US 'dead wrong on Iraq'

A presidential commission said yesterday that America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war.
Bush meets with members of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. At left is Sen. Charles Robb, who co-led the commission. In a scathing report, the panel said that the United States knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear threats posed by many of its most dangerous adversaries.
The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined 74 recommendations and said that President George W. Bush could implement most of them without action by Congress. It urged Bush to give broader powers to John Negroponte, his choice to be the new director of national intelligence, to deal with any challenges to his authority from the CIA, Defence Department or other elements of the 15 US spy agencies.
It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office. The White House vowed to act on a presidential commission's scathing report.
"We welcome the report," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "We're going to carefully review each recommendation and we will act on those recommendations in a fairly quick period of time."