A good article, with which I've few disagreements. A few comments...
A big part of the problem was that the Bush administration (and the president himself) had still failed to adequately prioritize the reasons for the urgency of removing Saddam ASAP. Was it because of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction? Its defiance of UN regulations and international law pertaining to those WMDs? Its possible links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups? The brutality and inhumanity of Saddam's regime? Or a more general need by America following 9/11 to kick some serious butt among its enemies, of which Saddam's was surely among the most deserving and doable?
Although the last statement probably comes closest to the truth (and should have been sufficient unto itself), it was the first the Bush administration decided to stress.
It needs to be underscored here that while Mr. Ben-David and some others may feel that a generalized need to kick somebody's butt is sufficient cause for war, it would never pass muster with the populace.
Two plain facts:
1. The administration needed to portray Iraq as a real threat in order to win support for the war.
2. The administration chose to emphasize the WMD issue.
We have no reason to say that there is a causative relationship between these facts, but we also have no reason to say that there isn't one.
The most plausible explanation has to do with a failure of US intelligence. Perhaps the CIA, NSA, Army Intelligence, etc., were simply wrong in their estimates of Saddam's WMD stockpile. If that's the case, there should certainly be an inquiry of sorts into how that faulty intelligence was gathered, and if major mistakes did happen then the appropriate heads should roll. (Just how many screw-ups is George Tenet allowed?)
Again, there is a quick way to resolve this. The Intelligence available at that time has to be reviewed. If it's too sensitive for the public, it has to be reviewed by a credible and independent group that is accountable to the people.
Another theory put forward is that senior Bush administration officials deliberately skewed ambiguous intelligence information into the direction they wanted to better make the case for war. Given the speculative nature of almost all intelligence material, this would be a very, very hard case to nail down, although Bush and Tony Blair's political opponents will certainly try.
It will be hard to pin down, but we have to note that there was a clear motive to distort.
Saddam could have destroyed his WMDs in the early days of the war although it defies credibility that the amounts cited by Powell could have been made to vanish without a trace so quickly.
Hard to argue with this. Also hard to argue, I think, that they could have been moved abroad, or extensively within Iraq, without somebody knowing.
Everybody in Iraq must know that anyone who comes to the Americans with details on WMD will be able to name his price. If they are around, why isn't anybody talking? Hard to believe that Saddam could be that efficient.
Still a mystery. |
