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To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157784)	6/11/2003 5:58:49 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) of 164684

Editorial: Where are the weapons? / An increasingly edgy debate on Iraqi WMDs Tuesday, June 10, 2003 Public debate on the question of whether there were or were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is likely to get edgier -- in the United States and the United Kingdom -- before it is resolved. President Bush took the occasion of his visit to U.S. troops in Qatar on Thursday to assure them that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, an assurance he echoed in remarks at the White House yesterday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair continues to be harassed in Parliament and in the British media about critics' claims that the intelligence that British and American leaders put forward on the subject in the run-up to the war was either rigged or shoddy. This question is a big deal because it goes far beyond the issue of whether the Iraqis succeeded in squirreling away or destroying their so-called WMDs before the United States and United Kingdom took over Iraq. There are really two questions. The first is the competence of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence-collecting bodies, fueled by an estimated $40 billion-per-year budget. The second is the more critical question of whether the Bush and Blair administrations lied to their respective citizens about Iraqi weapons in an effort to find a reason for the war that would be convincing to their populations. That Iraq used and experimented with such weapons in the past is not the issue. Even countries that refused to support the United States and Britain thought Iraq's record was sufficiently suspicious to justify sanctions and a new round of weapons inspections. The question was whether Iraq's weapons capability justified immediate and extreme action. On that question, Americans are left with an ugly "lose-lose" choice if no WMDs are found. Did U.S. intelligence fail again on a question of monumental importance to the United States, making a misjudgment almost as grave as failing to detect terrorist planning in advance of the Sept. 11 attack? Alternatively, did U.S. intelligence tell the Bush administration that the evidence for such weapons was shaky -- a scenario that assumes the administration disregarded that warning in a call to arms based on WMDs and possible Iraqi links to the Sept. 11 terrorists? Checking box (a) means that U.S. intelligence is seriously incompetent. Checking box (b) means that our leaders lied to us, about a matter of great national importance -- going to war. Several inquiries are under way which may be able to lead to greater clarity on the subjects of both U.S. intelligence competence and the true story about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Those conducted by congressional committees need to be especially pointed and probing; unfortunately, Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress have taken a "Who, me?" approach to discovering the facts. It is definitely "tell the truth" time. This imperative has little to do with U.S. electoral politics. U.S. elections are still 17 months off and are usually conducted in any case on the basis of domestic considerations such as the state of the economy. The real subjects in question now are the competence of U.S. intelligence agencies and the veracity of the senior leaders of the U.S. government, starting with President Bush. "Where are the weapons?" is a question that won't go away. post-gazette.com

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