U.S. official cites bureaucracy in reason for war
By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, May 31, 2003
As President Bush begins a European tour to patch up trans-Atlantic relations, comments from senior U.S. defense officials about Iraqi weapons have increased controversy over the war's justification.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for focusing on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
"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," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with Vanity Fair.
In the interview, Wolfowitz cited one outcome of the war that was "almost unnoticed -- but it's huge": It opened the way for American forces to withdraw from Saudi Arabia. Vanity Fair interpreted Wolfowitz's remarks as meaning that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia was a major reason for going to war.
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might have been destroyed before the war.
"It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
The remarks were seen by many skeptical Europeans as a tacit admission that the United States overstated Iraq's weapons threat.
The Daily Express of London ran a report Friday on the statements by the two U.S. officials with the headline "Just Complete and Utter Lies."
"Claims that the world was lied to about the reasons for going to war in Iraq gathered pace yesterday," the newspaper said.
In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said, "The charge of deception is inescapable."
During his interview with Vanity Fair in early May, Wolfowitz cited several payoffs from the war, including removing the need for U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. Those troops were sent to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1990. But their presence in the country that is home to Islam's holiest sites enraged many Muslims, including al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States said it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia.
"Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government," Wolfowitz said. "It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda."
Wolfowitz insisted that there had always been three major concerns about Iraq.
"One was weapons of mass destruction, second was terrorism and the third . . . was the abuse of Iraqis by their own government," Wolfowitz said Friday at the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference in Singapore. "All three of those have been there. They've always been part of the rationale."
The inability of coalition forces to find significant stocks of banned weapons has fueled skepticism. The top U.S. Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence reports "were simply wrong" in saying that Saddam intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Friday he was convinced before and during the war that at least some Iraqi units had chemical weapons.
"It was a surprise to me then -- it remains a surprise to me now -- that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites," he told reporters.
"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," he added. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
The BBC reported Thursday that an intelligence report asserting that Saddam could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, released by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government last fall, had been "made sexier" on the orders of Blair's office against the judgment of Britain's intelligence services.
Blair insisted Friday that he was certain concrete evidence of banned weapons will be found. "I have absolutely no doubt at all that we will present the full evidence after we have investigated all the sites, after we've interviewed all the scientists and experts, and this will take place in the coming weeks and months," he said.
CIA Director George Tenet also took the unusual step Friday of publicly defending his agency's intelligence on Iraqi weapons.
Three complaints have been filed with the CIA ombudsman about the possible politicization by the Bush administration of intelligence on Iraq, an intelligence official said, but he wouldn't describe the substance of the complaints. One senior administration official said there have been complaints by CIA analysts that they felt pressured by administration policymakers.
"The integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong," Tenet said in a statement released by the CIA.
Speaking as he arrived Friday in Poland, Bush dismissed charges that the administration had failed to prove its case that Iraq possessed banned weapons. He cited the discovery last month of two trucks in Iraq that U.S. intelligence said appeared to be designed as mobile biological weapons production facilities. "For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them," Bush said.
U.S. authorities have to date made no claim of a confirmed finding of an actual nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. The CIA reported that no pathogens were found in the two trailers, but it said a civilian use for the trailers, such as water purification or pharmaceutical production, was unlikely.
This article contains material from other wire services |
