Bush was told twice of Iraq challenges

The report, issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee, brought to light once-classified warnings that accurately forecasted many of the military and political problems the Bush administration and Iraqi officials have faced since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

These warnings were distributed to senior officials with daily access to President Bush and others at the very top of the administration, the report states.

Although many names were left blank to protect members of the intelligence community, the report's 81-page list of who received the predictions included figures throughout the national security bureaucracy.

One of those was then-deputy national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley, now the national security advisor.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said the report demonstrated that "the intelligence community gave the administration plenty of warning about the difficulties we would face if the decision was made to go to war."

He added: "These dire warnings were widely distributed at the highest levels of government, and it's clear that the administration didn't plan for any of them."

Unlike previous studies of the buildup to the war, the Senate report did not focus on the intelligence community's flawed information, which included overstated assessments of Iraq's potential for developing weapons of mass destruction.

The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, criticized the report, saying that it highlighted only elements that seemed important in retrospect and that it distorted what was presented to policymakers in 2003.

He said the committee's inquiry into the intelligence community's prewar assessments "has become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report."

At a news conference Thursday, Bush was asked about the impending release of the report. He responded that "going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn't happen.