http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/060703A.shtml
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War
An Impeachable Offense?
By John W. Dean
FindLaw
Friday 06 June 2003
President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before
asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American
military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements
about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical
actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In
the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly
issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not
clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless,
perhaps, they start another war.
That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war
are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of
President Bush's warmaking.
Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national
security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of
truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and
get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth
about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President
Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his
resignation.
Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter.
Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too
early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to
explore the relevant issues.
President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction:
Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about
weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled
these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed,
been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.
Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were
used for the production of biological weapons."
United Nations Address
September 12, 2002
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is
rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently
authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very
weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
Radio Address
October 5, 2002
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and
biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of
chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve
gas."
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a
growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be
used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.
We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for
missions targeting the United States."
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi
nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his
nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is
rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear
program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which
are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the
materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent."
State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no
doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of
the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003
Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?
When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words
posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the
world, and many other Americans, doubted them.
As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was
also being debated on campuses - including those where I happened to
be lecturing at the time.
On several occasions, students asked me the following question:
Should they believe the President of the United States? My answer was
that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for
several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated
in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating
in the Bush White House, too.
First, I assured the students that these statements had all been
carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the
result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters
process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior
aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And
this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for
his own review and possible revision.
Second, I explained that - at least in every White House and
administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -
statements with national security implications were the most carefully
considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these
statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also
to the world.
Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically
corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this
case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims,
Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been
even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9,
2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact
that there are weapons there."
In addition, others in the Administration were similarly quick to
back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal
statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed
that Saddam had WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew "where
they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so
great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these
statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up.
Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off
by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there
was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling
him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say:
"I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest,"
or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.
So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found,
indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have
been?
After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given
Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find - for
they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical
weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale
facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production
equipment also existed.
So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's
unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?
There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously
wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That
seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has
deliberately misled the nation, and the world.
A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit
Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
the President had dispatched American military special forces into
Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would
provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were
found.
Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward
Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.
As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and
countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs.
None were found.
During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news
reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites
throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.
British and American Press Reaction to the Missing WMDs
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in
England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the
missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as
scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to
task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to
be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an
imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he
continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in
American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than
Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the
search for WMDs in Iraq continues.
Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it
was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for
people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that
WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the
Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from
around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.
But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According
to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to
virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and
Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."
Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any
explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements,
yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there
an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be?
Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or
was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?
The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements
and reality only increases the sense that the President's
misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.
Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports
Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional
misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem.
Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a
new age of pre-emption --when it must strike first because it cannot
afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological
weapons--exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States
take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA
can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to
maintain support at home and abroad?"
In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and
his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense
Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war
intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort
about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may
be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone
else to blame - informants, surveillance technology, lower-level
personnel, you name it - they may not escape fault themselves.
Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war
intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA),
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee
and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the
situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
plans an investigation.
These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent
evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct - and
either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems
to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.
Senator Bob Graham - a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee - told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they
find WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three
other possible alternative scenarios:
One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the
worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were
trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could
be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad
intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but
that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people
and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of
war against Iraq.
Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is
the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN
"there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."
Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times,
he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national
intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After
reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration
declassify the information before the Senate voted on the
Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.
But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a
letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's
letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's
position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about
intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by
cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the
information to support its conclusion.
Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the
decision making process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly
suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with
Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for
reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we
settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was
weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently,
Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we
went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."
Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMDs Are Still
Missing
Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In
the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal
I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush
Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented
intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support,
military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a
monstrous misdeed.
As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due
for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron,
it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's
doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into
war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or
deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven,
could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause.
It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the
broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to
defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for
any purpose."
It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was
about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the
CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that
manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly
is a serious abuse of presidential power.
Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his
political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same
kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse
national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony
reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us
hope that is not the case.
John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President
of the United States.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Vote for Bush. Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
No matter the candidates the superstition industry wins.
'Jesus' is a sock-puppet Christians utilize to add 'authority' to
whatever action they intend on taking. -Stoney
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