The CIA told the Bush White House seven months before the 2003 Iraq invasion that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in the country, nor any links to Osama bin Laden. Worse: the CIA warned that in case of an invasion, the US could face a thicket of bad consequences, starting with "anarchy and the territorial break-up" of the country.

With leading Republicans finally admitting Iraq is a mess (Mess'opotamia), one man who was in control of a key asset - the CIA - in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion has spoken out. He claims - and shames - the White House directly. Ex CIA Director Tenet states that CIA analysts clearly spelled out a warning that post-war Iraq could be disastrous at the start of August 2002 and inserted it into a briefing book distributed at an early September meeting of President Bush's national security team at Camp David. This was several months before the Iraqi invasion in March 2003 and with ample time to come up with a post-invasion plan.
The agency analysis painted "worst-case" scenarios: "a surge of global terrorism against US interests fuelled by deepening Islamic antipathy toward the United States"; "regime-threatening instability in key Arab states"; and "major oil supply disruptions and severe strains in the Atlantic alliance."
The analysis also presaged an intelligence community conclusion in 2006 that the Iraq war was fuelling Islamic resentment toward the United States and giving rise to a new generation of terror operatives.

Tenet's book "At the Center of the Storm" has been seen as the CIA striking back against the White House, which has blamed the CIA and other US intelligence agencies for being wrong about much of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Tenet claims the CIA is innocent.
Instead, the book is highly critical of Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials, who Tenet argues rushed the United States into war in Iraq without serious debate - a charge the White House rejected on April 27, three days before the book's official publication date (April 30, 2007). Beyond that, he contends, the administration failed to adequately consider what would come in the war's aftermath - a charge that has been globally levied against the US: "There was precious little consideration, that I'm aware of, about the big picture of what would come next," Tenet writes. "While some policy makers were eager to say that we would be greeted as liberators, what they failed to mention is that the intelligence community told them that such a greeting would last only for a limited period."

The former CIA director offers a litany of questions that went unasked:
-"What impact would a large American occupying force have in an Arab country in the heart of the Middle East?"
- "What kind of political strategy would be necessary to cause the Iraqi society to coalesce in a post-Saddam world and maximize the chances for our success?"
- "How would the presence of hundreds of thousands of US troops, and the possibility of a pro-West Iraqi government, be viewed in Iran? And what might Iran do in reaction?"
Tenet laments that "there seemed to be a lack of curiosity in asking these kinds of questions, and the lack of a disciplined process to get the answers before committing the country to war."

Tenet assigns his own agency part of the blame, saying the intelligence community should have strived to answer the questions not asked by the administration. As was known long before the publication Tenet's book, the memoir paints a portrait of constant tension between the CIA and the office of Cheney, who Tenet says stretched the intelligence to serve his own belief that war was the right course.
It alarmed Tenet and surprised even Bush, the author says, when Cheney issued his now-famous declaration that, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Chastising Cheney nearly five years later, Tenet writes: "Policy makers have a right to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts." Here again, Tenet blames himself for not pulling Cheney aside and telling him the WMD assertion was "well beyond what our analysis could support."

For the first time, Tenet offers an account of his own view of a historic moment in the run-up to war: Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 2003 speech before the United Nations, with Tenet sitting just behind him.
"That was about the last place I wanted to be," Tenet recalls. "It was a great presentation, but unfortunately the substance didn't hold up," he says of the performance, in which Powell charged Iraq had WMD stockpiles. Previously, it had been reported that Colin Powell did not want to deliver this speech either, but was eventually forced to present it.
"One by one, the various pillars of the speech, particularly on Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs, began to buckle," Tenet writes. "The secretary of state was subsequently hung out to dry in front of the world, and our nation's credibility plummeted."

Though Tenet was critical of his own stance, stating he should have challenged Cheney, six former CIA officers went further and added Tenet himself was the main problem. Unfortunately, in what has become customary in American society, namely cheap outlandish desires, the writers said Tenet has "a moral obligation" to return the Medal of Freedom he received from President Bush. And no doubt the following "demand" was made so that any TV interview Tenet were to give promoting the book, a sceptical interviewer could use as ammunition to take a cheap shot at Tenet: the request to give more than half the royalties from the book to US soldiers wounded in Iraq and families of the dead

The writers said they agree that Bush administration officials took the nation to war "for flimsy reasons," and that it has proved "ill-advised and wrong-headed." But, they added, "your lament that you are a victim in a process you helped direct is self-serving, misleading and, as head of the intelligence community, an admission of failed leadership. You were not a victim. You were a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war and you share culpability with Dick Cheney and George Bush for the debacle in Iraq." The writers accused Tenet of having helped send "very mixed signals" to Americans and their legislators prior to the war.
The former intelligence officials argue that "CIA field operatives produced solid intelligence in September 2002 that stated clearly there was no stockpile of any kind of WMD in Iraq. This intelligence was ignored and later misused."
The letter said CIA officers learned later that month Iraq had no contact with Osama bin Laden and that then-President Saddam Hussein considered the al Qaeda leader to be an enemy. Still, Tenet went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to al Qaeda.
They charge that "you showed a lack of leadership and courage in January of 2003 as the Bush administration pushed and cajoled analysts and managers to let them make the bogus claim that Iraq was on the verge of getting its hands on uranium. You signed off on Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations. And, at his insistence, you sat behind him and visibly squandered CIA's most precious asset - credibility. You helped set the bar very low for reporting that supported favoured White House positions, while raising the bar astronomically high when it came to raw intelligence that did not support the case for war being hawked by the president and vice president."

Though it is clear that Tenet has broken rank with the White House people, it is equally clear that certain CIA officials are not willing to let him distort his own role in this debacle, arguing that "you betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld."

On May 2, 2007, the British newspaper "The Guardian" reported that the British defence secretary during the invasion, Geoff Hoon, admitted that there were "a catalogue of errors over planning for Iraq after the invasion". But like Tenet, he placed the blame on Cheney. "Sometimes...  Tony [Blair] had made his point with the president [Bush], and I'd made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."

As to the claims that politicians "sexed up" claims of WMDS, Hoon said: "I saw intelligence from the first time I came into office, in May 1999 - week in, week out - that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction... I have real difficulty in understanding why it was, over such a long period of time, we were told this and, moreover, why we acted upon it." He still does not understand why the intelligence proved to be false. "I've been present at a number of meetings where the intelligence community was fixed, and looked in the eye and asked are you absolutely sure about this? And the answer came back 'Yes, absolutely sure'."