US insistence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction is based on dubious intelligence from a shadowy Pentagon committee that now dominates US foreign policy.

By late last year, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) had grown to become President George W. Bush (news – web sites)’s main intelligence source, particularly over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the country’s links to al-Qaeda, the New Yorker reported in its May 12 edition.

But the OSP, the brainchild of US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, relied on questionable intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi.

“You had to treat them with suspicion. The INC has a track record of manipulating intelligence because it has an agenda. It’s a political unit, not an intelligence agency,” a former senior CIA official specialising in the Middle East said in the article written by Seymour Hersh. Yahoo! News

Meanwhile:

Rep. Waxman asks Defense Secretary Rumsfeld about evidence that Halliburton has profited from business with countries that sponsor terrorism. Here’s the letter in .pdf format.