Unfortunately, this report didn't do much to clear up some of the confusing and vexing issues surrounding the Bush Administration's use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Needless to say, this topic is politically explosive, so it's very difficult to make any kind of definitive statement that doesn't immediately provoke a torrent of partisan rancor. But we cannot understand the WMD controversy without first wading through the political muck, so that's where we must begin.
Politically, there are two very different versions of the WMD controversy. The first, which is the favorite of Democrats, is that President Bush and top administration officials deliberately made false statements about Iraq's WMD to frighten the American people to justify a war with Iraq. The second, which is popular among Republicans, is that Bush was simply repeating the conclusions of U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, and that the decision to invade Iraq was based on a genuine concern to protect the United States from Iraq's dangerous arsenal of WMD. If the first is true, Bush is a rotten war criminal. And if the second is true, then Bush is courageous leader who simply was misled by U.S. intelligence.
Anytime there is a suggestion that Bush "lied" to the country about Iraq's WMD, then Republicans make the argument that Bush's statements are no different from the Democrat's. Bush and the Republicans are not the only ones who thought Iraq had WMD. Here are some quotes by Democrats:
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
-- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002"
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
-- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002
We can see that Bush's statements on Iraq's WMD program are really not so different from the Democrat's. So does this prove that there was no chicanery going on? Were we all wrong, as Bush supporters like to say? Or was there an effort to influence the intelligence to justify a war with Iraq? The intelligence world is full of secrecy, anonymous sources, and murky details, so a crystal clear picture of what went on is going to be difficult, but we have enough background information to make reasonable conclusions.
A fact often overlooked is that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)was a seismic shift in thinking about Iraq. The Robb-Silberman report, a task force commissioned by President Bush to look into the intelligence failure, states the following, “The October 2002 NIE reflected a shift, however, in the Community's judgments about the state of Iraq's BW program. Previous Community estimates had assessed that Iraq could have biological weapons; the October 2002 estimate, in contrast, assessed with ‘high confidence’ that Iraq ‘has’ biological weapons.”
“The Intelligence Community's assessment of Iraq's CW programs and capabilities remained relatively stable during the 1990s, judging that Iraq retained a modest capability to restart a chemical warfare program. The October 2002 NIE therefore marked a shift from previous assessments in that it concluded that Iraq had actually begun renewed production of chemical agents on a sizable scale.”
Is it not suspicious that the October 2002 NIE gave the Bush Administration the justification it needed to initiate a war with Iraq? Are we to believe that the intelligence agencies just so happened to produce so much bad intelligence right when the Bush Administration was trying to sell a war? More importantly, the October 2002 NIE seems to provide an ex post justification for Dick Cheney’s August 26, 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars where he makes the following alarming statements,
“The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.”
“Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon”
“Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Of course, only the most Pollyannaish would object to war if this was all true. However, this wasn’t true, nor was it supported by U.S. intelligence at the time. George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, said in his book _At The Center of The Storm_ that Cheney’s speech “went well beyond what our analysis could support,” but he failed to say so at the time. The Vice President had just concocted his own intelligence report out of whole cloth that had no basis in fact. It’s also important to note that Cheney wasn’t just claiming that Iraq had renewed production of biological and chemical weapons, but that Saddam’s intent was to use these weapons to wage aggressive wars, to blackmail the world, and threaten the United States. Cheney’s speech inaugurated the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat to our national security, and only a war -- regime change -- could guarantee our safety. In this light, was it really bad intelligence or political intelligence?
Another seldom mentioned fact about the October 2002 NIE was that it was a rushed job. Typically, it takes about ten months to produce a NIE, but the one on Iraq’s WMD was completed in about 19 days. This fact alone proves the NIE was a political document, because there wasn’t sufficient time for all the raw data to be properly digested and assimilated throughout the various organs of U.S. intelligence. Instead of the normal gestation period of ten months, it came into being after three weeks, useless and stillborn, with its conclusions barely surviving a few months of exposure. The Robb Silberman report states, “The time pressures of the October 2002 NIE also may have hampered the normal thorough review before dissemination.” Of course, this “time pressure” is really political pressure, because the Bush Administration needed the intelligence community to give them a document that could justify a war -- mission accomplished.
While the Robb Silberman report provides a painstaking and thorough analysis of how certain aspects of the intelligence community went awry, the main points can be summed up briefly. In short, the Bush Administration was alleging that in 2002 Iraq had “renewed” production of biological and chemical weapons and was actively seeking a nuclear weapon. Once we remove the layers and layers of intelligence “assumptions,” “best guesses,” and “interpretations,” we see only a paucity of evidence that could barely survive a moment’s scrutiny. The conclusion that Iraq was seeking a nuclear weapon mainly came down to two bits of information: aluminum tubes and a forged uranium document. The conclusion that Iraq had extensive mobile biological weapon labs came down to one source, an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball, who was unreliable and a known fabricator. The conclusion that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons came down to satellite imagery that showed “suspicious” truck activity, and, again, Curveball. That was it. The entire case for war in Iraq was built upon a flimsy house of cards that could hardly stand on its own.
However, what is even more troublesome is that after the publication of the October 2002 NIE, its conclusions came into immediate question. On March 7th, 2003 the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) released its findings about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program. These findings eviscerated the claims made by Dick Cheney and the 2002 NIE. The IAEA exposed the uranium documents as crude forgeries and concluded that the aluminum tubes were not designed for enriching uranium.
“There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminum tubes in question.”
The 2002 NIE maintained that Iraq had renewed production of chemical weapons, but this also came into question after the United Nations team (UNMOVIC) spent months in Iraq acting on the best U.S. intelligence. Hans Blix states, “And among the 700 inspections that we performed, none brought us any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.” So the United States could not provide a single bit of intelligence to corroborate the conclusion that Iraq had facilities producing chemical weapons.
Finally, in regards to the conclusion that Iraq had extensive mobile biological weapon labs, this came from a single source, Curveball, who was known to be unreliable prior to October of 2002. The Robb Silberman report states, “Indications of possible problems with Curveball began to emerge well before the 2002 NIE...The analysts' resistance to any information that could undermine Curveball's reliability suggests that the analysts were unduly wedded to a source that supported their assumptions about Iraq's BW programs.”
What does all this mean? It demonstrates conclusively that every bit of raw data that went into the October 2002 NIE --the intelligence document that paved the way for the war in Iraq -- had either been debunked or called into question before President Bush initiated “hostilities” on March 19th 2003. Simply, Bush took the United States to war even though the entire case for war had gone up in plume of smoke.
So how do we assess culpability? On October 11th the Senate approved the resolution to grant President Bush authority to wage war in Iraq. So after this date, the decision to go to war is entirely invested in President Bush. It was after this date that the conclusions made in the 2002 NIE came into question. The uranium documents were exposed as forgeries. Hans Blix found no traces of chemical weapons, and Curveball was widely known as a fabricator. So the most relevant question is: was the belief that Iraq had WMD just as solid in March of 2003 as it was in October of 2002? The answer is obviously “no.” Intelligence is a dynamic process -- conclusions can and do change. There is no reason to stay wedded to assumptions if the evidence changes. If President Bush was truly concerned about the accuracy of the intelligence, he could’ve called for another NIE, or permitted Congress and the Senate to cast another vote in light of the latest intelligence. However, he used his “authority” to wage war and the rest is history.
Ultimately, the war in Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction, or protecting this country from a rogue regime. That was merely a convenient sales pitch for the war. The war in Iraq was about something else. But that's another story.
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