By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
St. Louis – Republican Kit Bond of Missouri says a Senate report critical of intelligence efforts in Iraq highlights the need to reform the system.
Bond is a member of the Senate select committee that spent over a year analyzing US intelligence data.
He says faulty information stemmed from bad systems within several key agencies.
Bond says an over-reliance on technology and a lack of human intelligence contributed to the problem.
"We had nobody on the ground that was our source in Iraq, which left us essentially blind in a very important part of the war on terrorism" Bond said.
The report found claims that Iraq had an advanced weapons of mass destruction program were incorrect.
Nevertheless, Bond says the US was justified in going to war against a regime that sheltered terrorists.
"We knew that after we disbanded the Taliban in Afghanistan, that Iraq remained the most dangerous place for terrorists to gather as they have because at the time, Saddam Hussein had the facilities, had used, had the people to make chemical and biological weapons," Bond said.
Accoring to Bond, the committee also found that no intelligence analysts were ever pressured by administration officials to reach specific conclusions about Iraq's activities.
llinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin is also on the committee.
In a Washington Post op-ed Friday, he said the committee's leadership chose to defer more important issues to another report.
That won't come out until after the November elections