Loch K. Johnson
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Congress, the Iraq war, and the failures of intelligence oversight
in Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq
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This chapter examines the erroneous US intelligence prediction regarding the likely presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq in 2002. It also examines why lawmakers in Washington, D.C., failed to question these estimates more thoroughly before they led the nation into war in the Persian Gulf the following year. It provides a sense of the many potential pitfalls in the conduct of intelligence that make some degree of failure inevitable. A useful analytic construct for understanding the hazards of intelligence is the so-called intelligence cycle, which traces how America's secret agencies gather, interpret, and disseminate information. The chapter suggests that members of Congress have displayed a range of responses to the call for greater intelligence accountability. One of the main catalysts for motility has been a sense of injured institutional pride, when lawmakers perceive that intelligence officials have failed to treat Congress with appropriate respect.

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