WASHINGTON (AFP) - Unfounded intelligence claims that paved the way for war in Iraq blew back like a ghost last week to haunt US charges that
Iran is arming Iraqi extremists.
President George W. Bush and his top aides had to admit by week's end that they did not know whether Iran's leaders knew that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was supplying Shiite militias with sophisticated bombs and training.
And "for the umpteenth time," as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, they denied that the United States was trying to prepare the ground for military action in Iraq.
But the flap exposed how deep public suspicion of US intelligence claims runs nearly four years after the United States went to war with Iraq on the strength of erroneous intelligence that it had weapons of mass destruction.
"I think this controversy is traceable to one big problem," said Loren Thompson, director of the Lexington Institute, a private Washington research group.
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