WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration misused intelligence to build a case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report issued Thursday.
The White House exploited its ability to declassify intelligence selectively to bolster its case for war, the committee chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-West Virginia, said in the report.
Senior officials disclosed and discussed sensitive intelligence reports that supported the administration's policy objectives and kept out of public discourse information that did not, he said.
The report also found that the administration misled the American people about contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
"Policymakers' statements did not accurately convey the intelligence assessments" about contacts between the then-Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's group, "and left the impression that the contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation or support of al Qaeda," the report said.
"Statements and implications by the president and secretary of state suggesting that Iraq and al Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence," according to the committee's exhaustive report on prewar intelligence..........
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