Subsonic Chronic
TRIBE Member
What's the Difference?
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A36
LAST YEAR the U.S. intelligence community produced a formal estimate concluding that Iraq possessed large stocks of chemical and biological weapons and that it had reconstituted its nuclear bomb program. But a concerted postwar search by a U.S. survey team so far has found no weapons or nuclear program -- only suspicious facilities and a continuing intention to acquire such arms.
"So what's the difference?" President Bush demanded of ABC's Diane Sawyer in an interview broadcast Tuesday. "The possibility that [Saddam Hussein] could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger." In fact, the difference is much larger than that -- and the president's cavalier dismissal of it is shocking.
Start with the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the administration delivered to Congress in October 2002, just as it was considering whether to authorize war. Mr. Bush told Ms. Sawyer it was "very sound" -- yet by now it is obvious that it was not. Not only did the NIE mistake the seriousness of Iraq's nuclear program, but it concluded that Iraq was still producing such deadly chemical agents as mustard, sarin and VX and had hundreds of tons of chemical weapons stockpiled. These have not been found, and the CIA-directed postwar survey group has surmised that Iraq did not have a large or centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991.
We are inclined to doubt that these erroneous estimates were made knowingly or for political reasons, if only because the Clinton administration and several European governments opposed to the war reached the same conclusions. But there is a critical need to discover how and why the intelligence community was so wrong about a target as important as Iraq. When the proliferation of dangerous weapons to terrorists or rogue states may be the most serious threat to U.S. security, and when an administration has adopted a policy of preempting such threats, there can be no more important role for intelligence than accurately determining where the weapons are -- and where they are not.
Pressed by Ms. Sawyer, Mr. Bush fell back on a rote response: "Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the fact he is gone means America is a safer country." That statement, at least, is true, as is Mr. Bush's argument that the postwar findings prove that Saddam Hussein violated the U.N. resolution offering him a "final opportunity." But the degree of the threat, as described by Mr. Bush and his administration to Congress, the American public and the world, matters enormously. It matters because some in Congress and the public who supported the war might not have done so had they been given a more accurate account of Iraq's weapons. And it matters because the gap between the administration's words and the emerging truth has done serious damage to its credibility, both at home and abroad. Mr. Bush already must live with the probability that future warnings he may make about "gathering threats" will be greeted with considerable skepticism. By denying the problem, he merely makes it worse.
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A36
LAST YEAR the U.S. intelligence community produced a formal estimate concluding that Iraq possessed large stocks of chemical and biological weapons and that it had reconstituted its nuclear bomb program. But a concerted postwar search by a U.S. survey team so far has found no weapons or nuclear program -- only suspicious facilities and a continuing intention to acquire such arms.
"So what's the difference?" President Bush demanded of ABC's Diane Sawyer in an interview broadcast Tuesday. "The possibility that [Saddam Hussein] could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger." In fact, the difference is much larger than that -- and the president's cavalier dismissal of it is shocking.
Start with the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the administration delivered to Congress in October 2002, just as it was considering whether to authorize war. Mr. Bush told Ms. Sawyer it was "very sound" -- yet by now it is obvious that it was not. Not only did the NIE mistake the seriousness of Iraq's nuclear program, but it concluded that Iraq was still producing such deadly chemical agents as mustard, sarin and VX and had hundreds of tons of chemical weapons stockpiled. These have not been found, and the CIA-directed postwar survey group has surmised that Iraq did not have a large or centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991.
We are inclined to doubt that these erroneous estimates were made knowingly or for political reasons, if only because the Clinton administration and several European governments opposed to the war reached the same conclusions. But there is a critical need to discover how and why the intelligence community was so wrong about a target as important as Iraq. When the proliferation of dangerous weapons to terrorists or rogue states may be the most serious threat to U.S. security, and when an administration has adopted a policy of preempting such threats, there can be no more important role for intelligence than accurately determining where the weapons are -- and where they are not.
Pressed by Ms. Sawyer, Mr. Bush fell back on a rote response: "Saddam Hussein was a threat, and the fact he is gone means America is a safer country." That statement, at least, is true, as is Mr. Bush's argument that the postwar findings prove that Saddam Hussein violated the U.N. resolution offering him a "final opportunity." But the degree of the threat, as described by Mr. Bush and his administration to Congress, the American public and the world, matters enormously. It matters because some in Congress and the public who supported the war might not have done so had they been given a more accurate account of Iraq's weapons. And it matters because the gap between the administration's words and the emerging truth has done serious damage to its credibility, both at home and abroad. Mr. Bush already must live with the probability that future warnings he may make about "gathering threats" will be greeted with considerable skepticism. By denying the problem, he merely makes it worse.
