Are there inconsistencies in the Administrations receptivity to reports it received from the intelligence community?
There does seem to be. With regard to Operation Iraqi Freedom, officials insist that the intelligence on which the WMD case for war was justified was accurate and detailed: 30,000 weapons of various types, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin and another 25,000 liters of anthrax, plus 500 tons of mustard and nerve gases. Moreover, defectors were said to have verified the data and to have provided leads that, over the 1990s, created a comprehensive mosaic about what was happening in Iraq. With the withdrawal of UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors in December 1998 and the nearly four year absence of UN oversight and inspections, the U.S. lost the direct, first-hand, in-country access to information that had been coming through the UN or straight to U.S. agencies from U.S. nationals on UN teams. Debriefing of Iraqi defectors and escapees continued; many of these were under the aegis of the main Kurdish factions or other groups that comprised the Iraqi National Congress or its rival orga
