war is such a good idea" maybe it wouldn't have happened. But Bush surrounded himself with yes men. If Powell hadn't supported the war, likely he and his entire staff would have had to resign. If that had happened, Bush would have lost Tony Blair's support and with that, any international support. Bush probably would have at least thought twice about going to Iraq alone.
So in this case, it wasn't so much that the institutions weren't trustworthy, it's that they fell in line with pressure that started from Bush. It doesn't do any good to have experts at your disposal if you're not going to listen to any of them.
Source: Robert Draper's exhaustively researched book on how Iraq happened:
https://www.amazon.com/Start-War-Bush-Administration-America...
Interview with the author:
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21417224/why-did-america-invade...
(Also, the U.S. media didn't do its job. The cynical side of me says there's money to be made in covering war. But probably, it was just incompetence. I still haven't forgiven the NYT though.)
How does falling into line with pressure that started from Bush make them trustworthy? That is exactly the kind of failure which makes them untrustworthy.
So were the intelligence institutions trustworthy to provide good information? Yes.
Bush did an end-run around them.
Were they able to stop the U.S. from going to war? No. But that was Congress’s (and maybe the US media’s) job and certainly _those_ institutions failed.
I'm sticking with the 007 analysis that UK intel is golden and the US contact is about as cowboy as a spy can get but won't stand injustice.
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-phishing-email-that-hacked-...
That said, considering the context of the election, Trumps close ties with Russia and Russian agents, and the broad and multifaceted attempts at hacking the election attributed to Russia (disinformation farms, hacking state election networks), it is very likely that Russia was also behind the DNC hack. These weak attempts at casting doubt on Russia's involvement are transparent.
You, directly above that: Assange's denials about Russia's involvement aren't credible on its face.
Yeah, I'm confused. This is all beside the point. It is lawful to publish true information about candidates that is of interest to the public.
Actually it's an established fact. They were being watched live on their computers and security cameras as they were doing the hacking.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch...
Is there some connection between State Dept in 2014 and DNC in 2016?
Imaging burning a source so valuable for the sake of the U.S., only to have us elect Trump anyways and four years later pretend like its still an open question whether Russia was involved.