Isn’t one of the very first things one learns about doing research involving human sources, even the normal non-classified, non-sensitive kind, that one needs to know the motives of your sources and what their agendas might be in order to evaluate the information coming from them?? This holds for evaluating the information you hear on television news, that you read in the newspaper, and when you are looking things up in old books at the library. Who woulda thunk it also applies when you are the administration of the world’s most powerful country and you are talking to people whose whole lives have been dedicated to trying to arrange the resources to go back to their country and overthrow Saddam? They exaggerated and told them what they wanted to hear to justify an invasion? Oh my gosh!!! I never would have guessed that was even possible!!!!
Exiles’ prewar data assailed
(Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, Philadelphia Inquirer)
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that almost all of the Iraqi defectors whose information helped make the Bush administration’s case against Saddam Hussein exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales, or were “coached” by others on what to say.