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This is Intelligence Matters, with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morel.

Brought to you by Lockheed Martin.

Your mission is ours.

What Iraq was was an overreliance on the imagination.

After 9-11, which the policymakers of the White House at least didn't see coming, they

let their imaginations run wild.

And so, while it was true that there were gross intelligence failures, particularly as

pertains to Saddam's supposed weapons program.

It was at least as true that in the end, President Bush didn't rely on this or that bit of intelligence.

There is a caricature out there of Bush as this intellectually lazy cowboy.

But Bush, in fact, could be a very, very intellectually rigorous guy.

The problem, though, was that the president did cut corners intellectually.

He did tend to see things in black and white terms.

In the months up to 9-11, he was not as engaged nor were his people around him with the clear

and present threat that Al Qaeda constituted.

And I think that that was a failure of his, just as it was a failure some 18 months later,

when he really came to believe all these Iraqi exiles, who told him what he wanted to hear,

which is that when the US troops come into Iraq, they're going to be throwing flowers

and candy at the feet of the soldiers.

They cannot wait to coalesce around democracy.

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