> Iraq is continuing. and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
> If left unchecked, [Iraq] probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)
> [State/INR Alternative View] The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.
So basically the CIA is saying:
- The INR (separate agency) doesn't believe this is enough to start a war over.
- The other agencies (presumably including CIA) do.
However, their justifications in the bullet points seem to rely on a fair bit of speculation about motivations behind things, not as much actual concrete evidence as you'd hope. Whereas the INR evaluated the same evidence and said they aren't confident enough in this yet.
OK, so I'm with you here so far. Now the question to me is: did the CIA really lie here, or did they (and other agencies) really fail at their job? If it was a lie, are we using that to mean a falsehood, or does it refer to omission of critical information that they were reasonably confident about? On the face of it, it looks like they really just failed spectacularly, not that there was malice per se, but I don't have more details. (Though I guess that means we should listen more to the INR in the future?)
[1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/nie.pdf#page=13
There's been a bunch of opinions since then that they were actually just misrepresented, but their own words from 2002 speak for themselves, IMO.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-o...