| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"NotBush2004" |
| Date: |
11 Jan 2004 12:07:07 PM |
| Object: |
The Faulty Weapons Estimates |
The Faulty Weapons Estimates
NYTimes Editorial
Published: January 11, 2004
There seems little doubt that the Bush administration's prime justification
for invading Iraq - the fear that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass
destruction - was way off base. Nine months of fruitless searching have made
that increasingly clear.
But last week three new reports cast further doubt on the administration's
reckless rush to invade Iraq. Taken together, they paint a picture far
different from the one presented to Americans early last year. They depict a
world in which Saddam Hussein, though undeniably eager to make Iraq a
threatening world power, was far from any serious steps to do that. The
reports strengthen our conviction that whatever threat Iraq posed did not
require an immediate invasion without international support. And they
underline the importance of finding out how far the Bush administration's
obsession with the Iraqi dictator warped the American intelligence reports
that did so much to convince Congress and the public that the attack was
justified.
The likelihood that significant weapons of mass destruction will be found
seemed to grow even more remote last week with publication of an
investigative report by Barton Gellman in The Washington Post. Mr. Gellman,
who perused Iraqi documents and interviewed key Iraqis and members of the
American search team, found that Iraq's effort to produce terror weapons had
been so thoroughly beaten down by conflict, sanctions and arms embargoes
that its forbidden weapons program amounted mainly to wishful thinking.
A program to produce missiles with enough range to reach neighboring
capitals, for example, turned out to exist only in designs and computations
on two compact discs. Experts estimated it would have taken at least six
years to build the missile, if it had worked at all. A planned genetic
engineering lab to design germ weapons was never completed. Most
dramatically of all, an internal letter, written by Iraq's top
unconventional-weapons official in 1995 to one of Saddam Hussein's sons,
asserted unequivocally that Iraq had destroyed its entire inventory of
biological weapons agents in 1991, proving the falsity of intelligence
estimates that Iraq still possessed large quantities of germ materials.
The failure to find anything significant has particularly disturbed Kenneth
Pollack, a former Clinton administration national security official whose
book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" led many moderates
and Democrats to believe that an invasion was justified - at least in time
to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that
seemed only a few years away. Now, in an article in The Atlantic magazine,
Mr. Pollack anguishes over how estimates of Iraq's capabilities could have
been so far off.
He puts most of the blame on the intelligence community, which overestimated
the scope and progress of Iraq's weapons programs starting in the late
1990's, partly because a lack of hard evidence led analysts to assume the
worst. But he also condemns the Bush administration for distorting the
intelligence estimates in making the case for going to war, particularly by
implying that Iraq could have had a nuclear weapon within a year when
estimates suggested five to seven years was more likely. Even that number
now looks far-fetched given that Iraq's nuclear program was virtually
eliminated.
Analysts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also found that
three intelligence services that are arguably the best in the world - those
of the United States, Britain and Israel - were tragically unable to provide
accurate information on Iraq. But the Carnegie experts are even harsher in
condemning the administration for deliberate exaggerations. They argue that
the intelligence community gave reasonably cautious assessments up until
mid-2002, when official statements and estimates suddenly became
increasingly alarmist. The Carnegie analysts accuse the Bush administration
of putting intense pressure on intelligence experts to conform, of
minimizing the existence of dissenting views, and of routinely dropping
caveats and uncertainties in painting a worst-case picture.
What emerges most forcefully from these reports is the need for two thorough
inquiries. Even though members of the American search team in Iraq told Mr.
Gellman they hold little prospect for major discoveries of forbidden
weapons, the search must continue vigorously to a conclusion, preferably
with the assistance of United Nations inspectors who have a huge database on
Iraq and are more credible to much of the world. Back home, a nonpartisan
investigation independent of political pressures from the administration and
Congress is needed to get a better sense of how judgments about Iraq were so
disastrously mistaken. Nothing can be fixed until we know for sure how it
happened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/opinion/11SUN1.html
--
A pattern of deception
A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received
scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American
history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in
selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in
direct conflict with the notion of the public's informed consent that is
central to American democracy.
Walter Williams is professor emeritus at the University of Washington's
Evans School of Public Affairs.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6378746.htm
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