Chambliss Statement on Partisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report Regarding Prewar Intelligence

U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, today made the following statement regarding final sections of the Phase II report on prewar intelligence on Iraq released today by the Committee. Chambliss joined the Committee’s Vice Chairman, U.S. Senator Kit Bond, R-Missouri, in noting that the partisan report not only violates the Committee’s longstanding history of non-partisanship, but also rejects the conclusions unanimously reached in previous reports.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee has always had a history of non-partisanship, and that is how it should be when our national security is at stake,” said Chambliss. “Unfortunately, the Committee has wasted countless hours only to show what we already knew four years ago, that policymakers’ statements turned out to be wrong after the war because the statements were based on flawed intelligence. The Committee’s Phase I report, which investigated that intelligence failure and explained how it happened, was a judicious and valuable act of intelligence oversight. The current majority report is not. We asked from the beginning of this investigation to be included in this review but were cut out of the process. I am disappointed members of the majority on our committee chose to pursue a partisan, election-year agenda.”

In July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Iraq report, adopted by a unanimous vote, makes clear that flawed intelligence – not Administration deception – was the basis for policymakers’ statements and decisions. The report released today completely ignores this key finding.