The Failure: be serious and complete, investigations now underway, and additional efforts undertaken by historians later, should explore the following questions:
1. The close cooperation between American and British intelligence services which helped President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair make their case for war while protecting them from awkward questions. [...]
2. Communications with the CIA by officials in the Pentagon, the office of the vice-president, and the National Security Council that might have been intended, or reasonably interpreted, as pressure to skew intelligence estimates. [...]
3. The origin of the obsession with Iraq which the Bush administration brought into office in January 2001, an obsession well-documented [...]
Attempts to answer these questions will be resisted by the White House principally on the grounds of executive privilege, and by the CIA citing its historic understanding with British intelligence that neither will share information received from the other without its prior agreement, which the British may confidently be expected to refuse. [...]
But something went terribly wrong as America debated the need for war a year ago, and each of the possible explanations raises grave questions of trust—either the CIA cannot be trusted to see the difference between real and imaginary dangers, or the agency made itself pliant and supine in the hands of the President, who exploited the CIA to make his case for war.
