After all, it was hardly as if WMDs was the ONLY reason to go into Iraq, it was just the lowest common denominator reason.
It’s strange how so many people who trumpeted the WMD issue to the skies before the war are now backing away from it.
WMD, whether or not we like to admit it, were the single most important argument for the war. They were important because they were the only factor that could be used to portray Iraq as an immediate threat. That, in turn, was critically important because the only way to sell the war to the American people was to convince them that Iraq was an immediate threat. There were other reasons why the war might have been thought expedient. These reasons sufficient to convince neocons, who need little excuse to go to war, but whether taken individually or in sum, they were only sufficient to demonstrate that war was expedient. That’s not enough for Americans: they would not support the war unless they thought it was necessary. The only way to convince them that it was necessary was to overplay the WMD issue, and that’s what was done. Some people here did the same: I recall a few posts claiming that anything short of immediate war would effectively cede control of the gulf to Saddam. This sort of exaggeration was crude, almost ridiculous, but it was sufficient to convince many who knew no better that Saddam was an imminent threat and that immediate war was necessary.
The real issue, I might as well say now, is not whether Iraq had any WMD, but whether Iraq posed a real and present thteat to the US and the region. Any WMD evidence must be assessed against this criterion.
The next question in the public arena, Steven, will be, did the Bush administration falsify the intel on Iraq OR, was the intelligence on Iraqi WMDs just crummy? even more worrying, if true.
I think it’s less a question of falsifying than of cherrypicking – emphasizing items that supported the pre-ordained conclusion, de-emphasizing items that did not. There was abundant evidence, even before the war, that this was going on; most simply didn’t care to look.
how do we sort out sincere complaints about intel misuse from the anticipatory butt-covering from the intelligence orgs? Seems to me that the complaints in this article fit equally well in either category.
Intelligence operatives don’t cover their butts with public statements. They aren’t accountable to the public, they are accountable to the administration; they risk far more than they could ever gain by this kind of open statement.
I think its fairly clear by now that the threat Saddam posed to the US and the region was considerably and deliberately exaggerated, less by the intelligence services than by their clients. (Many of us pointed this out before the war, but we were shouted down). One effect of this exaggeration will be the reduction in our government’s credibility in any future case involving similar issues. The next time we raise WMD as an issue, there will inevitably be a widespread chorus of “yeah, right”. Of course next time there might really be a threat. Crying “wolf” often seems a good idea in the short run. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a good idea.
As I said before, though, all the government has to do to resolve the issue is to release the data on which pre-war WMD conclusions were based. With Saddam gone, there is no reason to keep this stuff secret to protect the sources. Once we see it, we will know if the error was one of duplicity or incompetence, conspiracy or fuckup. Of course the Government won’t let us see it. That, in itself, says a good deal. |
