http://www.gwu.edu/...
http://www.gwu.edu/...
http://www.state.gov/...
Had Hillary cared to read the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which was the intelligence community's authoritative formal estimate of the existence of WMDs in Iraq, she would have known about the serious doubts contained therein.
Such as:
State/INR Alternative View of Iraq's Nuclear Program
The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) believes that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapons-related capabilities. The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.
In INR's view Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program.
INR's Alternative View: Iraq's Attempts to Acquire Aluminum Tubes
Some of the specialized but dual-use items being sought are, by all indications, bound for Iraq's missile program. Other cases are ambiguous, such as that of a planned magnet-production line whose suitability for centrifuge operations remains unknown. Some efforts involve non-controlled industrial material and equipment -- including a variety of machine tools -- and are troubling because they would help establish the infrastructure for a renewed nuclear program. But such efforts (which began well before the inspectors departed) are not clearly linked to a nuclear end-use. Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious.
From Hubris (Isikoff and Corn), p. 133-134:
As soon as he could, Peter Zimmerman, the scientific adviser to the Senate foreign relations committee, rushed to a secure room in the U.S. Capitol to read the CIA's classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was the report that had been requested three weeks earlierby Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee. The ninety-page paper, delivered to Congress on the night of October 1, was suppposed to be the most authoritative summary of the U.S. government's intelligence on Iraq's deadly weapons of mass destruciton and the threat they posed to America. Zimmerman, who had been unimpressed by the closed-door Tenet briefing a week earlier, was anxious to see what the CIA really had to back up the WMD case for war.
He read the NIE twice. He was, he later said, astonished..."I remember thinking," he later said, "Boy, there's nothing there. If anybody takes the time to actually read this, they can't believe there actually are major WMD programs."
Was the willful neglect of this key piece of evidence prior to the vote on the Iraq War Resolution, together with her vote to nevertheless authorize war, a reckless act on the part of Hillary Clinton?
You be the judge.