http://progressivetrail.org/articles/050401Corn.shtml
WMD Commission Continues the Stonewall for Bush
by David Corn
published by DavidCorn.com
WMD Commission Continues the Stonewall for Bush
The stonewall continues.
On Thursday, President Bush's commission on weapons of mass
destruction intelligence released a 692-page report that
harshly criticizes the US intelligence establishment. It
notes that "the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in
almost all of it pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure."
That's no news flash. The Senate intelligence committee
issued a report last July that said the same. But like the
Senate committee, Bush's commission--cochaired by Judge
Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and former Senator Chuck
Robb, a Democrat--ignored a key issue: whether Bush and his
aides overstated and misrepresented the flawed intelligence
they received from the intelligence agencies. As I wrote
about days ago, Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman
of the intelligence committee, promised last summer that his
committee would investigate the administration's prewar use
(or abuse) of the WMD intelligence after the 2004 election,
but more recently Roberts backed away from that vow, claiming
such an inquiry would now be pointless. The commission, which
claimed it found no evidence that Bush officials pressured
intelligence analysts to rig their reports, notes in a footnote,
"Our review has been limited by our charter to the question
of alleged policymaker pressure on the Intelligence Community
to shape its conclusions to conform to the policy preferences
of the Administration. There is a separate issue of how
policymakers used the intelligence they were given and how they
reflected it in their presentations to Congress and the public.
That issue is not within our charter and we therefore did not
consider it nor do we express a view on it."
So two years after Bush launched the invasion of Iraq, there
still has been no official inquiry into how he and his
lieutenants handled the prewar intelligence. The question
is whether Bush and other administration officials exaggerated
the intelligence community's overstatements. And the evidence
suggests they did. Bush claimed Saddam Hussein was "dealing
with" al Qaeda before the war, but the CIA had not reported
that. Bush said Hussein had amassed a "massive stockpile" of
biological weapons, yet the intelligence community had only
reported (errantly) that Iraq had an active research and
development program for biological weapons. Bush and his
Republican allies in Congress have so far succeeded in keeping
his role in the WMD scandal out of the picture. (Democrats,
where are you?)
The presidential WMD commission found numerous problems within
the intelligence community. It says, "we still know disturbingly
little about the weapons programs and even less about the
intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries." (This
is bad news for anyone who wants to bomb Iran or North Korea.)
The report is mostly depressing, as it describes severe
dysfunctions within the intelligence establishment. But the
commission casts little, if any, blame toward the person
ultimately responsible for the intelligence community: the
president of the United States. And the current president even
bestowed upon former CIA director George Tenet, who was at
the helm during this period of screw-ups, the presidential
Medal of Freedom. (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
received one, too. And yesterday the Rand Corporation released
a report concluding that his Pentagon failed to plan adequately
for the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. The Rand study says
that stabilization and reconstruction issues "were addressed
only very generally" and "no planning was undertaken to ensure
the security of the Iraqi people.")
The WMD commission took only a few modest steps toward
addressing--in the most general terms--the role played by
Bush and the policymakers in the Iraq WMD intelligence
failure. For instance, the commission notes,
"The Intelligence Community needs to be pushed. It will not do
its best unless it is pressed by policymakers-sometimes to the
point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how
much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed
to explain why they don't have better information on key topics.
While policymakers must be prepared to credit intelligence that
doesn't fit their preferences, no important intelligence
assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that
forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that
assessment and what alternatives might also be true."
It's obvious that Bush did not push the intelligence services
in this fashion. As the White House has conceded, Bush did not
even read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq produced
in October 2002. This was the intelligence community's ultimate
summary of its intelligence on Iraq. A close reading of the
document could have led Bush or national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice (who also did not read the 90-page paper) to
raise the sort of questions the commission suggests. But that
did not happen. When Silberman was asked at a press conference
if Bush had been inquisitive enough, he referred to a passage
in Bob Woodward's latest book in which Bush is depicted asking
Tenet if the intelligence is sound and Tenet maintains it is
a "slam-dunk." That clearly was not good enough.
The commission also observes,
"The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed
that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or
alter any of their analytical judgments. That said, it is hard to
deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an
environment that did not encourage skepticism about the
conventional wisdom."
The commission suggests that it is partly the responsibility of
the president to guarantee that conventional wisdom is questioned.
But Bush did no such thing. With this report, the CIA is again
cast as the fall guy. And Bush escapes merrily.
A government nonproliferation expert with experience dealing
with intelligence analysts, who has read the report, sent me
his/her assessment. This source asked to go unnamed, fearing
retribution at the workplace for publicly blasting the report.
Below is an excerpt of his/her analysis:
[The commission] focuses on how and why the dogs barked [and
got it wrong]. The real point, however, is: why didn't someone
look out the window? And why have no policymakers taken
responsibility, anywhere, for drastically wrong assessments
on Iraq?
"The Commission's report is a good read and thorough. The
recommendations -- to collect better intelligence, do better
analysis, and communicate better -- however, reflect the
absurdity of having intelligence experts tell each other how
to do their job better. The users of intelligence should be
involved. The Commission had 60 staff members, but only three
have identifiable expertise in nonproliferation and none have
nonproliferation policy experience. Why didn't the Commission
include more nonproliferation experts?
There are lots of reasons....The Commission was appointed by
the president and it is politically easier for this
administration to focus on intelligence rather than policy
failures, for obvious reasons. Nonproliferation experts might
point out that even though the intelligence was flawed,
someone with enough nonproliferation experience would have
asked more questions. Despite the fascinating details of how
and why the intelligence on uranium from Niger was faulty, an
expert would point out that there were tons of natural and
low-enriched uranium already in Iraq: even if Iraq got uranium
from Niger, it wouldn't make a discernible difference in the
quantity it could enrich. Iraq's first choice would be to take
the safeguarded material (just as it planned to do before the
1991 war) and use that. Faster and less complicated. A
nonproliferation expert would also know that the CIA's arguments
that Iraq was reconstituting its cadre of nuclear weapons
personnel were an old, tired mantra repeated since the early
1990s. In interagency meetings ten years ago, I used to ask
them, what evidence do you have? "Well," the analysts would
say, "we think he's doing it." Apparently their evidence
never got any better."
For Bush--or the commission--to say he was misled by the
intelligence community is not a sufficient explanation or
defense. First, Bush didn't ensure the intelligence he received
was solid. Then he and his lieutenants repeatedly said in
public that the intelligence was beyond doubt, and they made
dramatic assertions about the supposed threat presented by
Hussein's WMDs that went far beyond what the intelligence
(wrongly) claimed. In keeping the spotlight exclusively on
the intelligence gang and not turning it also on the
policymakers at the White House, the WMD commission has
served Bush well, but not the public.
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